Hactivists keep governments, institutions busy, Fortinet creates solutions

Hong Kong: With increasing cyber attacks against governments, financial institutions and private companies, the world is grappling with the destructive side of the internet, and India is not insulated either. Institutions are spending big money protecting IT infrastructure against hacking, and the last decade has seen many players setting up shop to find solutions. But the web is cast as each time a solution is found for virus attacks, hackers seem to outsmart and break the firewalls once again.During the presentations at the recent Fortinet APAC Fast and Secure Conference 2015 at Hong Kong, speakers spoke of threat adversaries and threat level, which include user error, insider threat, hactivists, organized crime, government sponsored and well funded threats. 'Blastware Beware', which are destructive malware in the wild was a real concern. Describing them, Darrent Turnbull, Vice President CTO office, Fortinet, UK, said the Disk Wipers overwrite hard-drive and MBR like it happened in South Korea in March 2013. It was named Dark Seoul in which three banks and two media companies were targeted and over 50,000 systems were affected. Other types include Ransomware, which encrypts data, leaves hard drive intact, and forensics unhampered.In 2014, FortiGuard Labs discovered DorkBot which erases hard drive if analysis is detected and added that there are new variations which are likely to destroy other targets.Anti-spam, web filtering, intrusion prevention, antivirus, APP control/IP reputation, malicious email, malicious link, malicious website, exploit, BOT commands and stolen data, are among the risks involved. Fortinet Founder, President and Chief Technology Officer Michael Xie said the security appliance major hopes to forge ahead to be world leaders in the segment by 2020, and as part of its strategy is strengthening its presence in the South East Asia-Pacific (SEA-PAC) region, which includes India, Singapore, Taiwan, Hongkong and South Korea.As per the latest IDC Security Appliances Tracker, Fortinet is currently ranked number 3 with year-over-year revenue growth of 27.4% and capturing 7.7% of worldwide revenues. Fortinet remains the largest security appliance vendor in terms of shipments with 18.8% share of total unit shipments in 4Q14, driven by its Unified Threat Management solution, Xie told TOI.The IDC report outlook has put Fortinet as number 1 in Japan, Taiwan, Sout East Asia and Hong Kong. Currently we are 3rd globally and in EMEA and 2nd in APAC region, with 896 million in billings and 31% year on year growthIn the Indian market too, Fortinet is ranked number 3 with a market share of 14.76 per cent with an estimated market of 271.06 million, in South Korea, it is ranked number 5, in China it is ranked number 3, in Australia and New Zealand it is ranked number 6, apart from its huge presence in the Americas and the European region, Xie said.The immediate focus to grow would be in the Japan, Taiwan and SEA-Hong Kong market where it is already ranked number 1 as per the security appliance market outlook. Fortinet has a market share of 35 per cent in the Americas which includes Canada, US, Mexico and Latin America, a market share of 40 per cent in Europe and the Middle East, where as the Asia Pacific share is only 25 per cent and here is where we can grow. Fortinet which has R&D a facility in Hyderabad and a large technical assistance centre in Bangalore believes that in the immediate future, the growth would be through increasing headcount rather than mere expansion. “Getting the right staff has been rather difficult for this segment and India holds a lot of opportunity,” Fortinet India Head Rajesh Maurya said.Maurya said apart from our market expansion in India we are also looking at increasing our footprint in Maldives, Bangladesh, Nepal & Sri Lanka. Being a 100% channel company, we will increase our channel base to fuel our expansion plans. He said the Fortinet’s Hyderabad R&D Center works very closely with the Fortinet’s R&D center at its head office in Sunnyvale, CA, USA. The primary focus is on building the hardware logic for FortiDDoS appliances used for Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack mitigation. The team specializes in digital design for high speed Internet security applications. The team works on developing hardware logic for TCP/IP, HTTP, DNS, SIP and other networking protocols.The writer was invited by Fortinet for the Fortinet Fast And Secure APAC Conference 2015 at Hong Kong recently.