In the last few years, unique cybersecurity challenges have emerged as organisations have moved to a hybrid work ethos. “As cloud adoption accelerates, creating an increasingly complex security landscape, businesses and governments are being forced to rethink their security strategies, and many are adopting a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) approach to protect data everywhere it goes — without network performance trade-offs,” Alok Kothari, managing director of Netskope India told FE in a recent interview. The Santa Clara, California-headquartered company is a leading player in SASE – a new model for cybersecurity and networking.
Destination India
Netskope has been doubling down on developing new SASE solutions, and its India team has been playing a key role in this. The company last week opened a new office in Bengaluru to accommodate a local team that has more than doubled since January 2021. Netskope’s India headcount is close to 600, out of which over 400 employees are engineers. About 50% of all workforce at Netskope works in R&D and a significant part of this effort is led from India. Around 28 of the 78 patents granted by the US patent Office in 2022 credit the work to Indian engineers, the company said.
“Since day one, India has sat at the very core of Netskope’s DNA, and it is great to witness how innovation that originates from this country can go on to change the way organisations around the world secure data. We hold more than 100 issued US patents, and a third of those awarded in 2022 include named involvement of our Indian engineers,” said Kothari The local team is focused on engineering innovation, and local specialists are named among inventors on a number of Netskope’s technology patents in areas including Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
The new Bengaluru office is also host to Netskope’s local go-to-market team, which has seen significant success during the five years it has pursued local sales.
According to Ajay Gupta, country manager, India & SAARC, Netskope, the company has recorded solid growth from new and existing customers in the last financial year, driven by a go-to-market strategy focused on a network of tech partners and resellers with footprints in networking and security transformation projects. “Three of India’s four largest manufacturers and five of the 10 largest e-commerce players in the region rely on Netskope for cloud security and data protection,” he said.
Cloud security threats
Netskope recently unveiled research showing that cyber attackers are targeting Indian organisations by delivering malware via popular cloud business applications. The data between May 2022 and April 30, 2023 shows that cloud malware delivery in India almost doubled from 33% of all malware deliveries, to 63%; significantly greater growth than global figures.
“The silver lining is data protection is top of mind for Indian organisations and our aim is to help them stay ahead of bad actors and minimise their risk.” said Tony Burnside, VP & head of APAC, Netskope.