Trend Micro India head talks about Cloud security provider’s strategies

Infotech Lead Asia: Cloud security provider Trend Micro is spreading its presence in India.

Amit Nath, country manager, India &  SAARC, Trend Micro, while talking to Baburajan K of InfotechLead.com, says Trend Micro will continue to focus and invest in channels in India. Excerpts of the interview:

On Trend Micro’s expansion plans

We have termed 2013 as the Year of the Channel. We will continue to focus and invest in channels. The idea is to enable to for business growth. Channels will be engaged with us through our revised Channel Program and shall sell our new age security solutions besides the traditional products. We want to reinvigorate our channel business, with a new partner program and a new partner portal.

Under the new program, the Affinity, Affinity Plus and Affinity One partner levels will be replaced by Silver, Gold and Platinum respectively. However, the basic level of partnership will remain Registered partners.

We plan to double our volume business. In 2012 the volume business garnered 5 percent market share, our aim this year is to increase it to 10 percent.

We are also watching the consumer acceptance of our Android-based mobile and tablet security which is currently available for free download on the Google Play Store. We expect traction for this category to grow exponentially within the next 6-12 months.

In terms of new solutions, we launched Deep Security in early 2012 for server security; this received good response from the enterprise segment, and contributed around 15 percent of our revenue last year. Recently we launched our integrated DLP product called I-DLP. With virtualization, security at the endpoint is getting revolutionized. With thin clients, integrating DLP at the endpoint level has become crucial.

The other new product we are excited about is Deep Discovery, which is aimed at managing APTs. The product works on the Detect, Analyze, Adapt and Respond model. Deep Discovery provides sand boxing or virtual analysis.

Trend Micro’s growth strategies in India

We are following a clear 3-point growth agenda.

The first is to leverage our wins in the government to garner more market share; we have set the goal of achieving the No 1 spot in the government segment by 2015.

We grew by 33 percent in our government business with large scale projects last year (2012) and plan to grow on that this year.

The second is to dig deeper into our enterprise accounts, to sell new products like Deep Discovery and I-DLP to large customers.

Recently we launched our integrated DLP product called I-DLP. With virtualization, security at the endpoint is getting revolutionized. With thin clients, integrating DLP at the endpoint level has become crucial.

The third is to increase the market penetration of our volume products both with SMBs and consumers.

New growth opportunities and challenges

Opportunities

In the business world, the driving forces of consumerization, cloud computing and virtualization, and the increase in advanced cyber attacks, have changed the way you need to look at data security. You need to ensure your data is protected in real time regardless of device, location, or application. You need to know your protection is easy and
cost-efficient to manage, and you need it to grow and change as your business does. In short, you need smart, simple, security that fits.

We are constantly endeavouring to deliver solutions that provide smart protection against loss, theft and cyber attacks, with a layered approach that provides security for all user activities, regardless of device, location, or application. Our solutions provide real-time protection from the cloud that is transparent to end users.

We deliver solutions that are simple to manage and deploy, with centralized visibility and control. Our solutions are lightweight, have minimal impact on server and network efficiency, can be on-premise or hosted – and are priced and packaged to meet your requirements.

We deliver security that fits your evolving ecosystem. Our solutions are optimized for your operating systems and platforms, and work seamlessly with complementary technologies and applications. Today, Trend Micro is in the forefront of providing cloud based security solutions. We’re the security partner you need – one who is constantly innovating to deal with the latest security threats, and is 100% focused on security.

Challenges

In 2013, managing the security of devices, small business systems, and large enterprise networks will be more complex than ever before. Users are breaking down the PC monoculture by embracing a wider variety of platforms, each with its own user interface, OS, and security model. Businesses, meanwhile, are grappling with protecting intellectual property and business information as they tackle consumerization, virtualization, and cloud platforms head-on. This divergence in computing experience will further expand opportunities for cybercriminals and other threat actors to gain profit, steal information, and sabotage their targets’ operations.

On new industry verticals

As businesses move to the cloud, security becomes more crucial than ever. Data-centric protection like encryption with policy-based key management ensures the security of data in the cloud. Virtualization projects, as key steps toward fully utilizing the cloud, should consider security that is virtualization aware. As popular new consumer technology floods the enterprise, the consumerization of IT offers the potential to increase employee productivity and reduce overall IT costs. However, it also challenges IT with new security risks, financial exposure, and operational complexity.

The Trend Micro Smart Protection Network infrastructure rapidly and accurately identifies new threats, delivering global threat intelligence to all of our products and services. Ongoing advances in the depth and breadth of the Smart Protection Network allow us to look in more places for threat data and respond to new threats more effectively, to secure data wherever it resides.

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