Technologies like SOAR, DRM, SSO & MFA will See Huge Growth

In an exclusive interaction, NK Mehta, Founder & CEO, Secure Network Solutions, shares the highlights of his achievements and how the recent trends in the cyber security industry are affecting the customer purchasing behaviour. He highlights that with hybrid work, push towards online and cloud applications security investments are moving towards proactive approach to security.

• Please talk about the highlights of your achievements in terms of business growth, customer acquisitions and new innovations in 2021.

The current Financial Year has seen a great recovery in the business. We saw customers back with investments, focusing on digital, cyber security and automation. Most importantly, there is an increased spend on cyber security aiding organizations’ initiative to enable secure work from home, information protection, and digitization. We expect to grow by 50 percent in FY 2021-22. We also acquired a significant number of new logos during this period. Our focus on cloud security had given us great results.

• Please talk about few major developments in your business processes/model which enabled improvement in business in 2021.

We continued our business as usual except for the switch from physical to virtual wherever possible. Internal Sales review meetings, training and collaboration happened online. Customer meetings,  Workshops, Seminars moved to web platforms. Wider acceptance of remote installation and support from the customers encouraged improvement in the productivity. SNS was 100 percent virtual and paperless for a long time and this helped us to seamlessly adopt to the new conditions. All our business applications were on cloud. Internal collaboration platform and HRMS was online as well.

• What are the top trends that will shape the technology industry in 2022?

Specific to Cyber Security industry, we see an importance for proactive approach to security. Technology platforms such as breach prediction, ability to quantify risk, integrated security orchestration and automated response (SOAR) platforms, Digital (or Information) Rights Management, Cloud based Single Sign-On (SSO), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and Secure Endpoint Connectivity are going to see a huge growth. Organizations moving online, moving away from physical offices, increased business process integration with Cloud applications are the major trends influencing the investment in these technologies.

• With the ongoing pandemic, what are the changes you see in the relations between brands, channels, and customers?

There is a definite need for realignment. It’s not easy as face-to-face meetings and on-prem services are age old practices. Whenever the pandemic ends these old practices will definitely make a comeback. However, many organizations have realized huge cost savings in travel, hotel accommodation, utility bills and consumables. So we can expect a hybrid working model (probably first time meet the customers and partners in person and follow-it up with online meetings). Social bonding may see a huge boost for brands as well as for channels.

• The current pandemic has changed the expectations and purchasing behaviour of the customers, which are forcing many of the channel firms to reconsider their business model. What are your suggestions for the channels to re-invent themselves?

This pandemic has created an uncertainty which is reflecting in the allocation of capex budgets to the IT. We are approaching this with OPEX, as-a-Service, Pay-as-you-Go, shorter and smaller investments designed to meet the technology needs of our customers. This has been received well. Not owning a physical infrastructure has given the flexibility to scale-up and scale-down as per the market needs. This is convincing the CFOs too.

• What is your outlook for the technology industry over the next 2-3 years?

Technology industry has always taken a lead in introducing innovative products, technologies, and business processes. IT has influenced every industry in several ways. It has never been a reactive industry to introduce new tools and techniques to a situation ad hoc (for example, pandemic). What was impossible few years back (completely working from home, preparing quotes on tablets, and responding to mails from hand phones) is a norm today. Introduction of 5G is going to bring wider connectivity of billions of devices (computers, phones, tablets, smart appliances, IOT devices and more). This massive infra is going to churn out tons of data, data needs to be analyzed, automated, interpreted and secured to help businesses benefit from this multiverse connectivity. This proactive approach will continue to bring innovative products to improve the quality of life, business, and economic growth. However, despite all these technological advancements, concern for security would be a growing concern as always.