With nearly two decades of experience in the cybersecurity space, CyberSafe has carved out a niche in user authentication, particularly within the SAP ecosystem. The company focuses on helping organisations streamline secure access to critical business applications.
In an exclusive interview with Techobserver.in, Tim Alsop, Managing Director and CEO of CyberSafe, said, “Securely streamlining the password for SAP platforms helps in improving productivity.”
Edited Excerpts:
What is the core focus of CyberSafe?
We have been in business for about 20 years. We have specialised in security, particularly in authentication. Authentication means when somebody logs in to your system, and you are verifying who they are. What we are doing is authenticating users when they are logging in to SAP business applications. SAP applications are used in most companies to run the business for finance, HR and other critical applications.
Businesses need to invest in security, and they also need to look at the cost. We help businesses to reduce costs by enabling them to use a single method of authentication instead of multiple ones, so they don’t have to remember different passwords for all the different things. When companies use our application, they have one password for all authentications.
Are you also catering to platforms other than SAP?
No, we are not selling to SAP, but to SAP customers. We have done that deliberately because we know the SAP application, the customers and what their needs are, compared to somebody using a completely different CRM. So we are focusing on the SAP market. So when somebody engages with us, we talk in SAP language, which both sides can understand.
What types of newer trends are you observing in the authentication process?
The trends are really to do with mobile. Ten years ago, people were using SAP internally, but with the advent of the internet and cheaper mobile devices, people now want to authenticate and log in to SAP systems from mobile. That creates a new challenge for security. We are developing products and functionality to address that challenge.
Nobody wants a situation where a person loses their phone, and someone else uses the phone to log in to the SAP platform. Nobody wants that to happen. So we need to create new mechanisms and stronger configurations to safeguard these platforms.
Is it a big challenge to ensure security with the growing popularity of BYOD?
It is a big challenge. The industry is still learning the best way of doing things, because there are a lot of people out there doing things wrong. We get contacted by a lot of companies regarding the use of security solutions for managing mobile access.
We do not sell services. We are selling products. So any services required for our product are given for free. When it comes to using our service, there is ease in getting started with us. You can evaluate our product and then use it. A company can do a proof of concept with us.
At present, we are working with an energy company that has about eight thousand users. They have been using our product internally for about five years. They contacted us a few weeks ago saying that they were facing a problem with configuration in the 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 centre in India. Here, we are partnering with companies like TCS, Wipro, HCL and 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 a lot of direct sales, but in India, we go via an indirect channel because Indian consultants are more up to date in building relationships.
We have already started relationships with Wipro and HCL in the very early days, and we are also keen to work with 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 years, not only in India but across the globe, is that some companies have been reluctant to invest in security because they have too many other projects to focus on, and security has not been a priority. But we are starting to see a shift now. Security and authentication are becoming higher-priority tasks.
I think what might be driving this shift is mobile.
