Sophos looks at synchronised security as the next evolution

Sunil Sharma, Managing Director Sales - Sophos India & SAARC explains how security delivery will transform and why an integrated approach to security is the need of the hour 

The transformational journey for Sophos has been quite phenomenal. Ever since the acquisition of Cyberoam by Sophos, the company has seen an incredible growth. 

“At Cyberoam we only used to sell Firewall, UTM, but today we have got a product range which is end-to end. So in terms of product portfolio, we have multiplied,” says Sunil Sharma, Managing Director Sales - Sophos India & SAARC.

Today while approaching a customer, Sophos takes an integrated and synchronised security approach.Starting from endpoint (anti-virus, anti-malware)to encryption, we cover up the entire stack right from desktop to servers. 

“On the network security side, apart from UTM, we have email gateway, web gateway, and access points; we are also looking at integrating with IoT which is the future. The best part is we have been talking about synchronised security which no vendor is doing. Vendors today are offering solutions on network side and endpoint side separately; we are the only company that started telling in 2015-16 that customers need an integrated approach in security and that the network side of the products need to talk to the endpoint side of the products. Most of our offerings are on the cloud, and so you get frequent updates of what is happening in other parts of the world. That is the best thing which we could offer to our customers. With this approach, whatever products we are bringing in, either the ones developed internally or the ones acquired from outside, are integrated into the synchronised security environment as part of the portfolio. If a CIO has a solution that works in isolation, then he won’t be said to be having a good security posture. One should look at security from a more holistic manner, understand what you have and where you are moving tomorrow,” explains Sunil. 

Security should be a comprehensive portfolio with a layered approach. According to Sunil, if there is an attack from the endpoint side, then the UTM at the network side should spring into action. “So as a company, if you look at our journey, from what we were and what we are today in terms of the variety of solutions that we are able to offer to our existing customers of Cyberoam and the new customers of Sophos, I think it is phenomenal,” says Sunil. 

Security concerns for a CIO…

Today the most important thing that CIOs and IT Heads have understood is that if they are not able to educate their users. Education plays a big part in not becoming a victim of any of malicious threats or phishing attacks. Today organizations, in spite of them spending a lot of money in making the users aware, the right awareness drive is not there. 

“We have acquired a company that is in the area of machine learning. We implemented their capability in all our products. Today we are talking about deep learning, and have tried to make it a part of all our products. By putting these technologies in our products we try to ensure that we are far ahead of the cyber criminals,” Sunil says. 

He further explains, “We started this company in 1985 and are carrying 33 years of data. Deep learning is able to identify the malicious data within fractions of second. In this way, we are giving a robust security to our customers. Intercept X for instance is a deep learning product. So we are moving ahead with our products with this technology embedded in it.”

A CIO indeed has a very tough job, because technology keeps on changing and they need to keep pace with the dynamic cyber world. Although Ransomware has always been there, people did not have any idea that WannaCry kind of an attack can happen. A survey that Sophos recently launched pointed out to the fact that ransomware has attacked a customer not just once but twice, but in spite of that 80-85% customers still believe that anti-virus will do the job of securing their sensitive data and information. Fundamentally threats have come to a level where individuals are getting impacted. 

“But the good thing is that as we move forward, lot of companies are understanding the importance of securing their organization. We as a security company ask our customers to be secured all the time,” sums up Sunil.