Security solution: essential tool in digital transformation age

Peerapong Jongvibool, vice president for South East Asia and Hong Kong at Fortinet

Why does the 361° Security 2019 Conference focus on security-driven networking where networking and security are integrated and combined?

In today’s hyper-connected world, data moves between various environments such as multi-cloud, IoT, and mobile devices. It is important for modern networks to enforce consistent security, yet preserve functionality in the network so that essential workflows are protected along their entire data path as data travels through multiple environments. That is why this year’s regional 361° Security conference focuses on security-driven networking. This concept of building a network around security as a foundation allows enterprises to architect and deploy business-critical applications and services faster than ever before without compromising security throughout the network.

In addition, most of business is now changing and everything is driven and connected by security. It is the centre of every component, so it is important to have good security.

Can you explain more about the concept of “building a network around security as a foundation”? And what are the advantages this brings to enterprises?

Security is important, it is not only just for protecting, but also helps you to understand the topic. Any business with good security can transfer all of the data to drive success without any interruption. Imagine if one day you open digital banking and see that a hacker is in your system and without proper connectivity of the security and your system, the transactions will fail. On the other hand, if you use secure internet access for some places, like retail stations or supermarkets, you can also estimate profit and can follow what kind of products they buy, so security can also help you acquire a better understanding of customers through data analysis.

Big organisations in Vietnam are beginning the digital transformation process, but many of them are still struggling to protect their infrastructure adequately. Do you think by following security best practices such as integration and automation, organisations can reduce the security challenges and stress that accompany digital transformation?

You know, Vietnamese companies and big enterprises and the market in general are on the transformation journey. This is not only true for Vietnam, every company across the globe is looking at transformation to make sure that they can compete better. Security is also a weapon to fight cyberattacks.

I like the term "weapon" because you can have many security solutions but most customers do not have a good team or a very good system that can help them respond to an attack. The platform approach can benefit responsiveness. So we have all aspects from detecting attacks to dealing with them thoroughly.

Can you share some predictions about the threat landscape for the last months of 2019? How popular are Fortinet’s cyber solutions in the world?

Different countries have different attack patternsand no analyst can predict what kinds of attacks will take place. We cannot make exact predictionsn but we are very sure that hackers are getting more intelligent. Thus, instead of predicting the threat landscape, what we should predict in the near future is human behaviour and new attack methods.

Fortinet has been recognised as one of the leaders among the 18 vendors included in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Network Firewalls report for 2019. We believe this recognition showcases our clear understanding of market needs, both as an innovator and thought leader.

Fortinet is the first vendor to introduce secure SD Wan to the market. That is why we are standing in a very good position and we are moving very fast because of the concept that we bring to the market.

One of the good references is Thailand, where 70 per cent of country-level mail security protection are using Fortinet solutions. I don’t want to be very conservative but it is very hard for any vendor to say that they are 100 per cent proof – and this is also true for Fortiner. However, even for something we never handled before, we have a sandbox platform and AI tech to handle them.

Can we discuss the Vietnamese market? With your excellent results since last year, have you decided to pursue the top spot among market security vendors?

I was here four years ago. When I first came to Vietnam, I saw the market and understood what kind of challenges await. Education is one of the first key priorities that I highlighted, because five-six years ago people had heard about security but they didn’t take it very seriously. It’s something like if you don’t get hacked, you don’t buy it. Only after they get hacked do they realise that security is very important. So education is one of the key issues.

Another is the partner ecosystem, I think. The technology is there, but if nobody is able to articulate or enable the solution, to make sure that this product has been fully utilised, it is also meaningless. That was something I put in place, and also the team here, the people I “built” is also equally important.

These things are important here, because you can manage one policy here and another there. What kind of policy can do both tasks simultaneously? Fortinet is the only solution for all customer desk. We’re talking about a very huge opportunity in Vietnam. That’s why I’m saying we can really grow the business. Maybe in the next two years you can come back to me and I confirm this or you can jus tpat me on the back and say I was right.