April Issue 2022

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ISSUE 01

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FOR THE CIOs. BY THE CIOs. APRIL 2022

GOPAL SHUKLA CEO, IIT BOMBAY - WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS

“While everybody is focused on building leaders, we are building the change agents through EMBA offered by IIT Bombay Washington University St Louis.”

P - 22

OUR

EDUCATION SYSTEM SHOULD BE OUTCOME BASED

EDITOR’S LETTER trickling effect on the neighbouring countries where Indian skilled workforce uses to go and earn good remuneration. For example, countries like UAE, Qatar, Egypt, etc. which are favourite destination of Indian techies and young workforce, are facing spill over effect now. Senior management in those countries are whining that people are ready to leave those countries and join Indian start-ups.

Since there is a shortage of skilled workforce, it is a good opportunity for the automation and RPA. The issue with Indian management is mindset. They do not want to rely on the automation so soon as they are under strong conviction that their existing team can do it. CIOs also find it difficult to explain why they need automation properly. Even why do they need good manpower of extra manpower. Management do not understand the technology. They only understand production, manufacturing, marketing, branding, sales, etc. IT is the last priority. I know that all the CIOs vouch for their management that their CEO or CFO is pro-technology. There might be some but more than 80% are not as they do not understand any thing unless their attacked or their virtual meeting gets interrupted due to low bandwidth, etc.

So, the crux is that 2020, every CIO across the world has to deal with this situation of man management and team building. Second situation for them is to deal with protecting privacy and data from internal and external forces. Third one is cyber security and ransomware.

Today, CIOs and CISOs are really scared of presenting to the management that they need all major solutions including SIEM, SOAR, CASB, XDR, etc. Even the CIOs are handicapped of managing vendors. I thing the answer is automation and AI. Somehow the CIOs have to onboard automation and AI into it.

2020 WOULD REMAIN A YEAR OF MAN MANAGEMENT AND AUTOMATION

Hello Friends.

As we are entering FY 2022, India has become a $3 trillion+ company. We have just Germany, UK and Japan to surpass to become third largest economy. At the same time, Indian IT industry has touched $227 billion, registering a 15.5 per cent growth. India stands 3rd in the race of producing unicorns. And India is also top 5 start-up favourite counties. These achievements have their own advantages and disadvantages.

Good thing is that it would be a hue consumptionoriented economy and there would be a lot of push around innovation, incubation, etc. There would be investment flow from the global market to set up delivery centres locally.

The disadvantage is that there is a paucity of skilled labour force. Every CIO / CISO is today worried about a having a long-term skilled work force whom he can call team. People are leaving organizations in a quick tenure. And if any organization is handicapper for having its locational position in a little far from the city, for them getting a good work force is a gold dust.

This trend is catching up despite offering lucrative and higher than expected salary. This situation has a

NEXT MONTH SPECIAL

S A N J AY M O H A PAT R A S A N J AY @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M

COVER STORY

SUPPLEMENT

INDUSTRY 4.0

QUOTES FROM TOP CIOS

The next issue is dedicated to the Industry 4.0. We would like to take feedback from the CIOs and OEMs and create our judgment on the same.

PLUS

Interviews and Case Studies

Catch interviews, guest articles and case studies of recent applications from the Industry stakeholders, IT/ITES Vendors and IT leaders and CIOs from the Enterprise IT World CIO Community.

The supplement story of the magazine would have relevant quotes from the top CIOs in India.

Send in your inputs to sanjay@accentinfomedia.com APRIL 2022

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CONTENTS VOLUME 07

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ISSUE 01

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APRIL 2022

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W W W. E N T E R P R I S E I T W O R L D . C O M 1

FOR THE CIOs. BY THE CIOs.

Publisher: Sanjib Mohapatra Chief Editor: Sanjay Mohapatra Managing Editor: Anisha Nayar Dhawan Sub Editor: Kumari Ambika Designer: Shadab Khan Web Designer: Sangeet Technical Writer: Manas Ranjan Lead Visualizer: DPR Choudhary MARKETING Marketing Manager: Vaishali Shukla SALES CONTACTS Delhi 6/102, Kaushalya Park, Hauz Khas New Delhi-110016 Phone: 91-11-41055458 E-mail: info@accentinfomedia.com

FEATURE STORY

EDITORIAL OFFICE

16 THE IMPERATIVE FOR MANAGED SECURITY SERVICES

Delhi: 6/103, (GF) Kaushalya Park, New Delhi-110016, Phone: 91-11-41657670 / 46151993 info@ accentinfomedia.com

Organizations are leveraging managed security services to leverage the expertise for heightened threats and to bridge the gap in availability of skilled security professionals.

INTERVIEW: /20 Cyware is Building the first-of-its-kind Global Collective Defense Network

Printed, Published and Owned by Sanjib Mohapatra Place of Publication: 6/103, (GF) Kaushalya Park, Hauz Khas New Delhi-110016

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced without the prior written permission from the publisher.

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Editorial~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 03 News~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 06

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22 CEO INTERVIEW

Phone: 91-11-46151993 / 41055458

INTERVIEW

32 SECURITY

36 INTERVIEW

GOPAL SHUKLA

UTHAMAN BAKTHIKRISHNAN

RICARDO FERREIRA

SCOTT MORRIS

“Our Education System Should be Outcome Based”

“ClearTouch is Empowering Contact Centers with Intelligent Interaction”

“The Balancing Act of Financial Organizations to Compete in a Technology-Driven World”

“Druva Expands Industry’s first saas-based MSP Program to Asia Pacific Region”

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APRIL 2022

ITWORLD

ROUND UP

Oracle Launches Complete Employee Experience Platform for Evolving Workforce Needs

B Y S A N J AY @ A C C E N T I N FO M E D I A . C O M

Oracle today announced Oracle ME, a complete employee experience platform to help organizations increase employee engagement and ensure employee success. Part of Oracle Fusion Cloud Human Capital Management (HCM), Oracle ME enables HR and business leaders to streamline communications across the organization, increase productivity by guiding employees through complex tasks, and improve talent retention by developing a more supportive and trusted environment at work.

The events over the past two years have changed the game for the global workforce – people’s expectations for what they want and need from their employers have evolved. According to the most recent Oracle AI@Work study, 96 percent of the Indian workforce are not satisfied with their employer’s support for their careers, and 94 percent believe their organization should be doing 6

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more to listen to the needs of its workforce. This has put increasing pressure on organizations to prioritize the employee experience, but without truly understanding the needs of individual workers, it’s difficult for HR and business leaders to design workplace experiences that support their employees through their careers and help them thrive personally and professionally.

Yvette Cameron, senior vice president of global product strategy, Oracle Cloud HCM, said, “Employees want to feel heard, empowered, and part of a culture they believe in. To meet these expectations, organizations need to step up and design experiences that meet the unique needs of their talent – or risk losing them to competitors that do,” “Part of designing better experiences involves seeing employees as unique individuals with their own needs, goals, and ways of getting things done.

D ATA BRIEF

25% of People Will Spend At Least One Hour Per Day in the Metaverse by 2026

Source: Gartner

NEWS BRIEF // IT WORLD

LTI Inaugurates ServiceNow Experience Center and Innovation Lab at its Engagement Center in Hartford, CT

Larsen & Toubro Infotech has set up ServiceNow Experience Center & Innovation Lab at its recently inaugurated engagement center in Hartford, CT. The Experience Center aims to encourage enterprises to rapidly evolve and adapt to new organizational processes and harness the full potential of technological advancements by adopting digital workflows that identify improvements, establish roadmaps, and streamline processes..

With focus on innovation and establishing new capabilities for enterprises, the LTI ServiceNow Experience Center will enable co-creation of best-in-class solutions for clients to accelerate their digital transformation journey on the ServiceNow platform®. While the Experience Center will focus on new industry workflows, clients can engage with technical experts from LTI and ServiceNow for in-depth technology briefings, solution demos, software, and access to tools for Proof of Concept (PoC) and solution workshops.

CIO

The Experience Center offers: · One stop shop for solutions and PoC’s powered by ServiceNow’s platform · A ServiceNow sandbox for associates to explore and contribute · Innovation Zone to design future roadmap of joint solutions · Feedback mechanism for constant improvement.

Nachiket Deshpande, Chief Operating Officer, and Executive Board Member, LTI, said, “This Experience Center offers a comprehensive suite of ServiceNow solutions to foster innovation. It will be a combination of ServiceNow’s powerful tools and LTI’s deep expertise in business transformation journeys.

Our clients can now co-create innovative solutions to the new-age challenges using this lab and uncover more flexible, scalable, and agile models to stay competitive.”

UserTesting Providing Organizations with More Customizable and Powerful Machine Learning-Driven Insights

UserTesting, new features as part of its quarterly product release to help companies gather human insights specifically tailored to how their business operates. Companies can now identify and customize interesting and relevant findings using their own common, corporate terminology. UserTesting has also rolled out usage management for workspaces, making it easier to plan and share testing capacity across the entire organization.

Lastly, for teams that want to capture feedback from their Fuel Cycle community members, UserTesting now offers the ability to launch tests to these audiences directly from the UserTesting® Human Insight Platform.

Customize auto-generated insights UserTesting’s insight customization allows customers to provide feedback on auto-generated, intelligent insights by adding their own custom terminology. These insights are powered by machine learning and help surface intent, sentiment, keywords, and other key moments in a video.

EVENTS

10 JUN, 2022

10 JUN, 2022

08 JUL, 2022

21-22 JUL, 2022

Security Symposium 2022 and Awards.

DC Summit and Awards 2022

Security Symposium 2022 MEA and Awards

International Conference on IT & Computer Science

09:00 AM - 03:30 PM

03:30 PM – 08:30 PM

03:30 PM – 08:30 PM

VENUE: HOTEL HILTON LOCATION: MUMBAI

VENUE: HOTEL HILTON LOCATION: MUMBAI

ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

APRIL 2022

VENUE: 8A, THE SUNCOURT HOTEL YATRI LOCATION: 33, CHANNA MARKET, BLOCK 8A, WEAT, KAROL BAGH, NEW DELHI

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NEWS BRIEF // IT WORLD

Zoom Announces Platform Innovations to Elevate the Total Customer Experience

S/HE SAID IT

BLAINE KILLEN

CEO AND CO-FOUNDER FITLIFT

“Hierarchy can slow progress and decrease innovative spirits, which we can’t afford given that we are at the forefront of innovation.”

Zoom Video Communications, Inc. unveiled its latest innovations in the Zoom platform to help businesses improve customer and employee experiences for the new ‘work anywhere’ workforce. Announced today, Zoom IQ for Sales, a conversation intelligence solution for sales professionals, as well as new Zoom Events and Webinar functionalities such as backstage and Webinar session branding, are putting engagement at the center of the experience and transforming the way we work, connect, and collaborate.

Oded Gal, Chief Product Officer at Zoom, said, “Every interaction counts in a video-first world – whether it’s a call with a customer service agent, a video meeting with the sales team, or a hybrid event with customers and prospects. World-class customer engagement is where competitive differentiation happens,” “Following our recent launch of Zoom Contact Center, Zoom IQ for Sales, and our latest Zoom Events innovations mark further steps in Zoom’s journey to establish new heights for customer experiences and flexible

QUICK BYTE ON

collaboration across the workforce.”

Dave Michels, Founder and Principal Analyst at TalkingPointz, said, “These new innovations are yet another example of Zoom’s ability to bring new solutions to life quickly and seamlessly, based on the needs of its customers,” “With the introduction of Zoom Events, Zoom Contact Center, and now Zoom IQ for Sales, the Zoom platform is poised to make an impact on reimagining the customer experience, by expanding it to include the entire customer journey from marketing to sales to ongoing support – the total customer experience.”

“Sometimes you just need the right setting to truly shine, and you may need to do that on your own terms.”

F I O N A D A N I E L , C E O & FO U N D E R , F D Z I

Zoom IQ for Sales: Zoom’s First Step In Conversation Intelligence Zoom IQ for Sales is a conversation intelligence add-on for Zoom Meetings that turns customer interactions into meaningful and actionable insights, helping teams across marketing, sales, and competitive intelligence improve crucial interactions with customers.

SECURITY

Exterro Expands Privacy Offering with New Data Discovery and Consent Products “Exterro, expands its privacy portfolio with the launch of two breakthrough privacy products: Exterro Data Discovery and Exterro Consent. The Exterro Privacy suite is used by hundreds of organizations worldwide to protect consumers’ and employees’ personal information. These new capabilities deliver fast, secure, and automated low-cost privacy compliance for those organizations. Exterro Data Discovery has partnered with Divebell, a leading innovator in Data Discovery, to create the fastest, most automated, and most secure way to find, identify.”

APRIL 2022

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ITWORLD // NEWS BRIEF

Utthunga realigns business strategy to accelerate customer’s digital transformation journey

Upstox Introduces Good-TillTriggered feature on its platform Upstox, has added the Good-TillTriggered (GTT) feature on its platform. The new feature will allow users to place orders with stop-loss and target price, across all trading segments, viz. Intraday, Equity Delivery, F&O, Currency Derivatives & Commodities.

This feature is available for all traders and investors on the platform.

The order will remain active for one day in the case of intraday orders, 365 days for delivery orders, and as per contract expiry in the case of futures and options. It will allow traders and investors to decide at what price they want to enter or exit the market without placing an order every day.

By bucketing all orders together, this feature will make trading seamless for the users.

Mr. Shrini Viswanath, Co-Founder, Upstox, said, “This feature comes as a part of our ongoing efforts to make

EXECUTIVE

investing equitable and seamless for our users. With the GTT feature, we hope to provide traders with more convenience, while also encouraging them to maintain a disciplined trading mindset and be aware of their risk appetite. More importantly, traders will no longer have to worry about constantly verifying the status of a single order.

Through the many value adds that come with this feature, we hope to promote equity participation in the country while also providing a varied set of services to our users.

We’re constantly striving to improve the customer experience and make financial planning more accessible to everyone.”

Upstox aims to simplify its customers’ investment experiences as much as possible, and this feature will allow them to minimize risks across all investment categories.

Utthunga Technologies, has realigned their business and branding strategy to ride industrial tailwinds in manufacturing technologies.

The firm has changed their brand color to blue to symbolize the movement from sensor to cloud and highlight the core values of knowledge, integrity and seriousness towards customer success, The manufacturing industry, traditionally laggards in technology adoption, is undergoing a tectonic shift towards digitalisation, with an exponential rise in cloud adoption being predicted to further increase in the upcoming years. When combined with a national push to create a manufacturing-centric economy, the industrial IT sector is witnessing a bullish trend. In this context, Utthunga is preparing for the next phase of business expansion, focussing on increased revenue contribution from digital, cloud and IIoT verticals while retaining their core DNA as a product engineering company.

Mr. Krishnan KM, Co-Founder and CEO at Utthunga, said, “We have changed the color of our logo to dark blue, with the new brand color reflecting our technology and domain Knowledge, Integrity and Seriousness towards our customer’s success. ‘Utthunga’ means the mountain top or pinnacle in Sanskrit. Just as a mountain extends from the ocean to sky, our logo depicts the same in the industrial world – sensor meets the cloud. We are adopting the brand personality of a partner to our customers in this new world to help them reach the sky, the cloud.”

MOVEMENT

Wipro Appoints Satya Easwaran as Country Head, India

Wipro Appoints Anis Chenchah as CEO, APMEA

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Fintech Industry Veterans Sharda Caro Del Castillo and Scott Schenkel Join Forter’s Board of Directors

Orange Business Services appoints Chalapathi Rao as General Manager to lead India business

NEWS BRIEF // IT WORLD

BOOK

SHELF

Elephants and Cheetahs: The Beauty of Operations

GLOBAL UPDATE

BY

New research: Australian and New Zealand organisations move towards DevSecOps Lacework announced the findings of its DevSecOps Market Survey in Australia and New Zealand. A shift is happening in the local ANZ market as more organisations are moving to adopt agile DevSecOps practices, with 39 percent already undertaking this transition, and a further 36 percent earmarking plans to do so in 2022.

The research, which surveyed 170 technology practitioners from Australia and New Zealand across enterprise and SMB organisations, found more significant amounts of software development combined with greater security concerns are driving the adoption of the DevSecOps practice.

However, these adoptees are still facing challenges with over half of respondents (53 percent) citing budget constraints, the well-publicised skills shortage in the ANZ market, and tool proliferation that stretches existing teams to capacity as factors hindering their adoption and practice of DevSecOps. Only 16 percent of respondents currently rely on a single tool for testing and scanning, whilst 84 percent

report using two or more tools to perform these tasks.

Graham Pearson, Vice President and Managing Director ANZ at Lacework, said, “We are seeing a positive and speedy uptake of DevSecOps across the region, but it’s not possible to maintain the security status quo and also achieve innovation through organisational agility as business processes evolve,” “In order to take advantage of DevSecOps processes, ANZ organisations must streamline security tools and adopt and implement continuous security and create automated testing throughout the software development and release process.

Throwing more money at the problem without taking these steps will only feed existing challenges, not solve them.”

Promisingly, the report found that DevOps and Engineering teams are improving build-time security and their ability to catch issues before shipping to production environments: 37 percent of those surveyed said their DevOps teams have a dedicated headcount in place to take responsibility for build-time security as part of the development cycle.

SARAL MUKHERJEE

PRICE

RS. 247.00 (PAPER BACK ) WHERE

AMAZON.IN

About The Book This book, based on a popular elective at IIM Ahmedabad, examines the hard trade-offs inherent in the design of operating systems and business models to look for answers.

About the Author Saral Mukherjee is an associate professor in the production and quantitative methods area at IIM Ahmedabad. He specializes in Operations management and is involved in research, teaching and consulting in the area of supply chain redesign, operations strategy, marketing-operations interface and managing platform businesses.

Ab Inbev’s Global 100+ Accelerator Program is Back With its 4th Edition To Support Startups with Sustainable Innovations The DevOps approach for smoother and more reliable software development is now widespread.

It has helped reduce the time between fixes, improve the frequency of deployment and squeeze time to market. Forecasts suggest that the DevOps market will grow from US$4 billion it was in 2019 to US$17 billion in 2026.

The rising popularity of containers has ensured that development and operations can work in tandem, instead of remaining in their siloes, turning DevOps into standard practice. Developers can now be confident their code can be quickly

tested and taken to production, regardless of the environment in which it has been developed. This trend has been given a boost by Kubernetes and a host of DevOps tools allowing better version control to container management and from test and deployment automation tools to configuration management and server monitoring.

Three DevOps tools that you should take note of in 2022: Crossplane: With changes in provisioning, Crossplane is a handy way to extend the framework Kubernetes has to offer to cloud and

to compose systems and assemble infrastructure.

The control plane, designed to manage container workloads, can be extended to manage resources such as virtual machines necessary for Kubernetes clusters. Crossplane supports API-driven configuration and management of other infrastructure such as databases and makes it possible to deploy infrastructure resources across cloud providers.

This allows the Kubernetes community to leverage familiar YAML specifications to provision public cloud infrastructure and services without having to learn cloud-specific.

APRIL 2022

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ITWORLD // NEWS BRIEF

TeamViewer enables real-time remote video sharing for industrial aerial drones by SB C&S TeamViewer connectivity solution is integrated into the professional aerial drones provided

by SB C&S (SoftBank Commerce & Service). TeamViewer’s software enables the real-time sharing of aerial video and audio streams captured by the drones’ cameras to multiple remotely connected devices. Commercial use cases for this technology include for example joint infrastructure inspections, as well as joint aerial inspection of disaster sites or other locations that are difficult to access.

Via TeamViewer’s solution, images or videos captured by the drone-carried camera can be seamlessly streamed to multiple remotely connected devices through a 4G or LTE mobile network. Also, the images from devices such as infrared cameras for temperature measurements or LiDARs could be transmitted and streamed through the solution.

Katsumi Moriya, Vice President, Deputy Head of ICT Unit, Head of Cloud Service Promotion Division, Cloud Service Unit at SB C&S, said, “In recent years, there has been an increasing need to remotely check real-time video footage of aerial photography using drones and to give instructions directly to the operator. We are pleased that we can now offer this effective utilization of our drones together with TeamViewer.

Matrix 8MP Project Series Dome IP Camera Matrix Project Series Dome Cameras are designed to meet the needs of large enterprises and project environments. Designed for both indoor and outdoor surveillance needs the cameras are suited for modern organizations. Powered with Sony STARVIS sensors the cameras offer exceptional low-light performance. Apart from this, the cameras are developed with technologies to enhance the image quality. Besides this, image enhancing technologies such as True WDR help to balance the image lighting.

Further, dome cameras offer a sturdy built which allows them to perform exceptionally in harsh weather conditions as well as external impacts. The cameras are offered in fixed and motorized varifocal lens which gives the user the option to zoom in and out of the video footage.

KEY FEATURES: · Low – light Image Quality – 0.01 Lux, · H.265 Compression Technology · Superlative Image with WDR (120dB), · Adaptive and Smart Streaming · Higher Signal to Noise Ratio (>70dB), · Higher Field of View (HFOV: 106.9°)

Q1 2022 Investment inflows into Indian realty up 2X YoY at USD1.1 bn Institutional investments in Indian real estate touched USD1.1 billion during Q1 2022, doubling from the same period last year. The opening up of the economy post the third wave of Covid -19 infections, and an improvement in investors’ sentiment has led to surging investments, compared to the prior quarter. The investment activity during the quarter was driven by some large-sized deals in the office sector.

Investments were largely driven by foreign investors, that accounted for about 70% of the inflows during the quarter. Interestingly, after a drop in 2020, the share of domestic investments has reached 30%, almost the same as pre-pandemic levels. This shows a resurgence in the confidence of domestic 12 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

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investors.

Piyush Gupta, Managing Director, Capital Markets & Investment Services, Colliers India, said, “Real estate sector has undergone positive structural changes and performance indicators reflect strong come back across Residential, Office, Industrial, Logistics sectors, with newer themes around technology and digital clearly emerging. Investors, both domestic and global are appearing bullish on Indian real estate supported by pro-growth government policies with a long-term view to develop and hold assets. From a city level, Mumbai continues to be the market leader with a share of 25% in total investment inflows. This shows immense confidence of investors in the sector”.

DIGEST ZOOM ANNOUNCES NEW EDUCATION FEATURES FOR EDUCATORS AND STUDENTS Zoom Video Communications, Inc. at the CoSN2022 national conference, new features for education in response to requests from teachers and administrators. These features span Zoom’s Chat and Meeting offerings and are designed to support teachers who need to engage and manage students joining class remotely or submitting homework assignments.

Virtual Background & Blur for Chromebooks Chromebooks are a popular choice for students and teachers. Virtual background and blur are now available for Zoom for Chrome Progressive Web Application (PWA) users. Zoom developed this capability after requests from various education customers including Clayton County Public Schools, one of the 100 largest school districts in the United States, serving more than 52,000 students in Georgia.

FORCEPOINT OPENS INDIA INNOVATION CENTER IN MUMBAI Forcepoint is making further investments in India with the opening of a new stateof-the-art technology center of excellence near Mumbai in Thane, Maharashtra. The new India Innovation Center will tap into the region’s technical and engineering talent to enable rapid development and deployment of new capabilities to Forcepoint’s Security Service Edge (SSE) platform.

In the first phase of expansion for the Forcepoint India Innovation Center, the company will hire more than 200 software architects, cloud computing developers, DevOps engineers, quality assurance and specialists with diverse technical skills.

ORACLE AND AICPA & CIMA TEAM UP TO TACKLE THE TECHNOLOGY SKILLS GAP IN FINANCE Oracle and the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants (the Association) announced an introductory certification series to address the technology skills gap in finance and accounting. Created in collaboration with Oracle, AICPA & CIMA’s new “Agile Finance Transformation Certification Series” is designed to equip finance leaders with practical knowledge required to embrace the latest finance technology, processes, best practices, and skills to help them succeed in changing business environments and accelerate their careers.

NEWS BRIEF // IT WORLD

MANAGEMENT

MANTRA

“IT leader should be able to build a strong core IT team to support the company’s growth.”

Subhojit Roy, Head - IT, SBI Funds Management

Coforge Becomes AWS Travel and Hospitality Competency Partner

Commvault Announces Creation of New ‘International’ Region Led by Marco Fanizzi

Commvault, today announced the merging of the APJ and EMEA organizations into one organization led by – SVP and GM, Commvault International – Marco Fanizzi, who has significantly expanded the business, since his appointment as EMEA leader 2 years ago.

The new International region will comprise of more 150 national markets and will continue to deliver the world class support to all customers and partners consistently across all of those countries. All regions will continue to be represented directly to regional management level, as before.

Commvault, CRO, Riccardo Di Blasio, said, “As we begin our new financial year as a leader in a very competitive industry,

we must remain focused on prioritizing our investments on the ability to scale and accelerate our growth globally.” “While geopolitical and economic events still challenge the global economy, we can be assured that data management, protection and utilization will only become more business critical for every organization anywhere in the world.”

Asia-Pacific region has experienced a high number of ransomware attacks over the past year with India being one of the most affected countries. In fact, according to a recent Indian Computer Emergency Response Team report, more than 14.02 Lakhs cyber security related incidents last year. With these challenges being faced by every country in the world, Commvault is building flexibility to retain the consistent, repeatable growth it has seen from the APJ and EMEA regions.

Marco Fanizzi SVP and GM, Commvault International, said “Our success as this integrated, International region will be built on celebrating, and equally representing the incredible diversity within our organization, but based on the clear fact that each of our teams already share more similarities than differences – especially in terms of proven business success and best practices.”

Coforge Limited has become an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Travel and Hospitality Competency Partner. Coforge achieved this recognition because it has demonstrated deep experience helping customers transform their business, from behind-the-scenes operational efficiencies to guest-facing customer experiences. The launch of the AWS Travel and Hospitality Competency comes at a crucial time for the industry as it looks to innovate to address changing demands in the face of COVID-19.

AWS helps travel and hospitality customers of every size and segment – including airlines, airports, ground transportation, travel services and sellers, restaurants, lodging, entertainment venues and casinos, cruise lines, and technology providers – to stay agile and accelerate innovation.

AWS launched the AWS Travel and Hospitality Competency to help customers find highly specialized AWS Partners and take on the heavy lifting of identifying and validating industry leaders with proven customer success and technical proficiency.

Seagate and Phison Broaden Partnership to Bolster Portfolio of High-Performance Seagate, announced today plans to expand their SSD portfolio of next-gen high-performance, high-density enterprise NVMe SSDs. The new SSDs will help enterprises lower total cost ownership (TCO) through increased storage density, lower power consumption, and higher performance. The companies also announced that they have entered a long-term partnership that will strengthen the development cycle and distribution of enterprise-class SSDs. Seagate and Phison have collaborated on Seagate’s mainstream SATA SSD products since

2017. That close cooperation has continued through the company’s performance-leading line of FireCuda consumer gaming NVMe PCIe Gen4x4 SSDs and the world’s first purpose-built NAS NVMe SSDs. The partnership will now focus on meeting the evolving global enterprise demand for higher density, faster, and smarter storage infrastructure needs that complement HDD storage to enable comprehensive enterprise applications such as hyperscale data center, high-performance computing and AI.

Jeff Fochtman, senior vice president of business and marketing at Seagate Technology, said, “We integrated Seagate’s 40-plus years of marketleading enterprise storage expertise with Phison’s nimble ability to create highly customized SSDs to meet the ever-evolving needs of the enterprise storage market,” “Seagate is extremely excited to work with Phison on developing advanced SSD technology. Our selective focus allows us to serve the broad performance-driven enterprise SSD market while continuing our leadership in the specialized premium gaming SSD segment.”

APRIL 2022

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ITWORLD // NEWS BRIEF

IBM z16: Real-time AI for Transaction Processing at Scale and Industry’s First Quantum-Safe System

Trend of rising office vacancy broken for the first time since Covid-19 After a gap of two years, vacancy across Grade A office markets across the top six cities has not increased for the first time, and remained stable at 18.5%. Over the last two years, office vacancy has risen every successive quarter led by occupiers exits and slower demand. Along with stable vacancy, during Q1 2022, gross absorption has risen almost 3 times YoY to about 13.0 million sq feet – the highest in two years. This shows that Q1 2022 has been a watershed period for the commercial office sector, with the office sector shrugging off the relatively low demand seen over the last two years. The office market started picking up since H2 2021, with the momentum continuing onto Q1 2022 too. This has been led by large deals returning to the market, well supported by an infusion of quality supply across the prominent markets.

Bengaluru continued to be the top market with a share of 31% of the

overall Grade A absorption during the quarter. Pune, interestingly, pipped larger markets and shared the second spot along with Hyderabad at 17% each. Compared to other cities, demand momentum in Delhi-NCR and Mumbai was relatively slower, as few large deals have been pushed to the subsequent quarters.

During the quarter, supply doubled to about 14.3 million sq feet. The new supply was led by Bengaluru with a share of 29%. This was followed by Chennai and Pune with a share of 22% each of the total supply.

Source: Colliers Ramesh Nair, CEO, India and Managing Director, Market Development, Asia, Colliers, said “This quarter has seen occupier confidence swinging back with considerable large-sized deals that accounted for a whopping 55% of the leasing during the quarter.

IBM’s next-generation system with an integrated on-chip AI accelerator—delivering latency-optimized inferencing. This innovation is designed to enable clients to analyze real-time transactions, at scale — for mission-critical workloads such as credit card, healthcare and financial transactions. Building on IBM’s history of security leadership, IBM z16 also is specifically designed to help protect against near-future threats that might be used to crack today’s encryption technologies.

IBM innovations, including the IBM z16, have formed the technology backbone of the global economy for decades. Today’s modern IBM mainframe is central to hybrid cloud environments, valued by two thirds of the Fortune 100, 45 of the world’s top 50 banks, 8 of the top 10 insurers, 7 of the top 10 global retailers and 8 out of the top 10 telcos as a highly secured platform for running their most mission critical workloads. For example, according to a recent IBM commissioned study by Celent report “Operationalizing Fraud Prevention on IBM Z,” IBM zSystems run 70% of global transactions, on a value basis. [2] Ric Lewis, SVP, IBM Systems, said, “IBM is the gold standard for highly secured transaction processing. Now with IBM z16 innovations, our clients can increase decision velocity with inferencing right where their mission critical data lives,” “This opens up tremendous opportunities to change the game in their respective industries so they will be positioned to deliver better customer experiences and more powerful business outcomes.

UiPath Announces Reboot Work Festival 2022 UiPath announced its global Reboot Work Festival—a celebration of automation and a forum of new ideas—will take place virtually on April 12.

The Reboot Work Festival is expected to attract more than 10,000 people from the global automation community to hear big ideas and practical insights from UiPath experts and visionary customer leaders.

The festival kicks off with presentations in the Big Tent from the brightest minds in automation. Register here to join Daniel Dines, UiPath Founder and CEO; Ted Kummert, UiPath Executive Vice President of Product & Engineering; and guest keynote speaker Azeem Azhar, author 14 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

APRIL 2022

and creator of Exponential View, and many more as they discuss how automation affects how we work and our interactions with each other and the world. Customers presenting include Cisco, EY, Sonic Automotive, Xerox, Reckitt India, Kmart Group, KION GROUP AG, Liberty Global UK, HSE UK, and Swiss Re Central Europe, among others.

“Automation is the most powerful way to manage changing the mentality of people in how we view and define work,” said Dines. “There is a new paradigm underway. The Reboot Work Festival is about changing the world with automation, bringing innovative ideas forward that challenge

conventional thinking, and understanding how automation provides people more time for communication, creativity, and problem solving.”

Anil Bhasin -Managing Director and Vice President, UiPath — India and South Asia, said, “The biggest minds in automation are about to gather under one tent, and the ideas that emerge from here are bound to be innovative. The inclusion of customer stories, live demonstrations, product, and industry-based sessions make the perfect package for all those who choose to tune in. The session on automation for good especially is expected to showcase a new dimension in automation beyond business perceptions.”

LOGRHYTHM // GUEST COLUMN

LOGRHYTHM

ATTACKS ON IOT: THE CALL TO COMBAT RISING CYBERTHREATS IN THE TELCO SPACE Today cyber criminals are drawn to organisations that operate within critical infrastructure sectors, including telecommunications, due to the potential to cause significant disturbance to critical processes that benefit ordinary people and entire governments. These targets are desirable because criminals can often achieve large ransom pay-outs due to the critical nature of the infrastructure.

MOHAN RAJ

BY SANJAY@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

REGIONAL DIRECTOR, THE GULF & INDIA AT LOGRHYTHM

“The low barrier of entry and easy availability of cyber-sabotage,

resources are creating more threat actors and cybercriminal groups.”

In today’s cyberthreat landscape, threat actors are drawn to organisations that operate within critical infrastructure sectors, including telecommunications (telco), due to the potential to

cause significant damage and disturbance to critical processes that benefit ordinary people and entire governments.

By compromising the critical infrastructure of telcos, cybercriminals, like ransomware groups, are assured of significant ransom pay-outs because of the far-reaching, potentially devastating impact of their exploit.

These attacks have the potential to leave long-lasting consequences, operational disruption and total system shutdown.

Critical infrastructure attacks can make it hard for telco players to roll out and grow new infrastructure as part of their business; a necessity to keep up with the speed of innovation and capture new business growth.

Security teams must consider fundamental factors like the evolving threat landscape, system vulnerabilities, different threat actors and information sharing to ensure the protection of their critical operations and end-users.

The IoT Challenge Traditionally, control systems for critical infrastructure were kept separate from the open internet. They were deployed on air-gapped networks and had tight physical security. However, the introduction of the Internet of Things (IoT) has changed the dynamic. With a global focus on digitalisation and building a hyper-connected world more and more telcos have been left with no choice but to adopt IoT into their critical infrastructure.

According to Gartner, the IoT market will represent a $58 billion opportunity by 2025.

Although this shift has helped cut operational costs and human resources, it has also enabled remote access and control of critical systems. This puts telcos in an even more vulnerable position when faced with emerging critical infrastructure threats.

Protecting critical infrastructure comes with many growing challenges — from the side

effects of digital transformation to ensuring complex, interconnected supply chain networks.

To stay ahead in a changing telco environment, it is essential for security teams to consider all these aspects to develop a solid critical infrastructure protection foundation.

Strengthening Telco Security The critical infrastructure threat landscape includes international and national terrorism by nonstate threat actors, nation-statesponsored cyberattacks, and the convergence of Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) systems with the increased use of IoT across industries. Cybercriminals exploit the vulnerabilities in critical infrastructures for a number of reasons, including for geopolitical and financial gain.

The low barrier of entry and easy availability of cybersabotage resources are creating more threat actors and cybercriminal groups. Cybersecurity teams must increase awareness of the interests and motivations of different threat actors to understand the level of security controls needed to protect critical infrastructures. To gain this insight, organisations should consider cyberthreat intelligence sub-teams that are focused on studying and analysing threat actors’ trends, interests, motivations, and potential targets.

On top of this, security teams also need to be aware of human error within their cybersecurity framework. Weakly enforced technical and administrative internal security measures combined with running critical systems on the open internet make them easier targets for compromise.

To access the complete article log on to: www.enterpriseitworld.com

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FEATURE STORY // MANAGED SECURITY SERVICE

MANAGED SECURITY SERVICES

THE IMPERATIVE FOR MANAGED SECURITY SERVICES Organizations are leveraging managed security services to leverage the expertise for heightened threats and to bridge the gap in availability of skilled security professionals.

C

yber security has become a key topic in business discussions as the threats grow in frequency and intensity. Increased digitalization, remote working, and an

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increased emphasis on Cloud-first and mobilefirst approach are exposing the vulnerabilities.

As organizations become more connected, operations are managed digitally and data-driven business decisions have become a way of life to

achieve excellence.

At the same time the number of cyber attacks have increased exponentially and according to VMWare’s Global Security Insights, 2021, respondents reported 2.35 breaches on an

MANAGED SECURITY SERVICE // FEATURE STORY

Challenges in Managing Cyber Security Over the years the IT environment within organizations have changed slowly and today a typical organization operates in a hybrid-environment comprising legacy infrastructure and applications, SaaS-based applications, co-location centers and multiple Cloud service providers. “Suddenly you had a situation where the perimeter was no longer relevant and security restricted to the perimeter did not make sense as boundaries burred into seamless environments,” says Sriram Srinivasan, CSO, iValue.

A very pertinent question is to understand how matured are the Cloud security systems. When we talk about hybrid Cloud it is important for the organization get single visibility for on-prem and the Cloud.

As more operational layers were added, different IT teams started adding security solutions to address specific needs creating a complex IT environment. Managing security has become even more complex as employees accessed patterns changed—from accessing resources

HASHIL DOSHI DIRECTOR SALES- INDIA & SAARC, SECURONIX

Cyber security is a boardroom discussion because it affects the brand, business and future growth. It is

about a business need to have operational continuity and and avoid being in the news for the wrong reasons.

MUNEER WANI CISO, J&K BANK

Cyber security requires skilled professionals for vulnerability assessment, penetration testing, continuous

monitoring services. This requires large budgets which smaller banks and companies do not have and so working with an external partner is the best solution.

within the office premises using company devices to accessing from outside the premises using multiple devices including personal devices. This has expanded the surface area of attack, adding complex layers of management to the security stack.

A comprehensive organizational cyber security

strategy requires not just security tools to protect the environment but also risk mitigation to monitor and assess threat at all times including vulnerability assessment and testing. “We are capturing a lot of data with these tools but the key is to discover the actionable information that will help prevent an attack. This is where APRIL 2022

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BY SANJAY@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

average per year and indicated that material breaches occurred in eight out of 10 cases which required reporting to the regulators or an incident response team to take action. Businesses are also seeing an unprecedented rise in ransomware attacks shelling out record amounts according to IBM’s annual report, Cost of Data Breach, which estimates that in 2021 a typical data breach experienced by companies cost $4.24 million per incident which is 10% higher than 2020.

Consequently, cyber security which was an obscure part of the IT department in a traditional IT environment catapulted to a significant role as the enterprise expanded across environments and freely accessed enterprise resources to work remotely from anywhere with any device. This is manifesting in a change in organizational spending and in 2021 a global survey of 2000 CIOs by Gartner cybersecurity was a top priority for new spending amongst the majority of respondents.

Securonix, a leading provider of security solutions have witnessed an increased demand for its services. Speaking about the growing demand for security services, Hashil Doshi, Director SalesIndia & SAARC, Securonix says, “IT security is no longer just a check mark for compliance or governance requirement. It is about a business need to have operational continuity and not have disruptions due to attacks, and avoid being in the news for the wrong reasons which will affect the brand, credibility and reliability. Cyber security is a boardroom discussion because it affects the brand, business and future growth.”

FEATURE STORY // MANAGED SECURITY SERVICE

machine learning becomes critical by leveraging behavioural analytics and statistical modelling to discover patterns in behavior and take preventive measures,” says Rishi Rajpal, VP, Global Security, Concentrix.

Given the wide array of tools employed from different vendors using different technologies, in-house IT teams often lack the capability to manage them. As security requirements become complex, organizations are looking outside to hire skilled people. There is a limited pool and given the demand, companies are dipping into the same pool creating further shortage.

A World Economic Forum finds that globally there is a shortfall of three million cyber security professionals.

Reports suggest that the shortage of skilled cyber security professionals in India is 9% higher than the global average. Data Security Council of India estimates the country will need about one million cyber security professionals. According to a report by ISACA-HCL Technologies, 49% of the organisations have unfilled positions in the cyber security divisions and it had taken between three to six months to fill an open position in the field.

Given these challenges, outsourcing cyber security as a managed service is becoming a popular approach to achieve comprehensive security needs of the organization. Managed security services are witnessing a huge uptake primarily because IT security is no longer a technology issue and is clearly a business challenge closely linked to its competitiveness and survival capabilities.

Speaking about challenge and advocating managed security services Sriram Srinivasan, CSO, iValue, says, “To stay ahead of the threat vectors, it is impossible to rely on a single brand or a single vendor to build the organizational defenses and a collaborative approach with an open stack with threat intelligence sharing and if all this is delivered as a service in a scalable manner, it is an ideal solution.”

Speaking about building defenses to fortify the organization Muneer Wani, CISO, J&K Bank says it requires pro-active preventive measures such as vulnerability assessment, penetration testing and continuous monitoring services. “All of which require large budgets and capabilities and smaller banks and companies do not have it and working with an external partner is the best solution as it also takes care of the challenge arising out of shortage of experienced security professionals.”

The managed model of security services helps enterprises get access to the latest security technologies without spending heavily on procuring

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SRIRAM SRINIVASAN CSO, iVALUE

It is impossible to rely on a single vendor to build the organizational defenses and a collaborative approach on an open stack with threat intelligence sharing and which is delivered as a service in a scalable manner is an ideal solution.

RISHI RAJPAL VP, GLOBAL SECURITY, CONCENTRIX

We are capturing a lot of data but the key is to discover the actionable information. This

is where machine learning becomes critical by leveraging behavioural analytics and statistical modelling to discover patterns in behavior and enable us to take preventive measures.

capital infrastructure. According to ResearchandMarkets, while MSS has been in place for quite some time, a shift in offerings from a customer premise equipment (CPE) based to Hosted MSS

is observed in India.

Security as a service is still evolving and organizations are calibrating the need for agility and productivity with heightened need for security.

MANAGED SECURITY SERVICE // FEATURE STORY

SUMEET SHARMA ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, KPMG

“Leaning on a managed security providers enables the company to focus on identifying strategic security risks and prioritizing goals while the provider manages day-to-day threat management, data protection and ongoing compliance requirements.”

Security as a managed service is still evolving and organizations are calibrating the need for bringing

an external partner in a thoughtful manner to balance the skill and expertise while implementing services with an understanding of the business priorities.

Bringing an external partner to this equation requires a thoughtful approach to balance the skill and expertise while implementing services with an understanding of the business priorities, says Sumeet Sharma, Associate Director, KPMG. Benefits of Managed Security Services Security and risk leaders are increasingly outsourcing the security requirements to managed security services providers (MSSP) to get access to latest technologies, improve capabilities, reduce complexity and better manage security and compliance risks. Leaning on a managed security providers enables the company to focus on identifying strategic security risks and prioritizing goals while the provider manages day-to-day threat management, data protection and ongoing compliance requirements.

According to Check Point Research, non- integrated, point solutions make enterprise security more challenging. As the threat landscape evolves and cyber-attacks become increasingly more sophisticated, 99% of companies using solutions from multiple vendors cited that it caused challenges to their organization and 69% of respondents agreed that prioritizing vendor consolidation would lead to better security.

This is a serious issue in the security posture of companies and an MSSPs can bring a standardsbased approach to security management with a reliable framework of services. At the same time, the MSSP can strengthen the security capabilities by leveraging next generation technologies to deliver holistic threat management including

threat detection, prevention and data protection services.

The rapid pace at which cyber threats are growing is leaving little time for organizations to ramp up the prevention capabilities. MSSPs are able to bring value to many organizations by quickly shoring up the company’s defences with a preselected set of cybersecurity solutions and providing continuous monitoring, services to detect, prevent and respond to attacks.

Working with an MSSPs enables to extend the security capabilities of the organization, and take advantage of the provider’s security operations center 24x7 to leverage insights into the latest threat intelligence and visibility into advanced threats. Information security must encompass the entire network and endpoints and conduct vulnerability testing, monitoring across people, processes and technology at all times.

Given the highly dynamic regulatory requirements, it is a tough task to achieve compliance internally without the help of an external partner.

A certified MSSP has the expertise to provide risk and compliance management support and ensure the organization’s assets are secure.

MSSP bring learnings and best practices such

as proven reference architecture based on the experience of working with a large number of customers. They are able to ensure that much of the basic security practices such as using strong passwords, server hardening, blocking public access ports by default and enabling permissionbased access to any enterprise resource are systematically implemented in the organization.

Going Forward A robust and smart security strategy is critical to the organization survival. A two-pronged approach by building internal capabilities and partnering with an expert vendor makes sense.

This allows the organization to lean on the external partner to manage day to day security, step up during a crisis and implement security protocols with rigor as they are immune to internal influences.

As businesses gear up for the new normal achieving security objectives have become more complex with a dispersed workforce and business continuity imperatives. The CISO is also under pressure to achieve more with limited budgets and partnering with external experts can help achieve security and business goals.

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Q&A // CYWARE

CYWARE

CYWARE IS BUILDING THE FIRST-OF-ITS-KIND GLOBAL COLLECTIVE DEFENSE NETWORK

BY SANJAY@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

With the cyberattacks on the rise, organizations are looking at various options to safeguard their data and identities. Cyware is one such solutions provide who is differently and seamless supporting the organizations by automating threat intelligence by integrating security operations of the organizations. Akshat Jain, Co-founder & CTO, Cyware spoke about how the company can add value to the user organizations.

An excerpt.

What was the idea behind Cyware?

Please take us briefly through your brand journey so far?

We founded Cyware with a vision of building a self-responding collective defense network that drives cross-sectoral collaboration at industry scale through next-generation cyber fusion centers. As professionals leading large teams in the security and technology domains for global corporations in our previous stints, Anuj Goel and I recognised the shortcomings of the siloed, reactive, and manually-driven security processes employed by organisations in the past. The lack of security collaboration exacerbates these challenges as technology infrastructure keeps expanding with every passing day. We set out to help organisations overcome these challenges and transform the security landscape by creating cyber fusion centers that form the core of our selfresponding collective defense ecosystem. Cyware has built scalable solutions to help organisations adopt a threat-intel and security automationdriven approach for proactively curbing cyber threats. Together, Cyware’s suite of solutions helps organisations leverage the power of security automation and orchestration, cyber fusion, threat intelligence sharing, and situational awareness, and threat response in order to align their people, processes, and technology towards the shared security priorities of all their stakeholders.

Today, Cyware is making secure collaboration, information sharing, and enhanced threat visibility a reality for enterprises, information sharing communities (ISACs/ISAOs), National 20 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

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CERTs, regulatory bodies, and government agencies globally.

With the pandemic still in vogue, what major cyber market trends would you forecast for 2022?

The pandemic has escalated the use of digital technologies and led to the adoption of remote work for enterprises of all sizes and across many sectors. This has caused drastic changes in the security threat environment for organisations as their technology infrastructure becomes increasingly distributed. Threat actors are capitalizing on the new extended attack surface with endless attacks on remote access solutions, virtual collaboration tools, and the software and hardware supply-chains. The rise in the number of smart, connected devices for various applications has further added to the security risks faced by individuals and organisations alike. Ransomware threats and social engineering attacks exploiting ongoing trends have also made things worse. In the continual game of cat and mouse between the defenders and the threat actors, the addition of new technologies into the mix only creates more security risks. Organisations will look to level up their security operations with key technologies like threat intelligence operationalization, security orchestration, and automation to become more cyber resilient going forward in 2022.

How are Next-Gen Techs like AI/ML impacting the Cyber Threat Landscape?

The use of AI/ML technologies is growing in the cyber domain, with security technology providers using it to improve the capabilities of their solutions and make threat management easier.

While AI/ML can help organisations improve their threat detection, monitoring, and response processes, it is crucial to find the synergy between man and machine capabilities to make the most out of it. Cyware’s solutions leverage Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to find attack patterns from heaps of threat Intel gathered from multiple sources, correlate with historical threats, prioritise threat mitigation actions, as well as accelerate incident management workflows.

When it comes to collective cyber defense, why is Cyber Innovation so critical in a digital-first economy?

Digital transformation is completely changing the way different industries conduct their business operations in today’s day and age. In order to cope with rising cyber threats, innovation in the cybersecurity domain is needed to help organisations accelerate their threat response and management capabilities. While security teams continue to improve their performance, it is also crucial to bring other stakeholders within and outside the organization on the same page in their security processes. True collective cyber defense can only be achieved through information sharing and operational collaboration at every step of the threat lifecycle. Instead of adding to the complexity of the security technology stack, organisations need innovative solutions that enable collective cyber defense while also helping simplify security governance and their daily operations.

Are there any major investment plans from Cyware for 2022?

Cyware has built its brand equity and gained a lot of trust from its investors through the combination of category-defining products, exceeding the expectations of its clients, and its continued expansion across various verticals and geographies. This enabled Cyware to close its Series B ($30 million, March 2021) and Series A ($10 million, August 2020) funding rounds, with a total of $43 million raised to date. The renowned group of investors backing Cyware include Advent International, TenEleven Ventures, Tanium, Zscaler, Prelude (the venture practice at Mercato Partners), Emerald Development Managers, CrossPoint Capital Partners, and several industry veterans. Our plan, for now, is to keep growing and continue solving the most complex challenges in the cybersecurity domain. We will raise funds at an opportune moment in the future based on the company’s growth trajectory and operational requirements.

CYWARE // Q&A

with their 10,000+ member organisations.

Moreover, Cyware’s security orchestration and automation (SOAR) and connected threat intelligence (TIP) solutions enable organisations to operationalize the collected threat intel through the combination of human and machine capabilities in an integrated SecOps setup under a single roof. Together, Cyware’s solutions equip organisations with the necessary technological capabilities to adopt a collective defense approach in their cybersecurity strategy.

How do Cyware’s cyber fusion solutions ensure end-to-end threat intelligence automation for organisations globally?

Cyware’s cyber fusion solutions help security teams leverage threat intelligence to drive security actions across the cloud-based, on-premise, or hybrid infrastructure. From the ingestion of threat intel via different internal and external sources to analysis and operationalization, Cyware’s solutions provide security teams the ability to automate their end-to-end threat intel operations.

Furthermore, Cyware also provides organisations with the advantage of last-mile delivery of threat intel for smarter and faster decision-making and actioning. Together, Cyware’s solutions provide a seamless and automated threat intelligence integration in security operations.

A K S H A T

J A I N

CO-FOUNDER & CTO, CYWARE

“Cyware’s suite of solutions helps organisations leverage the power of security automation and orchestration, cyber fusion, threat intelligence sharing, and situational awareness, and threat response in order to align their people, processes, and technology towards the shared security priorities of all their stakeholders.”

Please detail us on Cyware’s initiative to create a ‘first-of-itskind global collective defense network?

Today, cyber threats are a shared challenge for organisations large or small in both the public and private sectors. In light of the growing cybersecurity risks, organisations need to build bridges to collectively fend off critical threats.

Cyware is building the first-of-its-kind global collective defense network through its advanced cross-sectoral threat intel sharing platforms that connects all the stakeholders within an organiza-

tion, as well as its business partners, vendors, industry peers, national CERTs, information sharing communities (ISACs/ISAOs), and others.

Through this network, organisations can share strategic, tactical, technical and operational threat intelligence in real-time to ensure a timely response to various threats. More than 20 information sharing communities (ISACs, ISAOs, and CERTs) from financial services, automotive, space, aviation, healthcare, retail, energy, and manufacturing sectors, among others, are using Cyware’s solutions to share threat intelligence

Please enlighten us on Cyware’s Roadmap for 2022 and beyond?

Cybersecurity has become a make-or-break factor affecting the bottom line for organisations globally. Cyware is well-positioned to enable organisations to bolster their cybersecurity postures with our cyber fusion, threat intelligence, security orchestration and automation, and situational awareness solutions. Cyware is rapidly expanding its operations across major geographical regions that includes India and SAARC, EMEA, North America, Asia Pacific and Japan and AustraliaNew Zealand, and witnessing a rapid adoption of its solutions across various sectors, including clientele such as large enterprises, information sharing communities (ISACs/ISAOs), National CERTs, and more. Our 100% net-dollar retention rate in 2021 demonstrates our commitment to our rapidly growing installed base, and to enhancing every SecOps teams’ capabilities around advanced Security Orchestration and Automated Response (SOAR), cyber fusion, and threat intelligence operationalisation. Cyware will continue its exciting journey by doubling down on its hyper-growth momentum with its cyber fusion center solutions and bringing together the good actors in the fight against cyber threats.

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Q&A // IIT BOMBAY

IIT BOMBAY

OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM SHOULD BE OUTCOME-BASED

BY SANJAY@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

In a recent interaction with the CEO of IIT Bombay-Washington University in St Louis Joint venture, Gopal Shukla, we heard about how EMBA of IIT Bombay - WashU is trying to create change agents and how our education system should be outcome-based to produce more and more entrepreneurs and change agents. An Excerpt.

What is the rationale behind IIT Bombay and Washington University joint venture?

IIT Bombay and Washington University in St. Louis are two large and very established and prestigious universities.

Washington University and IITB have worked together since 2009. The institutions are members of the McDonnell Academy Global Energy and Environment Partnership, a consortium of sustainability-minded universities and corporations; McDonnell International Scholars Academy; and IITB-WUSTL Corporate Alliance, an affiliation that develops the next generation of global leaders. Their rich partnership history facilitates the collaborative delivery of the joint Executive MBA program in Mumbai.

CEO of the Joint Venture, Gopal Shukla says, We are now running the7th cohort and we have produced successful leaders and start-up founders who joined this program from various industries and functional backgrounds.

My objective from the JV is to create worldclass leaders and I call these leaders “change agents”. These leaders are expected to go out to their respective industries, markets, or the public sector enterprises, wherever they can contribute, they become ‘Change Agents’ as they change the society, re-design the business models, embark on changing the mindset and psychology contributing to the economic growth, social welfare, and social growth. Hence, I must tell you that at IIT Bombay- Washington University in St Louis, we are building a pool of ‘Change Agents’. While everybody is focused on building leaders, we are 22 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

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building the ‘Change Agents’ through our EMBA program.

What is your vision of creating academic reach deeper and widespread?

This programme is unique and as far as the reach is concerned, I see, two types of reach. One is reaching out to audiences in India and Other countries to educate them about the existence of this unique program. Another is the deep academic reach in the form of module delivery in the classroom. We have the ability and combined experience of both the Universities to deeply impact the participants with structured modules and delivery style.

So, IIT Bombay-WashU is able to create a unique place in India among the senior executives and leaders from corporates, large enterprises, family-owned businesses, defense, public sector, and so on. So, we have a diverse set of participants enrolling in the program.

My vision is to achieve a deeper reach to these segments to create more ‘Strategic Change Agents’ at the top level. These change agents will further influence and fuel economic growth and sustainability. In addition to where we are able to make an impact through this EMBA, my effort and desire are to invite more and more distinguished participants from Public Sector, Indian Administrative Service, Indian Police Service, and Defence to foster rich learning and networking experience. Imagine such cohorts where we have participants from Indian Administrative Service, Public Service, police service, and the corporate

world. When these two sets along with the entrepreneurs, who are building large enterprises and family-owned businesses, come together, they will be instrumental in shaping the future industries, and society, and fuel the economic growth. Let’s imagine the whole of India comes together to learn from each other as to how they do business, how they could empower people, empower the society and empower their businesses. The individuals from the public sector who are not fully exposed to the mechanisms of the private sector or enterprises, will now get connected, gain insights into strategic thinking, market dynamics, and will be well equipped with understanding and new perspectives to work together.

Imagine if, through our EMBA program, we are able to create this kind of a learning ecosystem and infrastructure, where everybody tries to understand the challenges of each other(Public/ Private/Start-ups), what would be the level of learning and academic reach can be created in the classroom. So, that is where my vision is to reach out deeply in terms of making it geo widespread and learn from each other and shape the future of economies and society.

Is there any number you are looking at?

We are not looking at any number but yes, we are looking at contributing as much as possible and as fast as possible. We plan to enroll 200+ leaders to be trained as ‘Change Agents’ every year and go to their respective places and take the right decisions for the benefit of society and their respective businesses.

How do you see technology enabling the growth of education?

Education is one sector that has been a key beneficiary of technology. We are the fastest adaptors of technology. The classroom experience is a very different experience than online, but technology plays a very critical role. Ed-Tech industry is growing at 16-17 percent and I assume it would grow at 40% CAGR in the years to come just because of the technology influence. We have adopted a hybrid delivery model. This programme particularly is delivered in a restrictive classroom mode where the leaders come and get the back-to-school experience at the IIT Bombay campus. But during the pandemic, we opted for a hybrid technology model where some of the students were in the class and some of them were online. Lately, when the pandemic began to wane away, we started offline classroom sessions, but technology, otherwise, plays a very critical role.

Technology is just not delivering the classes on zoom or a hybrid. We have a high-tech classroom, which is built a year or two ago. We have a fan-

IIT BOMBAY // Q&A

G O P A L

S H U K L A

CEO, IIT BOMBAY - WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS

“While everybody is focused on building leaders, we are building the change agents through EMBA offered by IIT Bombay - Washington University St Louis.”

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Q&A // IIT BOMBAY

“We should have an ecosystem to support the next idea and make it an easy entry to present that billion-dollar idea.’’

tastic classroom infused with high-end tools and technologies to deliver a unique learning experience. I am one of the Pro-technology CEOs, who is trying to make education delivered as efficiently, productively, and uniquely as possible.

people. So, we have a complete ecosystem within IITB right from learning to knowledge to creating a company to running it further - and, of course, generating employment and contributing to the economy.

What is your vision of creating an ecosystem of creating innovation and fostering entrepreneurship?

All the IITs are very well placed in building that kind of ecosystem. As far as IIT Bombay is concerned, our current director - Mr. Subhashis Chaudhary has a laser-sharp focus on building an innovative, agile, and problem-solving ecosystem combined with robust tools, technologies, and infrastructure where everybody can perform to the best. As far as the overall unicorn or start-up ecosystem is concerned, last year India replaced the UK in a pure number of unicorns perspective. While I know that we still need to speed up, academic institutions especially such as IITs and IIMs need to play a very important role. Schools need to play a very critical role in creating the mindset of entrepreneurship within the students starting from seventh and eighth grade. So, when they go to any IITs or IIMs or anywhere else, they can be supported through IIT/IIM incubation programs.

Speaking specifically about IIT Bombay, we have our incubator “Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE)”, which works aggressively in building an entrepreneurial ecosystem and all the IIT Bombay students, whoever want to create something unique or have an idea to pitch.

SINE encourages that endeavor and whenever requires to pitch in and help, it does the needful to support the incubation of the particular start-up.

As far as IIT Bombay and Washington University JV is concerned, as you know 20-30% of the class comprises entrepreneurs. And the rest of the class participants come to learn the various aspects of the business. They get influenced by the entrepreneurs and co-participants and come up with a lot of unique ideas, which further pushes them to go to SINE in IIT Bombay and they end up creating unique products and services for the society and

Can the IITs or Premium institutions in India create passion among the students to participate in the Make in India initiative?

The contribution of IITs in creating entrepreneurship is nothing but Make in India initiative.

You learn through academia, and you have an ecosystem to implement your ideas to get success, which contributes to the vision of Make in India.

In my view, not only IITs but all the institutions should draw a road map of governance in line with the best global practices.

Once you have your road map of governance ready in line with the global practices, more global companies get attracted and try to come to India for collaborations. And, then the Make in India initiative looks successful together.

Institutes must set up an industry Advisory Board with an objective to establish a strong industry connection – conduct multiple workshops, create a bond with each other, and develop a plan, along with objectives and outcomes.

I think academia should also focus on crossfunctional learnings with the transformative developmental experience. Intellectual growth with the deep practical knowledge with sound judgment, institution should also focus on the mindset of change for its own students.

Higher education is just not getting a degree and landing to a great job, but you learn and develop as an overall person. Putting all the industry and academia together and having an industry body with academia as an advisory would benefit immensely the Make in India initiative. All those practices which we just mentioned are followed within IIT Bombay.

24 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

APRIL 2022

But can we ever make companies like Google, Microsoft, Tesla, Oracle, WhatsApp, Etc.?

Sanjay it is a very good point, but I would want to make a little correction. I think you forgot that India has also created reputed companies globally, for example, Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, etc. TCS and Infosys and lot many Indian companies which have achieved global presence and global respect are born in India, but yes, how many numbers is my question.

Besides, you will be surprised to note that many founders of Indian startups that turned a unicorn in 2021 were an alumnus of IIT. It will be interesting to note that 65 of the 153 unicorn founders in India are from IITs. This apart, I think India has created valuable global companies and we are certainly on the path to creating more, looking at the entrepreneurship or the number of unicorns produced in India every year. But the fact is that 73 to 74% of innovative start-ups/Unicorns are being incubated/ produced and run in USA and China. However, to match the growth and build more and more valuable global companies, we must focus on skill-based learning and the New Education Policy (NEP) provisions that for us.

So, skill-based training is important. We need more investment into R&D from the government and companies. We also need to provide an ecosystem that could support the innovation.

Today, we need to listen to young and innovative talent from rural India, ideas from there have to be heard. And we should have an ecosystem to support the next idea and make it an easy entry to present that idea. This can only help in creating the companies like Google, Microsoft, or Tesla-like companies in India but for the great start-up ecosystem to flourish, companies should put themselves in the market the way Tata Sons did with Big Basket and 1mg, etc. So, companies need to invest in unique start-ups, listen to them and allow them to grow.

As far as the education system in India is concerned, do you have any suggestions?

Our education policy, has been recently modified.

It is very progressive and outcome-based. I am a big supporter of outcome-based learning.

We need to develop our course plans with an objective of outcomes and the focus on developing conceptual skills to identify, formulate and solve problems innovatively. The students must undertake case studies and simulation exercises irrespective of which education Institute they are in so that it can help them succeed in a far better manner than today.

2022 S O N I CWAL L CYBER T H RE AT R EPORT EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

CYBER THREAT INTELLIGENCE FOR NAVIGATING THE UNKNOWNS OF TOMORROW. sonicwall.com | @sonicwall

Over the past 12 months, SonicWall Capture Labs threat researchers have diligently tracked the meteoric rise in ransomware, as well as trends and activity across all threat vectors. By compiling these findings in the 2022 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report, we’ve ensured that small- and medium-sized businesses, government agencies, Over the past 12 other months, SonicWall Capture threat threat researchers have diligently enterprises and organizations have theLabs actionable intelligence needed to tracked the meteoric rise in ransomware, as well as trends and activity across all combat the rising tide of cybercrime. threat vectors. By compiling these findings in the 2022 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report, we’veExecutive ensuredSummary that smalland medium-sized businesses, government agencies, This offers a enterprisesoverview and other have the actionable threat intelligence needed to high-level of organizations the year’s most combat the risingFor tide of cybercrime.

GET THE FULL REPORT critical findings. a more in-depth look at SonicWall’s exclusive threat data, This Executive Summary download the full report.offers a high-level overview of the year’s most critical findings. For a more in-depth look at SonicWall’s exclusive threat data, download the full report.

sonicwall.com/threatreport

GET THE FULL REPORT sonicwall.com/threatreport

RANSOMWARE’S SAVAGE REIGN In 2021, SonicWall threat researchers recorded 623.3 million ransomeware

^

marked a 105% increase over 2020 and more than triple the number

RANSOMWARE’S SAVAGE REIGN seen in 2019. The U.S. and the U.K., where attack volume jumped 98% and

In 2021, SonicWall threat researchers 623.3 million ransomeware 227% respectively, suffered the brunt recorded of the spike. attacks globally — an average of 2,170 attempts per customer. This total marked a 105% increase over 2020 and more than triple the number

^

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attacks globally — an average of 2,170 attempts per customer. This total

seen in 2019.

TheBE U.S. and the FOR U.K., A where attack volume jumped 98% and MALWARE MAY HEADED REBOUND

227% respectively, the brunt of the spike.both a third-straight Malware was slightlysuffered down again in 2021, marking

year of decrease as well as a seven-year low. But while the overall trend is

still positive, it’s going in the wrong direction. An uptick in attacks during

^

MALWARE BE2021 HEADED FOR A REBOUND the second MAY half of almost completely erased the 22% drop in

Malware downhad again in 2021,atmarking both point, a third-straight malware was that slightly researchers recorded the midyear bringing the year of decrease as well as a seven-year low.

But while the overall trend is total decrease for 2021 to just 4% — less than a tenth of the 43% decrease still positive, it’s going in the wrong direction. An uptick in attacks during logged in 2020. the second half of 2021 almost completely erased the 22% drop in malware that researchers had recorded at the midyear point, bringing the

total decrease 2021 to just 4% — less than a tenth of the 43% decrease RTDMI™ GETSfor SMARTER, FASTER, BETTER

logged in 2020.

2021 was another banner year for SonicWall’s patented Real-Time Deep

^

Memory Inspection (RTDMI) technology. In Q4, RTDMI found more never-

before-seen malware variants than in any quarter since its introduction

RTDMI™ SMARTER, FASTER, BETTERmalware variants were in 2018. AGETS total of 442,151 never-before-seen

^

2021 was another banner year for year-over-year SonicWall’s patented identified in 2021, a 65% increase and anReal-Time average Deep Memory Inspection (RTDMI) technology. In Q4, RTDMI found more neverof 1,211 per day.

before-seen malware variants than in any quarter since its introduction in 2018. A total of 442,151 never-before-seen malware variants were

identified in 2021, a 65% increase year-over-year and an average

2

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2022 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report

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Executive Summary

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2022 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report

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Executive Summary

of 1,211 per day.

IoT MALWARE SHOWS SIGNS OF STABILIZING

^

IoT malware volume rose 6% in 2021, totaling 60.1 million hits by year’s

end. While this isn’t good news, it’s at least better than it has been: In 2019 and 2020, IoT malware volume rose 218% and 66%, respectively. With no

corresponding slowdown in the proliferation of connected devices, this suggests that attack volumes may be leveling off.

^

CRYPTOJACKING: BIGGER THAN EVER Cryptojacking continued to surge last year, rising 19% globally to

97.1 million — the most attacks that SonicWall Capture Labs threat researchers have ever recorded in a single year. This increase was

reflected in every region except Asia, where attack volume dropped 37%.

^

ENCRYPTED THREATS SHOW TRIPLE-DIGIT INCREASE Encrypted threats increased sharply in 2021, climbing to 10.1 million attacks — a 167% increase year-over-year. In August, the number of

encrypted attacks broke the 1 million mark for the first time, then continued to rise, reaching nearly 2.5 million by year’s end.

GET THE FULL REPORT sonicwall.com/threatreport

As a best practice, SonicWall routinely optimizes its methodologies for data collection, analysis and reporting. This includes improvements to data cleansing, changes in data sources and consolidation of threat feeds. Figures published in previous reports may have been adjusted across different time periods, regions or industries.

About SonicWall

SonicWall delivers Boundless Cybersecurity for the hyper-distributed era and a work reality where everyone is remote, mobile and unsecure. By knowing the unknown, providing real-time visibility and enabling breakthrough economics, SonicWall closes the cybersecurity business gap for enterprises, governments and SMBs worldwide. For more information, visit www.sonicwall.com or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.

SonicWall, Inc. 1033 McCarthy Boulevard | Milpitas, CA 95035 © 2022 SonicWall Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. SonicWall is a trademark or registered trademark of SonicWall Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners. The information in this document is provided in connection with SonicWall Inc. and/or its affiliates’ products. No license, express or implied, by estoppel or otherwise, to any intellectual property right is granted by this document or in connection with the sale of SonicWall products.

2022ThreatReport-ExecSum-COG-5745

Q&A // CLEARTOUCH

support, compliant with DoT and TRAI regulations, integration with in-house CRMs, helpdesk software, and other related applications.

CLEARTOUCH

CLEARTOUCH IS EMPOWERING CONTACT CENTERS WITH INTELLIGENT INTERACTION

BY SANJAY@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

COVID-19 has accelerated interest for cloud-based operations and at the forefront of the movement to the cloud.

How ClearTouch is empowering Indian businesses to transform on-premises call centers to Cloud-based Operations?

A subsidiary of TCN, Inc., a global contact center technology provider, ClearTouch introduced the first cloud-based contact center platform in India in 2016 to empower Indian businesses with its advanced technology platform for transforming on-premises infrastructure to cloud-based services. In the span of five years, we’re pleased to report that the cloud backbone of our ClearTouch platform has helped many Indian companies covering more than 25000 agents in their business continuity.

COVID-19 has accelerated interest for cloudbased operations and at the forefront of the movement to the cloud, ClearTouch combines a deep understanding of the needs of call centers with a highly affordable delivery model, ensuring immediate access to robust, omnichannel call center technology. This includes outbound and inbound voice channels, IVR and call recording as well as business intelligence, voice and speech analytics and compliance tools required to optimize operations and adhere to both India’s telemarketing and telecommunications regulations.

Our advanced, cloud-based platform enables contact centers to improve agent performance and enhance customer experience while increasing efficiency and reducing compliance risk.

ClearTouch’s “always-on” cloud-based delivery model provides customers with immediate access to the newest version of the ClearTouch platform as well as the ability to easily scale up or down adjusting to evolving business needs. ClearTouch is trusted by companies and enterprises of all sizes in India’s healthcare, insurance, financial 28 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

APRIL 2022

services, banking and business process outsourcing industries. We serve 1500+ customers across India and other international locations.

Product offerings & value proposition that the brand offers?

ClearTouch offers a complete contact center suite with Business Intelligence and Workforce management for enterprises, contact centers, BPOs and financial services companies in India.

Our contact center platform features a holistic set of easy-to-use, automated agent tools and advanced apps for omnichannel communications, workforce engagement, compliance & data management, integration & automation, intelligence, reporting & analytics etc. Moreover, we offer a deep understanding of the needs of call centers with a unique approach to pricing – no contracts, monthly minimums, or maintenance fees – that supports rapid scaling and instant flexibility to changing business needs.

We have recently launched a Voice Analytics feature that provides mission-critical support that can be deployed quickly.This feature uses audio from recorded calls and converts them into structured data for searching and analyzing. This solution supports advanced search and filtering, enterprise-grade speech recognition and transcription, contextual call playback data, tagging and commenting, transcript visualization, and full Payment Card Industry (PCI) redaction.

Our experience with 1500+ global customers enables us to bring innovative solutions that are cross-functional. We are proud to be the only company in India for the last five years to offer a managed contact center platform. All-inclusive per-minute pricing with no contracts besides other value propositions such as 24×7 customer

Please elaborate on the recently launched Voice Analytics platform and how it will powers agent performance and improves the efficiency of contact center operations?

Our Voice Analytics software takes recorded voice and translates it into structured data that can be searched and analysed. It helps organisations understand consumers better. We leverage high-end technology to recognise specific words, phrases, acoustic measurements, call information, and even the amount of quiet in a conversation. It includes a highly flexible search engine for quickly and easily finding and retrieving calls through free-form combinations of keywords, phrases, acoustic measures, and call metadata.

Voice analytics solution is cost-effective and provides highly efficient first calls resolutions to the customers. This solution can help increase your contact center efficiency, agent performance, and customer experience while reducing the overall compliance risk.

Current customer portfolio and plans of growing customer base?

ClearTouch as a brand is currently present in India with operations in Chennai, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Delhi. We believe in organic and sustainable growth and it has taken us five years in India to achieve some of our milestones. We have over 110 customers in India and over 1500 enterprises globally. Our customers range from sectors like Banking, Finance, FinTech, Insurance, Travel, Logistics, Healthcare, Retail, Political survey and campaigns, and MNC’s across multiple countries.

In the near future, we plan to expand our presence into other verticals such as e-commerce and edtech in India and we are also looking at expanding to South Asian countries, Philippines, and Vietnam.

How enterprises can capitalize on cloud intelligence for their benefit?

Many Indian businesses are recognizing the importance of cloud based operations as it is providing major gains in efficiency and productivity, as well as agent performance and customer experience, although the COVID-19 has push-started this pivot to the cloud out of necessity, these benefits will only increase in value after the pandemic.

Cloud based systems provide a lot of flexibility such as updates can be made seamlessly, businesses can get real time insights into their growth,

CLEARTOUCH // Q&A

U T H A M A N

B A K T H I K R I S H N A N

EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, CLEARTOUCH

“ClearTouch offers a complete contact center suite with Business Intelligence and Workforce management for enterprises, contact centers, BPOs and financial services companies in India.”

consumer preferences, avoid non-compliance penalties and much more. According to a recent Frost & Sullivan report, COVID-19 has accelerated the rate of migration from on-premises solutions to cloud-based services in the Asia-

Pacific (APAC) region, given the need to provide outstanding customer experience remotely.

The report’s author also noted that the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) industry will be the leader in deploying contact center

applications, followed by telecommunications.

Thus, enterprises can capitalise on the growing relevance of cloud intelligence to accelerate growth.

APRIL 2022

ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 29

Q&A // PERSISTENT

PERSISTENT

THE ROLE OF IT IS CHANGING DRASTICALLY AND TODAY THE CIO HAS A PLACE IN THE BOARDROOM AND ARE MAKING BUSINESS IMPACT PRESENTATIONS

BY SANJAY@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

Mr. Malvadkar is a senior IT leader with more than two decades of experience in the industry designing, developing and implementing technology solutions for business organizations. A strategic thinker, Mr Malvadkar has held senior positions in global organizations including Fujitsu, QuickHeal, Hitachi and Veritas.

Omicron seems to be threatening normal life. How is Persistent Systems preparing for this?

We have been working since last two years towards this and from IT standpoint and we see the maturing of our systems, processes and delivery capabilities to facilitate employees to leverage a hybrid work environment. We are looking at asset enablement, asset delivery in such a manner that employees are comfortable to start working within the system within a couple of days from home devices and equipment remotely and ensure business continuity.

We are working on many security and automation frameworks so that our systems are well-equipped to continuity in any scenario.

We have become familiar with the drills and the requirements from the first wave and so we are well equipped in assets so we can quickly distribute and enable employees to work and we have also made provisions for employees to connect remotely and work from homes. We have migrated much of the applications to Cloud, for example Exchange server is in the Cloud and we are well prepared with zoom and skype to enable employees to continue without any interruption.

We have also strengthened our security processes to ensure that no trojan is let inside.

We are conducting exercises to prevent phishing attacks. How to detect a phishing email and how to understand it’s a trap. In addition we have put in place a BCP and DR strategy too, so we have 30 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

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multi-pronged strategy.

How are you optimizing the workflow and adopting smart technologies internally?

As a service provider we think three or four steps ahead of the customer and with that perspective we are able to delight the customers. So we are adopting the latest and best products from OEM be it VMware, Microsoft, Commvault any of the OEM product. Parallelly we are also a product company, and we utilizing some workflow to enhance products and make it more user friendly.

So in our asset management mechanism we are adopting Microsoft Autopilot where a laptop can be delivered to a user’s home and from there the employee can start hooking to the corporate intranet.

We are looking at multiple ways to optimize workflows both from a technology and process point of view. We are adopting SaaS based applications so that employees can log in and access applications remotely in a secure manner. We are looking at optimizing the approval processes in a seamless manner. Earlier procurement approvals required physical sign off by four people, we are now looking at streamlining that process and make it faster in a virtual environment.

How are you leveraging new technologies like analytics and artificial intelligence?

The major challenge during pandemic times is to facilitate collaboration between employees and customers. Virtual platforms enable communication and engagement alright, but the missing gap is in the ability to read gestures, body language which are critical inputs in a communication session. So we are using advanced technologies such as AR and VR along with artificial intelligence to figure out the gaps and better understand customer communication. How can we optimize our solutions with better customer insights, collaborate meaningfully and know exactly what we need to do.

The pandemic has forced us to lean more on collaboration platforms and virtual platforms cannot match the quality of face to face communication. So we are leveraging artificial intelligence and AR VR technologies to fill these gaps in our internal communication and we are using the learning from those experiences to design products and solutions for customers.

You have bet heavily on the Cloud.

Can you share some challenges and experiences of Cloud migration?

Any change must start with a mindset change and technology changes are easier to implement than bring about a change in mindset. Moving to the Cloud must begin with a change in mindset because people do not see the Cloud-resources so there are questions and doubts about how things are done in the Cloud and how security will be implemented. Yet Cloud infrastructure is very secure when you employ the best practices and the ownership lies so much on the user to secure Cloud assets.

The second and more important thing is that the operating model for Cloud and on prem is very different and you must understand the Cloud principles when embracing it, or else you will not get the Cloud benefits. Simply lifting and shifting the workloads from on prem to Cloud is not the done thing, although we observe that in many cases. One of the advantages of Cloud is the inherent scalability and flexibility which must be utilized to optimize your cost and performance.

If resources are under-utilized you can turn them off but for that your workloads must embrace modern technologies, leverage modern platforms and use advantages technologies such as containers, microservices and DevOps practices.

Most legacy applications are tied to legacy technology and these applications simply cannot take advantage of Cloud benefits. Such applications must be modernized using new languages and frameworks with open APIs and deployed on modern Cloud platforms to scale easily. So these are some basic things that must be considered while migrating to the Cloud to harvest transfor-

PERSISTENT // Q&A

dardized launch environments and templates for application development and release, customers are hugely empowered in the Cloud innovate frequently.

Cloud empowers businesses to experiment without heavy upfront costs. You can simply turn on environments, do the experiments and move on if it fails. The cost of experimentation is low and therefore you can fail fast and learn fast.

G A T I S H W A R

M A L V A D K A R

SR. GENERAL MANAGER IT, PERSISTENT SYSTEMS LIMITED

“Virtual platforms enable communication but there are missing gaps in such communication scenarios, so we are using

advanced technologies such as AR and VR along with artificial intelligence to figure out the gaps and better understand customer communication.”

mational benefits.

Innovation is easy on the Cloud, what do you think?

The current generation wants everything at a click of a button and wants things instantaneously.

Take a simple example of a Kodak picture which requires some time for the pictures to wash and

print while now the cameras in phones gives instant pictures. So dealing with this generation of consumers, businesses must also be equipped with great deal of flexibility and agility and Cloud can equip businesses with solid technology capabilities to build responsive applications.

Cloud provides tremendous agility to churn out applications at scale and speed. With stan-

Concerns around cyber security with increasingly sophisticated attacks. How are you dealing with these threats?

First we are building our defences and focusing on the protection technologies. Next is we are focusing on building awareness amongst users within employees and amongst customers. After all, any attack ultimately affects the users and access to the environment is always via users.

Somebody makes a mistake and allows a trojan which will be sitting quietly and working its way through your networks and striking at the opportune time.

Third and most important is how can we develop cyber resilience. You may have back up and DR but is your last back up good enough, traditional RTO, RPO no longer holds true now.

You have to develop mechanisms and systems to detect and protect your data and have RTO and RPO to ensure that your last data backup is not compromised. And that is a mechanism we are trying to have where we can quickly restore data that is not compromised. Also, and more importantly can we detect the trojan, the malware in the image data, cleanse and then restore.

Focus should be on resilience because you can protect only that much. We can help and protect with awareness with 80% but it is data resilience strategy which help to fight cyber threats.

What are your priorities and what is your outlook for 2022?

I think the most important issue is how we can enable employees quicker, faster and efficient.

How can they be effective from day one. The endeavor is ensure that the collaboration and engagement is smooth, and by using collaboration tools we are able to deliver customer delight so that working from home or anywhere it is not a barrier.

Protection, awareness, and resilience. Build awareness not to strore on personal device but all data be stored at a central reporsitory a nd accessible from anywhere from anywhere.

Store and restore clean. Classification of data to have a robust data strategy so we are able to design and develop a strategy for storage, back up, restore and compliance requirements.

APRIL 2022

ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

31

SECURITY // FORTINET

the power of APIs. Building Banking as a Service (BaaS) has allowed them to develop new services and create stronger partnerships.

FORTINET

THE BALANCING ACT OF FINANCIAL ORGANIZATIONS TO COMPETE IN A TECHNOLOGY-DRIVEN WORLD Digital acceleration is impacting how we work, live, and consume services. In addition, the digital evolution of Financial Services Organizations (FSOs) raises essential questions about the future of banking. One looming concern is how FSOs will compete against fintechs, including addressing the need for innovation to improve customer experience. Ricardo Ferreira, EMEA Field CISO at Fortinet says how fintechs can adapt to the changing times and compete in a technology driven world.

Digital acceleration is impacting how we work, live, and consume services. In addition, the digital evolution of Financial Services Organizations (FSOs) raises essential questions about the future of banking. One looming concern is how FSOs will compete against fintechs, including addressing the need for innovation to improve customer experience.

Adapt to changing times The top three strategic areas outlined in the IDC Infobrief, sponsored by Fortinet, Accelerating Transformation Through Cybersecurity in Financial Services,* highlight the core priorities for financial institutions: Trust, Security, and Resilience. So, the question is, how can FSOs lead and win through innovation while ensuring that risks do not overwhelm a traditionally risk-averse industry?

Many FSOs have begun adopting new digital business models to help them thrive in a digital-first economy. These include prioritizing investments in key areas such as data-driven security, legacy modernization, and personalized and contextual customer experiences. But for these business models to work, they will need to rely on data, analytics, and cloud platforms.

So, when we ask, “what does success look like 32 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

APRIL 2022

for the future-ready bank?” we see three major themes: l Automation and cost reduction: Automation, managed services, and cloud platforms will enable FSOs to innovate faster. Automation allows business units to integrate with the rest of the organization, build self-service, and reduce manual labor costs, such as adopting Robotic Process Automation and artificial intelligencepowered chatbots to deal with insurance claims.

In investment banking, robot advisors use machine learning-powered algorithms to help retail investors make better decisions. Thanks to cloud platforms and managed services, these new products and services are economically feasible because they shift traditional CapEx to activities that create more value. l Customer intelligence and centricity: New platforms provide data and analytics for anticipating customer needs and hyper-personalizing the customer journey. Customer data, such as investment patterns, can guide a robot advisor to recommend portfolio choices aligned to customer preference. Similarly, natural language processing can help an AI system quickly assess a customer’s issue to redirect them to the nearest branch or get the appropriate representative involved. l New value propositions: Open banking was a massive change for banks, helping them realize

But what about the customer experience?

Who is not irked when reminded of their first troubled mobile banking experience, with terrible UX and lack of integration? It’s why, when some fintechs launched their online mobile banking, it was a beacon of light in a dark room. A real-world security example that everyone might remember was the usage of biometrics for accessing online mobile banking. Big brands took a long time to adopt it, and while it might seem trivial from a UX perspective, it’s leaps and bounds towards progress.

Today, traditional brands regularly launch products that emulate offerings from nimbler fintech organizations. The lesson is clear: to gain a competitive advantage, banks must focus on creating a fast, intuitive, and seamless customer experience.

Are clouds grey in banking?

These business models require the accelerated consumption of new platforms, such as cloud computing. Financial organizations must understand they can create differentiated value and increase competitiveness by using the cloud to increase their speed of innovation and accelerate the go-to-market of new services and products.

Cloud platforms also serve as a bridge to modernize financial organization workloads.

CIOs want to migrate workloads cohesively while ensuring the capabilities from their on-prem solutions are still available. Major Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) have jumped at the opportunity to integrate their environments into the same control plane.

Yes, but isn’t that risky?

Regulators have flagged the concentration risk.

For example, the Bank of England has highlighted it in their stability reports. The latest Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) PS21/3 rules address third-party risk and operational resilience. And the European Union has gone a big step beyond with their Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA).

All these activities and proposals are designed to address these concerns. The European Systemic Risk Board has flagged cyber as a systemic risk to the European financial system due to the increase in cyberattacks—especially in the financial industry, which is 300 times more likely to be the target of cyberattacks. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) emphasizes that cyber events propagate

FORTINET // SECURITY

RICARDO FERREIRA EMEA FIELD CISO FORTINET

“digital acceleration is essential for competing in today’s financial

marketplace. however, it doesn’t come without rish.”

risk through the entire financial system via three broad transmission channels: risk concentration, risk contagion, and erosion of confidence.

That is why cybersecurity is a priority as part of the EU’s “Europe fit for the digital decade” policy program. Programs such as EU-HYBNET, ACCORDION, and DORA for financial services ensure Europe works as a single entity by harmonizing requirements to increase resilience and protect citizens.

What can financial organizations do about it?

To start, security needs to be woven into transformation efforts to ensure that innovation and transformation are conducted securely. For this to work, security must be included from a project’s inception, not as a bolt-on after a project and its services are launched.

What about protecting financial assets?

55% of European financial organizations already

use some form of zero-trust strategy for their authorization and authentication. Zero-trust shifts the traditional paradigm from implicit trust for users and resources inside a static, networkbased perimeter to an authentication model that focuses on users, assets, and resources. Zero-trust requires authentication and authorization to be performed every time access is granted to a specific resource.

How do we address the ‘weakest link’ problem?

While people are an organization’s most critical asset, they are also the primary source for data breaches and network compromise. Organizations must be prepared for a loss of control if their workforce is not educated on cyber awareness.

Some large financial organizations have created partnerships with e-learning portals and vendors to provide tailored courses using nudges and financial instruments to reskill the workforce into new technologies. Similarly, financial

organizations must plan to mitigate the rampant cybersecurity skills shortage, which will impact 90% of organizations by 2025, resulting in delays to the transformational journey.

What can we do?

Digital acceleration is essential for competing in today’s financial marketplace. However, it doesn’t come without risk. First, ensure employees are trained and reskilled in the organization’s technologies. Second, share data with industry peers to learn best practices and identify potential issues. Transaction Monitoring Netherlands (TMNL) is an excellent example of transaction data sharing to mitigate Anti-Money Laundering (AML).

Finally, work with vendors and partners committed to cross-vendor openness and integration.

When vendors work together across the threat landscape, the sum of their products is greater than the individual parts, deepening your level of cyber protection.

APRIL 2022

ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 33

DIGITIZATION // HCL & AMAZON

J

ustin Honaman, Head, Worldwide Consumer Products & Retail – Go To Market at AMAZON, and Mohit Gupta, Senior Industry Principal, Consumer Services at HCL Technologies, talk through the disruptions underpinning the CPG and retail landscape and share their take on the commerce platform modernization for tomorrow’s digital buyers.

Mohit: Hi Justin, what do you see happening in the e-Commerce industry space to help businesses in the CPG industry innovate faster and get more competitive at what they do?

Justin: As we have all observed, the last two to three years have been characterized by a forced digital acceleration in retail. Our customers were focused on modernizing eCommerce platforms and launching direct-to-consumer channels. You know, retail was the fast leader whereas CPG was a fast follower – but this year, we are seeing the locus of transformation shifting to digital manufacturing, supply chain, procurement, connected factories, Industry 4.0 capabilities, and so on.

Mohit: Definitely, we have seen this shift quite equicocally – and this year, especially the CPG players, are observing considerable time, observing shifting consumer behaviors and knowing their customers better. I had a chance to visit the Amazon 4-star in the New Jersey area, and I was amazed to see the degree of product awareness at play there – I saw so many products from companies that I assume were born digital. I think that many companies need to catch up to these players in the years to come.

Justin: Yeah. I think that retail is actually helping drive some of the transformations in consumer products, at least in the food and beverage (F&B) space. I also have some stats that I’d like to share – these come from IHL. So during the pandemic, $500bn was the cost of out-ofstock products – and 25% of that was from known causes, but 15% was from newly exposed issues in the supply chain between CPG manufacturers, F&B companies, and the retailers. And this one I find particularly interesting – the number of dark stores and fulfillment centers has gone up by 1000% over the last two years on the retail side.

And these changes are receding back upstream as CPG players are trying to react to what retailers are doing. Some of the pain points in the CPG industry persist – for example, supply chain visibility and demand forecasting. You know, when I was working at Coca-Cola, our forecasting accuracy with some suppliers was near 60%.

However, some new technologies enable better demand forecasting – like analytics and disaggregated data. However, we did a study recently, 34 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

APRIL 2022

DIGITIZATION

MODERNIZING COMMERCE PLATFORMS FOR TOMORROW: A DIGITAL DELUGE Transforming direct-to-consumer channels and leveraging digital solutions to raise competitiveness in Retail and Consumer Packaged Goods. and we found that 66% of CPG brands have their channel strategy figured out, and only 22% are still exploring that area – and I’m sure that you’re seeing the same.

Mohit: You’re right. We are definitely seeing CPG players report what percentage of their sales will happen online – and there’s a clear prioritization of eCommerce, which is a big shift in the way they want to market their products and their product life cycles. From my recent work at a health and hygiene company, I observed that the number of places where interactions with the customers happen had gone up – and making that journey frictionless is the name of the game.

Justin: No doubt. And that’s where we get a lot of technical questions – like, what’s the priority of modernization? How do we transform our business and the technology that underpins it?

So these questions are basically unfolding in the form of tension between business and IT – and this is the case with legacy brands rather than digital natives, which can add personalization with customer data platforms to their strategic advantage.

Mohit: So if we break down the value chain Justin, there’s a lot of change that CPGs have to adapt to, beyond the 3 M’s – or the make-movemarket paradigm. I was recently asked what personalization means to you – as a retailer or as a CPG brand. What, in your opinion, is the industry standard, the baseline, and above average?

Justin: So what we have been seeing is that cloud is great and necessary – and then we need business capabilities, and we need agility, scalability, and cost savings across global operations.

That’s why the CPG industry is moving to the

cloud. But that’s just the story of the back office.

Let’s take a look at some of the solutions across the 3Ms that we have dialed into because of what our customers have asked for. So in the make section, we have OEE, we have connected factories, and we have facility-level analytics and visibility. Then, in the supply chain, we have capabilities to enable visibility and better decisioning – a control tower to use the buzz phrase.

Another interesting area is on-shelf or in-store availability. Our customers are a lot more interested in image-recognition capabilities in-store to empower optimal product placement, trade promotion execution, and so on. And then we move on to the 3rd M – that is, market. Again, there are some great solutions that integrate seamlessly with AWS – like Magneto and VTEX, which can enable a true CDP for businesses. And over the last few months, our customers have also shown interest in contact center and service capabilities.

Mohit: Absolutely, we have seen tremendous interest in digital manufacturing, connected factories, asset management solutions, and so on. And to take your point further, I think that the kind of personalization that we are talking about is only possible through a truly connected ecosystem that can reach down to the shop floor.

Justin: Definitely – and the fourth area that we haven’t spent much time on as yet, is measurement, metrics, and analytics. And one of the key pain points in the industry is about a singular view of operational performance – from retailer-to-distributor-to-customer – how do you roll that and get the right view of daily sales – right? And then, what about the retailer sales data

HCL & AMAZON // DIGITIZATION

MOHIT GUPTA

JUSTIN HONAMAN

SENIOR INDUSTRY PRINCIPAL – CONSUMER SERVICES, HCL TECHNOLOGIES

GLOBAL HEAD AND WORLDWIDE GO-TO-MARKET LEADER, AMAZON

BRIEF PROFILE Mohit Gupta is CXO’s Partner for Transformation & Innovation. He is Certified SAFe® Agilist and helps enterprises move at start-up speeds with agility business demands. He has extensive experience in consulting with CXOs in F500 – B2B and B2C Businesses. He plays a Change Agent for redefining global IT services strategy & next gen/future operating models, Transformation Roadmaps – captives, ITO, M&A, near shore set ups, and JVs. He focuses on Enhancing Customer Value with Modern Application Development Practices (Agile/DevOps), Creating Operating Models that fuel Digital Transformation, Accelerate Innovation, & Efficient Operations through Automation.

BRIEF PROFILE Justin Honaman leads the worldwide Consumer Products – Food & Beverage organization for Amazon Web Services.

His team’s focus within Consumer Products is on delivering supply chain, ecommerce, data / analytics and digital engagement business solutions for CPG customers globally.

Justin has spent the majority of his career in Consumer Goods and Retail both on the customer side (Coca-Cola, Georgia Pacific) as well as the technology / consulting side (Accenture, Teradata). Justin lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

coming back to you – how do you harmonize that data? And that’s a question to which there’s no single turnkey solution for years. Then we’ve got consumer data from D2C – how do I make sense of it with the rest of the data? So, in other words, the analytics space has exploded, and there’s a significant positive change.

Mohit: Yeah, data is definitely going to remain a key focus for years to come amidst changing priorities. And I have kept following what Amazon

has been doing in this space.

Justin: Absolutely. And you know, through the course of this conversation, we have thrown around so many concepts that it can be overwhelming from a CPG executive’s perspective – and there’s definitely a place for guidance here, and partners that can help them out will definitely be critical in making wise investments. While performing critical migrations may take time, there are innovations that you can take up in areas

like personalization, your production facilities, supply chain, and so on – and these are things that you can test out very quickly and learn to make better decisions on investments.

Mohit: Yeah, I think there’s a lot of opportunity areas for retailers and CPG brands – and honestly, we have a lot of brands that are now willing to partner with Amazon and see significant ROI as a result. And overall, I think that this is an exciting time to be doing business in this industry.

APRIL 2022

ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 35

Q&A // DRUVA

DRUVA

DRUVA EXPANDS INDUSTRY’S FIRST SAAS-BASED MSP PROGRAM TO ASIA PACIFIC REGION Scott Morris, Vice President of Sales for APJ, Druva speaks about Simplicity, Security and Scale help partners improve operational efficiency and accelerate customer cloud adoption with Zero complexity or infrastructure cost. An excerpt.

BY SANJAY@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

Is there no commitment from an MSP? Especially in comparison to what’s been followed all these years. So, how is it connected? Can you briefly explain the standard model for this?

Yes, of course there is a commitment. We work on a subscription based service which effectively means it can be turned on/ off instantly. The Druva Data Resiliency Cloud negates the need for MSPs to buy any hardware or software. Ideally, this allows MSPs to begin monetizing right from day one because there’s no need to sink one’s capital into heavy infrastructure. Additionally, our customer base include those that are either existing and/ or serving from an existing capability but wish to migrate into a more efficient and effective way of monetization.

Basically, you’re pushing around a service through an MSP, right?

Yes, correct. So it’s an aggregate model. Our minimum monthly commitment is 10 customers a year. This does grow incrementally for each and every subsequent customer they bring on.

The underlying minimum commit can either be consumed or increased in order for the MSP’s to make more money and also to obtain a higher discount from Druva the next year of the program.

And, would they require any kind of configuration at their end in pushing your service from an infrastructure?

Well, there is no pre-provisioning that is required which means there is no need for maintenance or sizing or upgrades that need to be performed.

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The idea is to stay focused on the core objective of identifying customers and bringing them into the MSP portal. We have built a unique console for the MSP community which helps create a true multi user, multi-tenant view of the user’s underlying assets. It’s a multi-tenant portal that allows an MSP to see all the customers at a top level, and then individually and securely manage each one of those customers with their own individual capability. So, MSPs now become an aggregator of the complex traditional solutions where they were used to putting in individual siloed solutions from the vendor and manage them as such.

Are you looking at putting a class of MSPs that would fit? How do you approach this or how are you offering this program? What’s the like- mindedness that you’re looking for from an MSP point of view?

What we are looking for is partners. MSP partners typically have got a very strong alignment to cloud migration and that is in sync with what both IDC and Gartner talk about- enterprises transitioning to cloud based workloads. Additionally, many of these customers while transitioning the on-prem traditional infrastructures to cloud, are also looking at how to remove other complexities. This is why they generally work very closely with an MSP that is not only helping them migrate, but also then helping them manage these complexities in the background. So, they become ideal candidates for us. And clearly, as you look at those MSP priorities, any MSP that views backup and recovery, either as a top priority or a growth area, becomes an immediate prospect.

And would there be any play for players like Amazon, or the hyperscalers?

So, we already have a hyperscale offering. We’ve built our platform on AWS which means we’re already a native in cloud solutions. In fact, we are the third largest ISV in the APJ (Asia Pacific and Japan) community today. Druva sits as one of the largest storage consumers globally. So we, in our own right, are a very strong partner to AWS and, we’ll be working closely with them to look at who are the most aligned service providers that we could potentially partner with by adding this incremental backup capability.

Druva achieved 100% growth last year, this year, how do you find the landscape to keep your flock together, specifically OEM partners, ISV alliance partners and service providers in the region? Also, how are you looking at the strategy to engage with startups this year, as we are witnessing lots of soonicorns in this region?

Growth continues to drive us. In fact, the data resiliency cloud really is the last bastion of onprem infrastructure. Today, it is nearly automatic for people to think, “Well, we’ll take a SaaS solution for that”. Some, 5- 10 years ago, you wouldn’t have considered a relational database in the cloud but it’s now automatic- relational database, CRM systems etc. Even email is considered on G- Suite or 365- it’s natural to now assume a software as a service provider becomes almost your default starting point as opposed to an on-prem solution.

Today, Druva is on that pinnacle. And while you see the growth that we’re seeing, backup is yet to be defaulted to software as a service as the primary mode. Druva is unique in the fact that we’ve been doing this now for 10 years. There’s a lot of startups in the backup and recovery space, all clamoring to provide software as a service solution. Druva has done this at an enterprise scale. We’ve got thousands of customers globally, protecting and being protected by this platform, and roughly 15% of these customers are in the Asia Pacific marketplace, and we continue to witness very strong, continued growth. India was one of our first markets that we opened up in Asia Pacific.

We introduced the multi-cloud concept which is wherever you choose to put your workload and how you decide to protect that under a single platform approach, ensuring that it gives you the highest level of security, recoverability and protection.

When it comes to OEM partners, Dell is our first, globally and it still is a new relationship with two full quarters in. At all levels, across

DRUVA // Q&A

S C O T T

M O R R I S

VICE PRESIDENT OF SALES FOR APJ, DRUVA

“This year we will see MSPs increasingly align with customer outcomes to drive growth, and the adoption of cloud-based technologies and SaaS solutions is increasingly a major part of these IT initiatives,” said, Scott Morris, Vice President of Sales for APJ, Druva.”

US, Europe, and Asia Pacific, we are engaged absolutely in lockstep- sales team to sales team in the field. Dell has a huge install base of traditional on- prem solutions that reaches this huge target market and all of their competitors are consistently pecking away at them from

the outside. Dell EMC PowerProtect Backup Service is 100% OEM and powered by the Druva platform. This now gives Dell a very credible story of how they went from traditional on-premise to a cloud based software as a service offering while maintaining and protecting their customers

without having them eroded away to these other vendor competitors.

We see many collaboration points, of course, as we continue to develop the product. SFDC from a Salesforce Sandbox Seeding point of view becomes a potential point of leverage. The APRIL 2022

ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 37

Q&A // DRUVA

relationship that we have with the ability to leverage VMware’s VMC product in terms of disaster recovery- be it on- premise or on cloud. The Druva Data Resiliency Cloud capability allows them to not only back up the virtual machine infrastructure into the Druva cloud platform, but as DR (Disaster Recovery) capability helps them move back up into a production workload back to on- premise. We become an enabler for these organizations. So, in short, now, as we go forward, you’ll start to see tighter integration from a security standards perspective.

IDC and other studies show that SMBs, particularly in APAC, are highly targeted by ransomware attackers.

SMB companies depend on MSPs for security. How are you enabling MSPs to help recover their data after a ransomware attack? What about immutable backups and the 3-2-1 backup model?

How does this fit into the Druva cyber resiliency cloud?

We do subscribe to the 3-2-1 backup model. But

there are multiple availability zones in the cloudmultiple redundant copies of that. One must remember that today, malware and ransomware is becoming extremely clever. It’s not just the software that’s running around, its individuals and people that create the risk of a bad act getting in.

So, when we think of a security to overlay that, we simply follow a zero trust security model, which means never trust anybody, always assuming that somebody is a bad actor. And, so with that sense of heightened security, it allows us to do some really interesting things.

Now, when it comes to encryption as a key capability, we have a general encryption capability that only allows the customer to de- encrypt their own data. We don’t see our customer’s data.

The architecture and design of our platform only allows the customer with their key to see their own data. So, tomorrow even if a government came along and asked us to give us all of the records for company XYZ, it wouldn’t mean anything, because we couldn’t encrypt or de- encrypt it, even if we tried.

Even in the case of dual access (wherein two

BAKSHISH DUTTA COUNTRY MANAGER, INDIA & SAARC DRUVA

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people have admin capabilities), our secure ops perspective catches some suspicious activity such as if one admin does a mass delete and we confirm the same with the secondary identified person. Druva has a failsafe, which means we need a secondary person in the organization to validate an activity or capability.

How do you leverage next gen Tech’s like AI to address security issues?

We have a strong AL and ML focus. We use it when detecting anomalous behavior. We are also looking at patent matching technologies to apply to things like governance and compliance. So if you think of GDPR or personal information policies that are implemented by governments around the world, we’re able to look for information in the background. This helps us to be able to drive alerts and it was again using API’s that plug into either your security alert platforms. We’re looking for patterns and analyse these patterns of behaviour.

A 3-2-1 model indicates three copies of data on two different media and one copy off site. To deploy this kind of architecture and if it is on- premise, then the customer has to invest a lot of hardware and a lot more to make things work. And, if an MSP is doing it, then too there’s a lot of effort and investment of time and putting things together. Now, we offer our SaaS on AWS and the way we architect our solution is that we ensure that the data that’s backed up to the cloud is stored in multiple regions and we move some unique blocks of data to the cloud making the backup process secure.

It is truly a 3-2-1 backup model and the ease for MSP is that there is no need to re-invent or establish another or to do anything at all, to make it 3-2-1 compliant. Our software also detects anomalous behavior and more importantly we also recently introduced a ransomware recovery module.

What this essentially does is that it ensures that ransomware cannot be executed even while storing an infected backup copy on the cloud. So your secondary copies are always safe. In addition, we also have the capability to scan the backup data which allows us to go to the customer and inform them about a possible ransomware manifestation within their environment.

We ensure that in case a customer’s primary data gets infected, the secondary will not because the data with us is air gapped and on another cloud.

We can build a golden copy of the snapshot with which the customer can restore faster and thereby get back to business faster.

One of the key problems that customers face is also that they keep backing a lot of data and they don’t really know the data that they’re backing up or how frequently they are accessing it. There is a need to understand the composition of that data that is stored on the cloud and we can give these insights to the customer so that they are aware if they are not really accessing the data. The customer can also think of either taking the data off or pushing it out to archival so that the cost goes down and we take the same cost benefits.

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