Semperis sees strong APJ growth as AI era heightens identity security risks
“While there are plenty of companies that can help manage identities, control access or detect threats, Semperis is focused on what happens when identity itself becomes the attack surface,” says Shekhar Thakurdesai as AVP of India and SAARC, Semperis.
Semperis expands its presence in the Asia Pacific region as the identity-driven cyber resilience and crisis response company’s Identity Resilience Platform is accredited from Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA). The validation comes as the vendor records a triple digit revenue growth across Asia, including Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand, and Japan.
To continue this momentum, Semperis has named Shekhar Thakurdesai as AVP of India and SAARC business, with Nick Lowther and Daniel O’Mara joining Semperis in key sales roles to bolster growth across the region. Ridwan Basri was also named Asia Regional Director - Channel & Alliances, Semperis.
Speaking to CRN Asia, Thakurdesai pointed out that there are three things driving growth in the region – the changing threat landscape, digital transformation and the continuous investment by Semperis in the region.
“We’re seeing organisations increasingly understand that if you compromise identity, you can potentially compromise the entire enterprise. High-profile ransomware and identity attacks have made that a board-level resilience issue, rather than simply an IT security issue,” he said.
Thakurdesai also pointed out that organisations in APAC are moving to hybrid and multi-cloud environments, but Active Directory and Entra ID remain absolutely fundamental to how those businesses operate. As such, he believes this creates a very significant identity security and resilience opportunity.
“Semperis has invested heavily in the region. We’ve built local teams, established our Singapore presence, expanded our partner ecosystem and, importantly, achieved IMDA accreditation. That helps us build the local trust and credibility that’s so important when you’re dealing with critical infrastructure like identity,” he added.
Growth in India and region
On continuing the growth momentum in the region, Thakurdesai explained that India is a particularly exciting market for the vendor as the country has a a combination of rapid digital transformation, significant investment in digital infrastructure, increasing cyber threats and a growing regulatory focus on data and security.
“But what I find particularly interesting is that Indian organisations are increasingly looking beyond simply preventing an attack. They’re asking a much more important question: “If our identity infrastructure is compromised, how quickly can we recover?” That’s a very natural conversation for Semperis because identity resilience sits right at the intersection of security and business continuity,” he said.
“And we’re seeing similar opportunities across the broader APAC region. Financial services, telecommunications, manufacturing, healthcare and government are all running increasingly complex hybrid environments. The technology landscape is different from country to country, but the dependency on identity is remarkably consistent,” he added.
For Thakurdesai, the biggest difference is that Semperis is built specifically around identity resilience. He explained that while there are plenty of companies that can help manage identities, control access or detect threats, Semperis is focused on what happens when identity itself becomes the attack surface.
“Active Directory and Entra ID are incredibly powerful pieces of infrastructure, but they’re also incredibly attractive targets for attackers. If an attacker gets control of your identity infrastructure, the consequences can extend across the entire organisation.”
“Semperis is purpose-built to protect that infrastructure — to prevent attacks, detect and contain them, investigate what happened and, critically, recover the identity environment when necessary. And that’s becoming even more important as organisations operate across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Following our acquisition of MightyID, we’re now extending that identity resilience capability across Active Directory, Entra ID, Okta and Ping as well,” he explained.
Identity security in the AI era
According to Gerry Sillars, Vice President, Asia Pacific and Japan at Semperis, as the APAC region is one of the fastest-growing global digital economies, organizations in the region are embracing AI agents and integrating it into their identity systems. However, Sillars highlighted that a Semperis study revealed that many haven’t to date adopted safeguards to manage them.
The State of Identity Security in the AI Era, revealed that only 21% of the organizations in Singapore and Australia are confident they could fully regain control of their identity infrastructure if an AI agent exposes admin credentials to an attacker, while 93% already use or plan to use AI agents for sensitive security tasks such as password resets and VPN access.
"Unfortunately, cybercriminals are moving just as quickly. Businesses are recognizing that cyber resilience starts with protecting the identity systems that every user, application and AI agent depends upon. Our exceptional growth across APJ reflects this shift in mindset. We're investing aggressively in local talent, expanding our regional presence and strengthening our partner ecosystem so we can help more organizations prevent, respond to, and recover from identity-based cyberattacks with confidence,” Sillars said.