A garam masala company wants to invest in a security solution. Are you intrigued, and wonder what is it that a masala company may possibly want to protect? Well, the recipe, of course. With hackers increasingly on the prowl to break into IT networks and steal vital data, protecting information has become even more critical for companies. In the recent past, a number of hacking instances have occurred in India but not that many were reported, given the embarrassment such disclosures tend to cause, says Mahendra Negi, Global CFO and COO, Trend Micro Inc.

More virtual assaults will happen in India as the value of Intellectual Property (IP) grows. In the past, hackers would have ignored India as not being financially rewarding but today software companies, banks and financial institutions are soft targets. It is not about virtual terrorism but about commercial interest, he says.

The garam masala company seeking a security solution reinforces the need for such protection, he says. Trend Micro is confident that its products will suit the Indian market. Although a late entrant compared with rivals such as Symantec, the company hopes to score with its offerings for the small and medium-size industries.

Here are highlights of a chat eWorld had with Negi.

Growing IP awareness

Being in the computer and network security business, Trend Micro says it protects the value of the IP. He says that at times people ask what the revenue growth is linked to. The answer is: to the growth in value of the information that is available in the network or the Internet.

In many developing countries, the concept of valuing intangible assets has not evolved yet. For example, if one plans to sell a mobile phone in India, a sales person goes about it by showcasing different features of the product and marking the price as, say, $100. But intangible assets are different. If somebody offers a compact disc and asks for $100, you would wonder, “why pay so much for a CD worth $1 or 50 cents?”

Hence there was a misguided perception that software piracy or, for that matter, downloading a song from the Net for free is not the same as stealing.

Now with growing awareness around IP issues, “India and China have become sensitive in protecting IP ownership,” says Negi.

For, the downside of not valuing IP is that a country will never have its own Microsoft!

Big plans for small players

Users are also realising that in manufacturing the differentiation comes not so much from the hardware as the software, says Negi. A year ago, not many evinced interest in Trend Micro's Data Leak Protection (DLP) solution. Clients would typically say, “it is interesting but I don't need it now, and I don't want to spend $30,000 on it”. Now many of the customers are testing it. The DLP solution has started to gain traction in India, he says.

A channel partner of the company is looking to sell it to even a garam masala player, he says. A few years ago, a masala maker would have hesitated to spend lakhs on protecting a recipe. Today, though, there is realisation that the recipe is its value. The ingredients can be bought off the shelf but what needs to be protected as IP is the company's unique mixing of the ingredients.

The DLP product is designed for small and mid-size companies of 5,000 personal computers and below. A full suite of banking solutions could cost over $1 million whereas Trend Micro's product could cost $20,000 to $30,000. The company has a few thousand small customers in India, says Negi.

Built-in checks

Before installing a security solution, a company should first identify what it seeks to protect — in the case of the masala maker, it is the recipe, says Negi. Then set up the barricades as to who should access what information. If there is some breach, and if someone tries to steal the information, the DLP solution will alert the authorities.

That said, hackers will look for some way to steal the information. “We need to make it as difficult as possible,” says Negi. A company can restrict download of data or disallow printing of documents. But what if someone opens the file and types the contents into another document? To counter this, Trend Micro has Fingerprint technology that alerts the control room when a person tries to type from the original document. The technology will stop the document being downloaded or typed.

There is also the threat that mobile phones can be used to take photos of sensitive documents or a production line. Trend Micro has a product with ‘device awareness' and ‘location awareness' — “we call it context awareness,” says Negi.

Simply put, if a person wanted to use a mobile phone inside the company, it would be mandatory for him/her to have the company's ‘agent' installed on the phone to monitor its movements. Within the company's network, the ‘agent' will disable the camera. As long as the person is within the company premises he cannot take pictures.

Growing pie

Today, nearly 90 per cent of revenue for data security is from the US, the UK and Australia. In future that could well be China, India, Brazil and Russia, says an upbeat Negi.

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