Sunil Sharma, Managing Director – Sales, India & SAARC, Sophos, shares the company’s channel strategies for 2019
Key highlights 2018 and opportunities for 2019
The global IT security market is pegged at US$ 46 billion, growing at 7.9 per cent CAGR, while India’s cybersecurity market is estimated to grow from US$ 4.5 billion currently to US$ 35 billion in 10 years. With augmented reality, automation, Internet of Things (IoT) and machine learning ruling 2018, the year 2019 seems all set to witness a technological revolution and growth in adoption of predictive cybersecurity technologies, powered by deep learning, artificial neural networks. All of these factors will have an impact on the IT channel industry, which will also see massive growth and expansion in 2019.
Just as last year, our business will see steady growth in 2019 as well. With hackers constantly on the lookout for vulnerabilities and weak entry points to attack, cybersecurity solutions will continue to see increased adoption among organisations. From a channel perspective, we continue to expand our channel penetration across Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets while strengthening our top tier channel presence. In 2019 too, we look forward to expand our channel depth across the country to provide next-generation threat protection to businesses of
all sizes.
Top tech trends for channel community
SophosLabs 2019 Threat report, gives insight into three key trends that will impact cybersecurity in 2019. Capitalist cybercriminals are turning to targeted ransomware, inspiring copycat attacks. In 2018, cybercriminals banked millions of dollars with hand-delivered, targeted ransomware attacks. We believe the financial success of targeted ransomware like SamSam, BitPaymer and Dharma will inspire copycat attacks and we expect more to
happen in 2019.
Cybercriminals are using readily available Windows systems administration. This year’s report uncovers a shift in threat execution, as more mainstream attackers have evolved their techniques to use readily available IT tools as their route to advance through a system and complete their mission – whether it’s to steal sensitive information off the server or drop ransomware.
Mobile and IoT malware is not slowing down. With illegal Android apps increasing, 2018 has seen an increased focus in malware being pushed to phones, tablets and other IoT devices. Attackers are finding novel ways to evade detection by Google and get malicious apps published on the Play Market and much more.
These trends will have a huge impact on partners as their customers will feel increased pressure to protect and secure company information. As cyber attacks today are both constant and changing, many organisations still don’t understand what technologies are needed to protect against exploits and ransomware. These organisations will rely on channel partners to recommend best protection against these ongoing and sophisticated attacks. We believe channel partners have a significant opportunity to improve their customers’ protection with minimal impact and grow revenue opportunities.
Channel directions for partners
Being a channel first and channel-only organisation, our efforts are focused on empowering the channel ecosystem by providing the best-in-class pre and post-sales support, training and certification programs, access to world class marketing communications via our partner portal and competitive margins.
Sophos is turning the channel into trusted cybersecurity advisors whom customers can bank upon. We will continue to support our partners with the right tools, technologies and programs to help them deliver the best service to their customers. In tandem, our channel partners are focused on delivering the best service to their customers by continually investing in the training and certification required to make their teams masters in the field and well placed to provide the right cyber security guidance to their customers. The challenges evolve in our sector, so we need to continually invest and develop to ensure we stay one step ahead.
As the market gets increasingly complex, point solutions are no longer enough. Organisations of today need to think like security companies and need multi-layered cybersecurity solutions to detect and remediate threats. Partners have an opportunity to scale their business and move from solution providers to MSSPs to deliver these security solutions for their customers, who do not possess in-house skills to support such complex, multi-layered cybersecurity solutions.
