30 Minute Interview

Data losses and leakage

Websense Inc considers data security as an important security threat to networks all over the world and has designed a strategy towards Data Leakage Prevention. Surendra Singh, Regional Director Head-South East Asia & India, Websense talks to Abhinav Singh about the company’s acquisition strategy and some upcoming strategies for the Web security space.

Surendra Singh

The importance of plugging data leakage

In recent times security attack trends have changed from being infrastructure-oriented to data-oriented. We have observed that customers are getting concerned about data security and that they are looking towards a comprehensive solution in safeguarding their organization against data losses and breaches. We at Websense believe that employees should be allowed to do whatever they want within office premises but that data should be protected at all times. These days a large number of hackers are also moving towards acquiring data. Hackers and criminals have been able to acquire money from banks by hacking passwords. They have also been able to acquire online bank loans by stealing a customer’s social security number in the United States. Data Leakage Prevention is mostly happening in the United States and Europe and the Indian market is new to this concept. However the Indian market is also expected to be affected by data losses and enterprises should take note of it. Being the earlier mover in this space, we are providing a comprehensive set of solutions to counter data losses and we are busy in propagating the concept of Data Leakage Prevention in the Indian market.

Integrated management module

Many of our customers expressed a major pain area in managing different Websense solutions deployed within their IT infrastructure. For instance they may be using our solution in the e-mail security space, Web security or in the data security space without a common management module. With the introduction of this module it is possible to integrate all our different technologies in a given IT infrastructure. Broadly speaking our module will be able to bring all our different boxes into one management module and it will be helpful to the administrators who can manage different technologies from a single management module.

Planning for growth

Websense’s growth plans are two folds. Firstly we intend to become larger through acquisitions. We acquired SurfControl and PortAuthority Technologies recently that aimed at complementing our existing technologies. We plan to enhance SurfControl’s on-demand platform to deliver other hosted content protection services, such as information leak prevention services and advanced Web security offerings based on Websense ThreatSeeker technology. At the same time we aim to constantly innovate and we always try to work on new technologies in the security space and try to cash in on the first mover advantage. We have a strong management team and are one of the leaders in the Web Security space. We are also strengthening our distributor and channel networks to make inroads into the Indian market.