AI-driven cyber threats accelerate MSSP demand across APAC: Exclusive Networks

Bennet Wong Senior VP of APAC, at Exclusive Networks believes that the industry will continue to see an uptake of MSSPs, especially within the midmarket and lower tier organizations.

The Asia Pacific region continues to see increasingly sophisticated threats on the rise. According to Bennett Wong, Senior VP of APAC, at Exclusive Networks, the most common threats in the region remain DDoS, phishing, ransomware and data breaches.

Wong explained that AI is making these threats becoming harder to detect, with organizations looking to increase their response time to any form of attacks today.

“The window for response is becoming very short. Fundamentally, the attacks don't change, but the way that the attacks are being deployed, are now very sophisticated because of AI. So, I think the biggest change or the trends that we see are really AI-driven attacks,” Wong said.

Wong also pointed out that cyberthreats have made their way into AI workloads that customers are deploying.

“Coming from my previous role, when we look at AIs, a lot of customers are working with ISVs to deploy AI solutions, and the most commonly deployed are probably bots. Bots are the simplest form of AI capability that a lot of organizations deploy. But the challenge is that the governance and the cybersecurity posture for deploying AI capabilities or frameworks are not being considered,” he said.

Wong explained that often times, there are different teams managing AI and security and there's not a lot of consideration how data is sitting from the edge to the cloud, even to the data center.

“How is it being used? What goes out? What comes in? Who has access? Who has not? So, I think a lot of that consideration is not being considered. And we're beginning to see a lot of opportunities in AI workloads, especially related to bots and chats. So, it's two different keys, really using AI for cyber and cyber for AI. I think that's the biggest trend that we see,” he added.

Complicated threats fueling need for MSSPs

For Wong, the increasing number of threats and the need to respond to them swiftly is seeing an increase for MSSP services.

“We are starting to see two very distinct, so-called partner ecosystems emerging. One is from the ground up MSSP capabilities that these partners are building. The other is more of evolution whereby system integrators, including regional system integrators offering MSSP as a service or becoming an MSSP,” he said.

Wong pointed out that there the fine line of becoming a system integrator versus a reseller versus MSSP is also growing.

“You no longer have a direct distinction. Because they need to be able to sell a product or a solution to a customer that has an on-prem requirement. But at the same time, there are also a lot more commercial or mid-sized customers who are saying to MSSPs that they own it, deploy it and manage it because these customers don’t have enough resources or talent,” he explained.

As talent remains a challenge in the market, Wong pointed out that Exclusive Networks is also investing in a lot of training for end users, for partners.

“It's all paid training. We are an authorized training provider for Fortinet, Palo Alto Networks, Netskope and more. We also train customers in different cybersecurity technologies and deployment capabilities. And we continue to see that even with AI, cyber training or certified cyber training continues to be a requirement. And that's where I think this is all the push that's coming through the market. So, it's definitely relevant and I think that it's definitely transforming,” Wong added.

At the same time, Wong also believes that the industry will continue to see an uptake of MSSPs, especially within the midmarket and lower tier customers that are simply not able to cope with the talent and also the spiraling costs of securing their business.

Managing cybersecurity cost

Wong shared that the distributor is seeing a lot more conversations on cost. He explained that is not because it's not important or cheap but customers now want to know how they can get the best value.

“I don't think the customer's IT spending budget has gone up significantly. But the way that it's spent and the way that this budget has been consumed has transformed. And more has been shifted towards cybersecurity. And the reason for that is because cybersecurity is becoming such an important element of it,” Wong said.

As such, he believes it's no longer a question of spending and being expensive. Instead, it's a question of whether this is the right solution for that customer.

“And that's where we come in. That's why having a broad portfolio of offerings matters. Having deep technical expertise, deep solution capabilities, having infrastructure to support, to demonstrate, to do POC, and ultimately even train and enable, I think becomes very important. So, it's not just product distribution and capability. It's really end-to-end,” he added.

For Wong, it’s a combination of all this synergy effect that comes along that helps to propel what Exclusive Networks does best in the market.