Forcepoint sees business growth in UAE, says CRO

Forcepoint, world’s largest privately owned cybersecurity company and the global leader for data-first cybersecurity, is bullish about its business growth in the UAE, said John DiLullo, chief revenue officer (CRO), Forcepoint.

The US-headquartered, global brand works in more than 150 countries around the world. Almost 13,000 organisations in 65 countries trust Forcepoint’s simpler approach.

Today’s distributed enterprises present amplified challenges for security teams who need to react to rapidly evolving hybrid workforces and ever-expanding SaaS applications. Data is the building block of today’s digitised economy and the opportunities for innovation and malice around it are incalculable.

Currently the company has more than 400 patents and applications and employs more than 2,750 employees.

“There are between 50 to 100,000 people trying to prevent cybercrime, that leaves you wondering how many people out there are actually trying to commit cybercrime. The answer to that is there are millions of people working against the system. From state actors to independent contractors, the population of people perpetrating some of these crimes is vast,” added DiLullo.

“Some of the reasons behind these crimes includes the amount of money involved, the number of opportunities and access to classified information as well as the low risk. The chance of prosecution is almost zero.”

Forcepoint implements zero trust which involves only trusting line by line transactions when it comes to data and application. The Gulf business, which is led by the UAE followed by Saudi Arabia and Egypt, contributes between 10 to 15 per cent to the global business.

How are businesses and corporates in the region adopting the zero trust concept? “Zero-trust is a market that’s perhaps only 10 per cent penetrated. The zero trust technology we offer is called ‘remote browser isolation’. This adds a barrier and prevents users from ever being able to download or touch anything malicious," added DiLullo.

“We also use content disarm and reconstruct (CDR) programmes that often tear down documents and build it back from building blocks we know are safe. This is what zero trust is all about.”

Forcepoint started in the region 14 years ago and continues to invest primarily in sales people, engineers, technical support.

"We are investing in partnerships with different carriers, service providers, partnerships with systems integrators and value added resellers of our technologies. We are also investing in cloud providers. As more people tackle the challenges of data privacy and start to move into the public clouds that are becoming available in the area; we plan to partner with them as well,” he added. — sandhya@khaleejtimes.com

• Dubai