Cybersafe have been into business for about 20 years. The company specialises in security, particularly in authentication. It authenticates users when they login to SAP business applications. Tim Alsop, Managing Director and CEO, CyberSafe says, “Securely streamlining the password for SAP platforms helps in improving the productivity.”
What is the core focus of CyberSafe?
We have been into business for about 20 years. We specialised in security, particular in authentication. Authentication means somebody login to your system and authenticating, who they are. What we are doing is we are authenticating users when they are login to SAP business applications. SAP applications are being used in most companies to run the business for finance, HR, critical applications. The businesses need to invest in security, and they also need to look into the cost, we help business to reduce costs in terms of using multiple means of authentication to one and they don't have to remember the password for all the different things. When the companies use our application they have one password for all authentications.
Are you also catering to other than SAP platform?
No, we are not selling to SAP but to SAP customers. We have done that deliberately because we know the SAP application, customers and what their needs are compared to somebody using completely different CRM. So we are focusing on SAP market. So when somebody engage with us, we talk in SAP language which both can understand.
What types of newer trends are you observing in authentication process?
Trends are really to do with mobile, 10 years ago people were using SAP internally but with advent of internet and cheaper mobile devices, people want to authenticate and login to SAP systems from mobile, that create a new challenge for security. We are developing product and functionality to address that challenge. Nobody wants a situation where a person loses the phone, and someone's use the phone to login to SAP platform, nobody wants that to happen. We need to create newer mechanism and stronger configuration to safe guard platforms.
Is it a big challenge to ensure security with the growing popularity of BYOD?
It is a big challenge. Industry is still learning the best way of doing things. Because lot of people out there doing things wrong. We get contacted by lot of companies related to use of security solution for managing mobile for accessibility. We do not sell service. We are selling products. So any services required for our product would be given for free. When it comes to using our service, there is ease of getting started with us. You can evaluate our product and then use it. Company can do the proof of concept with us.
Presently we are working with an energy company having about eight thousand users. They have been using our product internally for about five years, they contact us few weeks ago saying that they are facing problem in configuration in SAP Fiori application. They came to us and we fixed it quite easily. This is how we have been working.
What opportunities do you see in India?
We have our development center in India. Here, we are partnering with companies like TCS, Wipro, HCL, Infosys, who have been providing services to some of the big Indian companies. It is a different model for us in India. Outside India, we make lot of sale directly, but India we go via indirect channel because Indian consultants are more up to date in building relationship. We have already started relationship with Wipro and HCL in very early days and we are also keen to work with the Infosys, they are looking for the kind of solution that we have.
What is the outlook going forward for cybersecurity?
What we have seen over the last few year, generally not only in India but across the globe that some company have been reluctant to invest in security because they got too many other project to do and security does not become the priority, we are starting to see the shift now, security and authentication are becoming more of high priority task, and I think what might be driving is the mobile.
