Cybersecurity continues to be an area of interest to organizations around the world. In Asia Pacific, the growing IT landscape in the region requires organizations to pay more attention to their cybersecurity.
Cybersecurity basically ensures an organization’s network and data are well secured and protected from breaches, intrusions, and other threats. It is a broad and overarching term that describes hardware and software solutions and processes or rules and configurations related to network usage, accessibility, and total threat protection. body.
Today, IT monitoring solutions are becoming increasingly in demand in some of the high growth sectors in Asia. Statistics show that the global cybersecurity scale is expected to reach US$53.11 billion by 2029 with the growing number of startups and increasing internet penetration driving the demand.
While China continues to dominate the cybersecurity industry in Asia Pacific, the ASEAN region is also seeing growth in cybersecurity. In fact, the increase in demand has led to many cybersecurity solutions providers in the region offering the best security and monitoring services to businesses in the region.
The region has also seen a boom in data centers and more centers are expected to be built in the future. Ensuring the networks for these data centers are secure is the prerogative of organizations that need to be assured.
To understand more about the state of cybersecurity in ASEAN, Tech Wire Asia spoke with Helmut Binder, CEO of Paessler AG. A leader in cybersecurity, Paessler AG has been providing surveillance solutions to businesses of all industries worldwide. The company is now setting its sights on Southeast Asia with the region’s networking capabilities rapidly increasing.
How has ASEAN’s IT landscape evolved when it comes to cybersecurity?
Helmut Binder, CEO of Paessler AG.
Due to the increasing use of Internet-based services in the ASEAN region, the number of cyber threats is continuously increasing. We see this trend in every country in the region. This is not only a concern for classical IT networks, but also impacts the industrial space as more and more companies integrate their Information Technology (IT) and Operations Technology (OT) networks. .
As data flows between software and hardware become more integrated, it is more important than ever to monitor not only IT infrastructure but also OT and IoT environments. With the rise of IT/OT convergence, it is more important than ever to have monitoring capabilities, allowing organizations to better detect and investigate system changes and problems to minimize potential problems or downtime.
How is Paessler making the most of the data center boom in Southeast Asia and the critical role of monitoring solutions for maintaining data center uptime?
Being able to deliver uptime is one of the core business goals of any data center. Active uptime allows data centers to self-adapt to the modern data requirements that many businesses demand today. Unplanned downtime is not just an IT problem, it’s a business problem. Downtime can be costly, up to $5,600 per minute, up to a potential 540,000 per hour, according to Gartner, and preventing downtime by ensuring uptime is critical, according to Gartner. Top.
To ensure excellent performance and trouble-free operation of the data center, it is essential to continuously monitor the entire range of different components, both IT and facilities. This is very important as it can help to detect defects as early as possible and thus avoid problems, damage and breakdowns. When you proactively monitor your environment, you help spot issues before they become problems and increase your response times in the unlikely event that they happen.
For example, our PRTG monitoring solutions monitor all infrastructure components such as data center power and cooling, as well as the hardware and applications running in the data center.
When it comes to surveillance solutions as the first line of defense in cybersecurity, how will Paessler deal with the demands as cybersecurity becomes a bigger concern?
Security, especially in data centers, is a key aspect of IT that deserves special attention. In addition to IT infrastructure risks, site requirements and environmental aspects must also be considered. For example, overheating or even burning a cable can cause major damage, and a leak in an air conditioning system releases water that can short circuit or damage IT equipment.
Intrusion is also a constant risk. Here extensive IoT sensing technology is required to detect humidity, room temperature, hotspots, smoke, and other environmental influences.
We further developed PRTG so that it can monitor all these IoT sensors and systems 24/7 regarding their availability and functionality, and collect monitoring data. This can then be clearly displayed in dashboards allowing businesses to better monitor their IT infrastructure and systems.
Finally, can you share about Paessler’s investment plan in the region and building Malaysia’s hub, channel and partner strategy?
Paessler posted strong business growth in ASEAN markets last year across various sectors such as healthcare, public transport, education and public sector, up 115% year-on-year. We are confident in our growth trajectory and we expect to see rapid growth across the region in 2022.
We see this strong growth over the pandemic driven by growing market needs to reduce risk, enable better monitoring of IT infrastructure and applications, save time, maintain business continuity, scalability, and compliance with the changing needs of IT and OUT.
Through the establishment of a subsidiary and the construction of an ASEAN hub in Malaysia, we aim to strengthen our presence in the region. Our local teams will have expertise in the complex business areas in the respective markets in which they operate.
Furthermore, we have also formed strong partnerships throughout the region, Daya Cipta Mandiri Monitoring in Indonesia and IT Essentials Limited in Thailand, enabling local businesses and driving cloud adoption as well. as digital transformation.
On top of that, our strong local partners who know the market well will be able to strategically position themselves in their segments, allowing them to better respond to the dynamic needs of markets. this school. We want to provide expert monitoring solutions to assist companies in their digital transformation. In this context, we also aim to provide training to our end customers and support our channel partners through enhanced partner programs.
