EXPECTING a further rise in digital-information threats globally, network security provider Fortinet said on Wednesday that collaboration between countries is pivotal in addressing such to better protect themselves from the risks that could cause them.
Fortinet Vice President for Southeast Asia & Hong Kong told reporters that cross-national alliances are a key measure to protect the region from data breaches, considering that the economic integration of the 10 member-states of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) will take place by next year.
“It’s more of an awareness program. With the coming together of the Asean [economies], there are more of a concern now to put this program in place. You have to have more collaborative [efforts] between countries or more programs of infrastructure. Threat management and analysis are the keys [to do it],” he said during a luncheon meeting in Madaluyong City.
The executive cited a report from analyst firm Frost & Sullivan (F&S), which showed that data security market will peak up globally by around 15 percent in the next five years.
Addressable market in the Philippines alone is about 28.5 million for next year, he said, while citing that “this is [for] security only.”
While it takes two years for data security to peak in most countries, it’s quite longer here at three years, he said.
“So what we start doing now is to move this threat visibility lower to the country levels. We’re working in this program so that we can start providing a firsthand information of what’s going on or are better [solutions applicable] in a certain country,” Chang said.
In the Philippines, he said that they are now looking at different local threat-management partners to collect threats that are present here so as to provide a better local view of their extent.
He cited the government and the telecommunications industry as potential partners, with whom they could tie up to implement a program of infrastructure and to increase awareness on the importance of network security.
“We’re going to put this program to start working [and] to share information in those areas,” Chang said. Fortinet is a worldwide provider of network security appliances and the market leader in unified threat management. To date, it has shipped more than 50,000 appliances to more than 75,000 customers internationally.
As per the F&S, it is ranked No. 2 as a security appliance provider worldwide. In the Philippines, it has close to around 17-percent market share for the vendors’ perspective in the first half of 2014.
“Although we see a slowdown in Thailand and Indonesia, the Philippines seems to pick up in the second half of the year,” Chang said. “It only shows that from the security perspective, people know that they need and are still willing to invest in.”