ESET and Canon’s partnership in APAC explained

“Our vision is to progressively deploy this integrated digital transformation and cybersecurity-enabled offerings across countries and regions such as Thailand, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Philippines, and Taiwan, where Canon maintains a footprint,” explains Shinsuke Fukui, Senior Director, Regional Business Imaging Solutions, Canon Singapore.

It’s coming to almost a year since ESET and Canon Singapore announced an MOU to offer the cybersecurity vendor’s cybersecurity solutions across Asia. With Canon already offering ESET’s cybersecurity solutions in key markets including Japan, India, and Singapore, this MOU marked the next phase in strengthening and broadening that partnership.

Taking a look back at the journey of the partnership, Parvinder Walia, President of APAC Region, ESET shared that the relationship started in Japan many years back. With Japan being the second biggest market in the world from a cybersecurity perspective, Walia said that ESET has built a significant presence in Japan through its long-standing partnership with Canon, achieving strong market share in the country.

“In Japan, ESET products are exclusively distributed by Canon Marketing Japan. What began as a reseller relationship evolved into a trusted partnership. Building on that strong foundation in Japan, we then expended our collaboration with Canon across the region,” Walia explained.

To understand more from Canon’s perspective on the partnership in Singapore, Shinsuke Fukui, Senior Director, Regional Business Imaging Solutions, Canon Singapore shared more with CRN Asia in the interview below.

Tell us more about how the partnership with ESET supports your growth in the region?

Canon Singapore (hereby referred to as Canon)’s partnership with ESET is a cornerstone of our strategic evolution from being an imaging leader to a provider of digital transformation solutions that focus on cybersecurity. At the heart of this evolution is a fundamental commitment to protecting our customers’ business information. For decades, Canon has played a role in taking care of the information that flows through an organisation, ranging from confidential documents to critical intellectual property. Although that information has migrated to the cloud and changing the risks, our responsibility to safeguard it remains constant.

In the APAC region, businesses are no longer looking for standalone hardware and tools but instead, secure, resilient ecosystems. The latest ESET SMB Cybersecurity Report revealed that despite widespread organisational confidence in cybersecurity, 7 in 10 SMB respondents experienced a cybersecurity breach or acted on strong indications of a data security incident in the past 12 months. A significant 40% of surveyed SMBs anticipate a rise in cybersecurity spending within their organisations over the next 12 months, and 6 in 10 respondents intend to boost their spending by up to 60%.

It is precisely this shift in enterprise expectations that our partnership with ESET is designed to meet. By integrating ESET’s AI-driven threat intelligence directly into Canon’s document and workflow solutions portfolio, we are now able to engage in higher-value conversations with our B2B clients. This integration strengthens our ability to meet their increasing need for 'security-by-design' across their operational infrastructure. This supports Canon’s continued growth in the region by addressing one of the most critical challenges facing modern enterprises today. The need for true cyber-resilience.

Canon and ESET share a deep history, having worked together for more than 20 years, beginning with a successful partnership in Japan. This long-term alignment provides a strong technical foundation and deep operational trust.

Ultimately, we are offering our customers the best of both worlds, the stability of years long legacy combined with the agility of AI-driven security. This positions Canon as a reliable, long-term partner of our clients’ ecosystem—from office printing equipment to digital infrastructure.

What other revenue and growth opportunities does Canon see from this partnership?

Beyond the integrated hardware-software offerings, the primary growth engine for Canon lies in the strategic shift towards a 'Security-as-a-Service' model. We recognise that for our customers, the impact of a security disruption is no longer just a technical glitch but a critical business risk that leads to costly downtime and lost productivity. As these threats become more sophisticated, we see a significant opportunity to extend our security offerings from prevention to protection.

This evolution opens long-term, recurring revenue streams through subscription-based security bundles. Looking ahead, as the market matures and advanced threats like AI-driven ransomware become more prevalent, we anticipate a natural progression toward Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services. While we are currently in the early stages of rolling out MDR in pioneer markets like Singapore and India, this MOU with ESET provides the regional roadmap to introduce these advanced capabilities across our other Asian markets progressively. Our goal is to ensure that as our customers' security needs grow, Canon will be there to help them maintain operational continuity.

Additionally, we see a significant synergy further within our existing portfolio. We are increasingly hearing from customers who already trust Canon for their physical infrastructure and are now looking for ways to streamline their digital environment. By providing an integrated security stack, we are able to deepen our strategic partnership with clients, helping them reduce operational complexity by bringing more of their core infrastructure under a single, trusted framework.

Furthermore, this partnership strengthens Canon’s presence in highly regulated customer verticals—such as Finance, Healthcare, and HR services, where data protection is a critical requirement.

Why is it important to provide such solutions to customers today?

In an era defined by geopolitical shifts and rapid technological disruption, businesses must move beyond basic protection to a mode of resilience. Moreover, the digital and physical worlds today have converged. Office devices are now a critical gateway to your data.

Modern multifunction devices (MFDs) are essentially networked computers with hard drives and memory that process an organisation’s most sensitive information. Research shows that 67% of organisations experienced a printer-related security incident in 2024, up from 61% the previous year. Despite this rising risk, only 16% of IT decision-makers feel completely confident in the security of their print infrastructure. This gap in confidence further shows a key vulnerability in the modern workspace.

By collaborating with ESET to provide such solutions, we effectively bridge this gap through a comprehensive security ecosystem. We offer a comprehensive, layered defence that ranges from secure hardware and encrypted document management to a new, critical layer of proactive cybersecurity. At Canon, we provide the invisible armour that secures these vital gateways and protect the integrity of our customers’ entire digital ecosystem. This allows business leaders to scale and innovate with confidence, knowing their data and infrastructure are not only operationally strong, but fundamentally resilient.

How are Canon's customers responding to the partnership and solutions offered by Canon and ESET?

To date, our customers have responded positively to the partnership and new solutions offered. In a high-velocity B2B environment, security cannot afford to become a bottleneck. Our customers value that the robust endpoint protection and real-time monitoring never compromise the performance or 'uptime' of their Canon hardware.

Our clients value the simplicity of having a trusted vendor for both their productivity tools and their digital safety. By removing the task of managing multiple vendors, we allow them to focus on their core business with the confidence that their infrastructure is resilient.

Lastly, are there plans to expand this partnership in the future to more markets?

At Canon, we continue to explore ways that we can deepen our cybersecurity offerings, in line with meeting the needs of our customers.

This MOU with ESET serves as a regional roadmap to provide digital transformation solutions that focus on cybersecurity. We are rolling out MDR services to our customers in Singapore and India. Our vision is to progressively deploy this integrated digital transformation and cybersecurity-enabled offerings across countries and regions such as Thailand, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Philippines, and Taiwan, where Canon maintains a footprint.

As the digital economy in APAC continues to mature, the demand for integrated, resilient infrastructure will only intensify. We are committed to a phased regional expansion, evolving this partnership to meet local demands while maintaining the global standard of excellence that the partnership between Canon and ESET represents. Our goal is to establish this collaboration as the gold standard for secure business workflows, ensuring that Canon remains at the forefront of the secure digital workplace and continues to lead as a trusted partner in our clients' growth journeys.