“Channels Are One of the Most Important Pillars of Our Business”

“Channels Are One of the Most Important Pillars of Our Business”

In an era of Digital Transformation, companies are more concerned about the security of their digital assets. Cybersecurity is one of the major concerns for enterprises. In addition, a new form of risk - digital risk has emerged now and needs to be managed effectively. RSA is a prominent name in the security domain and provides security solutions to all sizes of companies. In a recent conversation with DT, Rajnish Gupta, Regional Director–India & SAARC, RSA (A Dell Technologies company) provided insights about the evolving threats, solutions and channel plans for the Indian market.

DT: How do you see the overall growth of the cybersecurity market in India?

Mr. Rajnish: I would like to take this a little higher- think most of the organisations are going digital - they are adopting digital technologies more than what they were in the past. With the adoption of digital technologies, more digital risks are coming out and technology is getting into products and services where it never existed. From that perspective, it is a good market to be in. Businesses are also realizing that they have a larger risk. A new form of risk - digital risk, needs to be managed and it is larger than the security or cyber risks that they use to have earlier. If we were to slice the market, three segments that are very aggressively looking at safeguarding digital assets are banking & financial institutions, IT- ITES organisations because they are more regulated. The public sector or the government is also very much concerned as they also have a lot of focus around safeguarding newer initiatives. So, the trends we are really seeing in cybercrime scenario today are-

  • The growing use of mobile to commit cybercrime
  • Adoption of legitimate digital platforms for illicit activities
  • Use of advanced technologies to both commit and fight cybercrime.

DT: What are the current trends for cyber-attacks especially in India?

Rajnish: The kind of trends, which would emerge due to the adoption of digital technologies from a cyber-risk or digital risk perspective, is that there would be so many things which are unknown and there will not be any technology which can really manage those unknown. So, it has to be well thought through the process of mitigating those risks, it cannot be a point solution, it has to be a journey. Now, if we just take mobile as an example of digital transformation, we can see how cybersecurity and fraud have changed from a computer browser-based attack to a mobile rogue app-based attack. That is the kind of transformation we will see even on the fraudster’s side. Over the last year only, we have seen 680% increase in fraud transaction over mobile applications as against the year before that. So, the fraudsters will be ahead of us possibly because the good guys are reactive while fraudsters are ahead of us and they use technologies more than what we do.

DT: How do you see the major challenges for CTOs that they face in current scenarios?

Rajnish: CTOs and CTDOs know their businesses more than anybody else does, better than the fraudsters. Therefore, the key in today’s world would be - knowing the business, knowing the business risks, and helping draw a mitigation plan around the problem rather than just throwing technology to a problem.

DT: How do you play an important role in helping companies secure digital assets?

Rajnish: We are poised to be the front-runners and we are creating this market segment, which we call it as digital risk management. Everybody knows RSA as a cybersecurity company and we have been existing for last almost 35 years. I do not think there is any other standalone cybersecurity company that has existed for so many years. We have a strong portfolio of integrated risk management. RSA is poised to be the leader in terms of helping our customers manage digital risks better. Our vision is to help them draw a safe passage to the digital future.

DT: How do you sell your products or solutions in the Indian market? How do you support your channel partners?

Rajnish: Absolutely, channels are one of the most important pillars of our business- 100% of our business is through channels and we have a huge focus on upskilling our partners, both on the technology side as well as on the selling side. Our channel policies are absolutely focused around channel partners. We understand that most of the channel today is driven by services revenues and whenever we really sell our technology, there is at least 40-50% of services involved in every technology. That is what we really bring on the table for our channel partners to focus around- services as well as advanced technologies, things that could really take to customers.

DT: What are your channel expansion plans for the Indian market?

Rajnish: We have sufficient partners already in each region. Therefore, from a geographic coverage perspective, I would say there are enough partners. We feel there are more security partners already but there is always a place for niche and very focused security partners in the industry. We have two sets of partners. The national partners- partners who have a national presence, special integrators, and national system integrators. Then we have regional partners, who are focused on specific regions, we engage with these partners in those specific regions. In addition, we also have our distributor partners like Inflow, Redington and others who really support these partners to do the commercial transaction.

DT: What technical support do you provide to your customers?

Rajnish: There are two things; firstly, we run a 24*7 technical support centre. One of those centres is based out of Bangalore, India. So, one of the shifts is run out of Bangalore itself while for all our customers, our basic support is available 24*7. Secondly, we do have a professional services team for one-time implementation and for some kind of consulting activities. That is very niche though; we have our limited resources there and we try to leverage partner resources for professional services. Wherever our partners do not have skill set, we try to bridge the gap for our customers. We do have a professional services team but their role is to really augment or support our channel partner capabilities to bring solutions to RSA customers, wherever they do fall short of skills.

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