Symantec has enhanced its Cyber Security Services business globally on a massive scale, with a new dedicated Security Operations Center (SOC) in Singapore forming part of a US$50 million plus investment. The Singapore SOC will be the lead SOC (supporting customers in Singapore, ASEAN and Greater China) and Symantec’s fourth in the APJ region.
Why Singapore? APJ is a very dynamic and diverse region – and Symantec is right at the hub of an environment where organizations are being hit hard and targeted by any number of security threats. That is now driving our customers to seek out world-class solutions, as they move away from solutions that have become far less effective in this much more challenging world. At the same time, as for many other regions, security skills are really scarce, particularly at the high end. Moreover, a lot of enterprises within APJ are growing so fast that they need to prioritize how they use their internal resources. That has seen many out-task components of their security such as monitoring, allowing them to focus on other key areas within their business, but that means they have to have those world-class solutions as their security guarantee. Many of the customers we work with in APJ are world-class themselves, of course, with operations that also embrace the US and Europe.
So, consistency also matters greatly; they not only want to be able to protect their operations in APJ, but wherever they do business around the globe. Also, one important basic that can lead to confusion is in thinking that security is simply a technology business when it’s much more than that. It’s a people business. It is people who attack organizations and people who defend organizations. So putting a new SOC into Singapore is all about building those trusted personal relationships with our customers locally – and you only do that through people.
Our SOCs work on the principle of knowing exactly what is important to those customers, whether that be brand, availability or data protection. Making those key connections with our customers, whatever industry sector they are in, lies at the core of what we do.
Ultimately, because of that, those customers trust Symantec when it comes to protecting their business – and some of those companies are amongst the biggest brands in the world. But we have similar relationships right down to the smallest organizations. What unites them all is that they have entrusted us with helping to keep their operations safe. Our goal each and every day is to ensure we fulfil that trust.
Symantec’s CSS (Cyber Security Services) business has developed and matured more over recent years than at any other time in its existence. Most of all, we are on a journey where that development is reaching unparalleled levels, in terms of our analytics platform. This transformation is only going to continue over the coming 18 months or so and will have a huge impact, I believe, on how we work with and develop the close engagements we have with our customers in the APJ region.