Security Is Critical In This Day And Age

With digital becoming the mainstay of our personal and professional lives, cyber security has become the most critical aspect of this shift. Today, hacking and cyber espionage are common occurrences across the world, so enterprises and governments are investing billions of dollars to deal with the issue. In an interview, Rupa Roy, head of marketing APAC, McAfee, tells Ruhail Amin  about the importance of the Indian market for McAfee and why security is key for organisations. 

Edited excerpts:

How important is the Indian market for McAfee? How big is the cyber security threat in India compared to its global counterparts?  
With Smart Cities, Aadhaar programme and proliferation of e-wallets, India is where McAfee feels it can make a lot of difference. Smart cities will be the living embodiment of the broad Digital India vision. It is critical to understand that such initiatives can drive greater benefits for everybody, only if they are able to harness the data and technology in a secure fashion. Security will be critical for government initiatives such as Smart Cities, Digital India and other e-governance programmes. As we build our digital infrastructure, whether its cloud or mobile, security has to be a part of it. The government of India identifies this. We have been working closely with the government as strategic knowledge partners in various capacities across projects.

India being the hotbed for growth, it’s one of our fastest growing markets in the APAC region. We have been growing in double digits over the last several years and expect to continue that trajectory across public and private sectors. In India, we have a strong presence across key verticals such as telecom, BFSI, IT & ITeS, and government, with over 1,500 partners. Additionally, we have also built on existing relationships with global smartphone manufacturers such as LG and Samsung; and by adding a partnership with Micromax. With this marquee partnership, we have expanded our mobile security footprint in India.

How is McAfee embracing the ever-changing innovations in marketing?
In the B2B space, where buying cycles can take months or even years and decisions are made by a committee, B2B buyers have shifted their focus on doing more of their product research online. Identifying this, under the leadership of Allison Cerra, McAfee’s Global CMO, we have put a premium on education through digital content marketing.

Our aim is to educate people about security threats. Education promotes readiness. Beyond keeping up with new regulations such as the GDPR, we look for threats in the wild as they start to percolate, such as Petya, WannaCry and, very recently, the Bad Rabbit ransomware. 2017 also saw the birth of the Blue Whale Challenge, but through our Cybermum India programme, we strived to reach out to parents to advocate a safe online experience for all.

By staying close to our researchers, we learn about new customer trends, which help us in strategising. For instance, our customers are interested in a layered security approach, i.e., using multiple security controls against threats. It’s the right way to go. But we have a different approach to layered security when it comes to implementation. Many customers think that if they just keep adding security measures to their environment, it makes them more secure. But what they are actually doing is making their environment more complex, and it’s that complexity that adversaries take advantage of.

We go to market with the idea of an open architecture that allows customers to quickly and easily plug in the latest countermeasures — even if that means integrating another brand’s product. Security is mainstream technology that impacts almost everyone from large corporations to individuals and even children. That makes marketing in this space really interesting.

How is McAfee trying to stay ahead of the competitive product offerings in the cybersecurity domain?    
McAfee believes that collaboration and integrations are more important than ever to create a strong security posture. We are keen to accelerate innovation and growth as a company singularly focused on being the preferred cybersecurity partner for customers.

At the core, our mission is to enable security devices to share intelligence and orchestrate security operations in real time. To enable such industry leading collaboration, McAfee’s OpenDXL leverages the McAfee Data Exchange Layer (DXL), to deliver a simple, open path for integrating security technologies regardless of vendor. OpenDXL enables unprecedented collaboration in an open, real-time system. DXL is our calling card to how we define security in the enterprise; and we are seeing that many large Indian enterprises are keen for this platform. Simultaneously, McAfee’s dynamic Endpoint protection collaborates across products, allowing new technology to easily integrate without a complete architecture rebuild. Through our collaborations with players such as Cisco, we further aim to close information gaps, break silos and provide the visibility we need to protect our most important assets from cybercriminals.

How big is the cybersecurity threat? Could you share some insights about the kind of losses businesses are incurring because of cyber espionage? 
Threats are more complex, more targeted and more customised now. While technology will undoubtedly spur innovation, we should also reassess the security of the data that will be produced. Noted economist Hal R. Varian, Professor Emeritus at UC Berkeley, compares security levels to medieval walls by stating, “You can always spend more and more to make them taller and thicker, but the gates will always remain your weakest point.”

The large-scale gathering of personal information and user generated content opens consumers up to the risk of data misuse, abuse, and even compromise. Irresponsible service providers can overindulge in the gathering and monetisation, allowing user privacy to be carried away by market forces, data to be compromised, and user reputations threatened years into the future.

Today, the fact remains that more and more organisations are accessing customer’s data and the risk of a cyberattack is more prevalent. Considering this dynamic, where breaches are becoming front page headlines more often than not, marketers have to address the scenario as brand custodians irrespective of the size of he firm.