Cyber Security will be driven by IoT over the next 2-5 Years: Debashish Mukherjee

While highlighting the need for partners to transform their business from product-centric to service-centric entity, Debashish Mukherjee, VP, Regional Sales-APAC, SonicWall, mentions that with the advent of 5G and major adoption of IoT, the company is focused on IoT-based security solutions to remain relevant over the next five to ten years.

The ongoing pandemic has certainly increased the importance of security among the enterprises. What are the top trends you see in the cyber security market in India?

Organizations are primarily investing in remote mobility solutions. In addition, a lot of organizations are moving towards cloud or partially moving towards cloud. And, we are now seeing more activity towards the Internet of Things (IoT).

What is the level of adoption you are seeing for advanced cyber security solutions? Where do you see the enterprise focus moving towards?

Large enterprises are primarily looking to build an agile and elastic business model. Due to Covid, suddenly, the requirement of remote mobility solutions has gone up from probably 10 to 100 percent. Large enterprises are now evaluating what solution to adopt to be more elastic and have more visibility on their environment.

Please talk about the highlights of your achievements over the last 12-18 months.

Last 18 months was a great journey. We have developed our product; we have acquired a lot of new customers and we are still growing. We had launched a new solution called Boundless Cyber Security Model in 2020, and due to the Covid situation it has been a huge success for us.

A new global climate and fast-moving market dynamics is accelerating the need for boundless cyber security, which proactively mitigates cyber-attacks across organizations’ boundless exposure points, including a workforce of remote, mobile and cloud-enabled users.

The boundless cyber security model theoretically has got three pillars. First is knowing the unknown. CISOs and CIOs should know what kind of attacks are happening in their network. Second, we must have visibility through a single pane of glass, which is called unified visibility and control. Whatever solution I have implemented, I should see how things are happening and collaborating. Third, we are talking about how we can make our business agile and at the same time how I can reduce the cost of security.

What are your suggestions to build a robust cyber security?

My first suggestion to the customers is to think from a layered approach. Do not go for a best-of-breed approach. Our idea is to protect your data and then you can start evaluating. Second, the customers need to see if the products are talking to each other or not. If your endpoint is finding out any threat and it is not talking to your centralized reporting tool and your firewall is not aware of the threat as well, then there is no point in the best-in-class product.

Please talk about your India channel footprint, and what are your recent channel initiatives?

SonicWall has always been a channel-friendly organization. We are growing our channel business and currently, over 2000 partners are working with us. Since our Boundless 2022 event in February, almost 600 new partners have shown their interest. We are also developing our partner program.

Since last couple of years, our enterprise business is growing at a much higher rate. We are number one in the SMB product. At the same time, we are upgrading our partners as we see that there is a shortage of cyber security skills. We are working on a perspective that the customers are not looking for products but for solutions. Our partners should be technically certified, and we are focusing heavily on certification and training programs for all our partners.

Since the pandemic has changed the expectations and purchasing behavior of the customers, what are your suggestions for the channels to reinvent themselves?

The partners should develop themselves as a solution provider rather than a product seller. They need to invest in upgrading their team in terms of technical skills. Most importantly, they need to transform their business from a product centric to service centric entity.

What are your top five focus areas over the next two to five years?

In the next two to five years, IoT will definitely be a big thing. Also, once the 5G comes, starting from refrigerator to CCTV, everything will be interconnected at home, following which you have to secure the network. That is why we are developing a lot of IoT-focused products so that we can stay relevant for the next five to ten years. We are upgrading and trying to focus on our solution centric approach.