India Symantec MD Shrikant Shitole

Channel Chief 

Shrikant Shitole, Managing Director, India Symantec  

“Our crown jewels are data. We see more, analyze more and therefore know more about the threat landscape than anyone else in the industry.” 

India Symantec MD Shikant Shitole reveals in an interview with DQChannels the advantage that Symantec offers to India. 

Q. Where were you before joining Symantec? What inspired you to come into Symantec?

Over the last 25 years I have worked at several enterprises in the IT and telecom segment. Prior to joining Symantec, I have worked with Nelco Ltd. (Tata Enterprise), Avaya Services and Cisco and have worked extensively across Asia.

Why Symantec? Security breaches are making headlines every day. Cyber security is no more IT prerogative, but a boardroom agenda. Symantec now has a clear path forward, and we’re unlocking tremendous organic innovation as the global leader in cybersecurity. We have launched six of the 12 new enterprise security products and plan to release the remaining half within the next 2 quarters.

Our vision will offer integrated solutions to protect against advanced threats and help customers keep their data secure as they transition to the cloud. As we help customers keep attackers out, keep important information in – we’ll also offer cyber security services if they need support to get it all done.

Our crown jewels are data. We see more, analyze more and therefore know more about the threat landscape than anyone else in the industry. With our scale and our assets, Symantec has a chance to change the game for cyber security. It’s our mission and our opportunity to deliver unified security that inspires me to come to work every day. I talk to customers all over the country and so far I haven’t met a single Chief Information Security Officer who isn’t excited by something we’re doing when they hear about the new Symantec.

Q - How has India Symantec been faring in last one year? What is the turnover?

Symantec globally has witnessed growth in enterprise security revenue for the third consecutive quarter (1% year-over-year increase in our enterprise security revenue) and we expect continued growth through FY17. Our $5.5 billion total capital return program underscores our commitment to shareholders and our belief in the strength of our business.

The APJ region accounts for nearly 17 percent of Symantec’s total revenue and India continues to be a high growth market for Symantec. India is also a key strategic hub for Symantec and a key engineering center. Over one in three engineers are based in India, solving business critical issues of customers for India as well as globally. In addition to the continued growth in core product development, we are also expanding shared-services teams in India. Symantec also has key security intelligence installations like Security Response Center in Pune and Security Operations Center in Chennai servicing customers globally.

Q - There are other players in the market such as Kaspersky and the Indian made Quickheal. How does Symantec posit itself as compared to these?

The magnitude of attacks is not going away. At Symantec, we believe it’s time to go on the offensive, leveraging the next generation of both threat and information protection technologies to fight increasingly sophisticated adversaries. Assuming this aggressive, offensive posture entails keeping adversaries out; protecting the valuable information that’s inside; continuously gathering and applying intelligence to gain an advantage; and providing comprehensive incident response and forensic support if a breach does occur. Symantec is the only company with the proven expertise to engage across all four fronts. We already operate the world’s largest civilian threat intelligence network.  No other company has as much insight (and in real-time) into the threat landscape as we do.  Our unified security platform will build on this capability, bringing together the threat intelligence derived across our unrivalled install base, and applying big data analytics to give our customers more actionable insights to stay protected. We believe our strengthened portfolio is just what CISO’s need – they’re telling us that trying to manage multiple security products from across the industry is too costly, too time consuming and gives attackers unintended opportunities. We expect to see steady adoption of next gen products like our new ATP suite as more customers realize the advantages of having visibility across all the major control points to discover potential threats faster, prioritize the most crucial attacks easier, and then rapidly remediate with one click of a button.

There is a lot of innovation taking place at Symantec and once customers see how we’re using threat intelligence and analytics to get ahead of attacks they start to realize we’re a partner who can help them get more value out of their security strategy and reduce the complexity they face every day. For example, we recently launched Symantec’s Advanced Threat Protection (ATP). For any company already using Symantec’s endpoint security this new offering gives them an instant lift in defending against sophisticated attacks like the ones we saw hit Sony and Target.

Q - What kind of channel partners does the company have? Are there any specific solutions evolving in Symantec to overcome its competition that you may like to share? 

With majority of Symantec’s business in India being partner-led, Symantec sees tremendous value in investing in committed, capable partners to drive deeper relationships with customers and help address information security challenges and complexities in the areas of cloud, data center and mobility. With an increased focus on cybersecurity and a strengthened portfolio aimed squarely at solutions that address today’s most sophisticated attackers, we introduced the new channel strategy, Symantec Secure One to enable our partners to leverage our products and services to grow their businesses. At its core, the enhanced program provides our partners with a clear path to take advantage of the innovation and growth we expect to drive as the world’s largest cyber security company.

Bringing in a focused channel strategy, Symantec together with its partners is confident of making businesses in India more secure and protected. We equip our partners well to focus not only on providing core security, but also Managed services, Threat protection and cloud solutions. This will provide partners a broader portfolio and wider range to engage with Symantec, resulting in increased revenue.

Q - What kinds of new technologies is the company coming out with? Are there any products or solutions specific to Indian clients? 

With data as our crown jewel, we see and analyze more and therefore know more about the threat landscape than anyone else in the industry. From a product innovation point of view, to successfully defend against the types of targeted attacks we’re seeing today, we have expanded the focus from prevention to detection and response. Some of the key products are:

• Announced an entirely new approach to Advanced Threat Protection (ATP), providing integrated security solutions, correlating alerts and intelligence across a range of security technologies to deliver more comprehensive attack prevention.
• Global expansion of Incident Response Services enabling organizations to proactively address security needs, enabling continual security improvement and overall cyber resiliency.
• Introduced Data Loss Prevention (DLP 14.0.1), elaborating the cloud offerings by providing content-aware security technology that helps companies understand the entire lifecycle of data – storage, consumption and protection. It is also integrated with Symantec Endpoint Protection enhancing the capabilities of providing organizations with strong full-disk and removable media encryption. This makes the product user-friendly, flexible, collaborative and scalable, giving businesses the strongest protection in association with DLP.
• Released Mobility Suite 5.4.2 to provide a centralized approach to easily manage DLP across all endpoints, including mobile devices.
• Advanced our Data Center Security 6.6 to provide agentless threat protection, which eliminates resource constraints and maximizes VM performance while avoiding negative impact on network and storage I/O. It’s fully integrated with VMware vShield Manager while utilizing Symantec’s best-in-class antivirus and insight reputation. Data Center Security uses a hypervisor-based Security Virtual Appliance to protect all VMs on a single hosted machine, which eliminates the dreaded AV storm problem. The appliance is fully integrated with VMware NSX for low OpEx and always-on, anywhere protection.

Q - In what directions does the company intend to expand? How do you foresee the company emerging in the next 3 years?

Symantec now has a clear path forward as the global leader in cybersecurity with the Veritas transaction completed. We have entered the second half of our transformation with a stronger foundation that includes a wave of new products that customers need, better top-line performance, and a plan to achieve long-term profitability. Our vision for Symantec is to become the universal source of threat intelligence for our customers.