Microsoft India had launched a full-scale Cybersecurity Engagement Center (CSEC) in India. Located in Delhi, Microsoft says it will be first-of-its-kind center to bring together the company’s capabilities to foster deeper cybersecurity collaborations with public and private sector organizations to create a secure computing environment.
It already had a pilot project for about a year and over the last 12 months, the Microsoft cybersecurity engagement team says it met with over 100 organisations in India. And, based on those conversations, it has observed three common IT environment challenges for cybersecurity namely, unmanaged and unregulated IT assets usage, procurement and maintenance; poor knowledge of cyber hygiene among users within organizations; inability of companies to timely monitor, detect and remove cyber threats.
The CSEC in Delhi becomes the seventh center in the world and it is also said to function as a satellite to the company’s Redmond Digital Crimes Unit (DCU). Besides, the company has also rolled out a nationwide campaign to
raise awareness about cybersecurity among Indian organizations. Recently at the Kaspersky Security Weekend, talking about security awareness in India, Vitaly Kamluk, Kaspersky Lab’s Director of Global Research and Analysis Team in APAC, had also emphasised on how awareness will play a major role, among other things. More on it here.
Microsoft has now announced Microsoft Secure, a nationwide campaign to increase awareness on cybersecurity and help organisations understand their security requirements better. Its approach in the cloud-centric world are based on three functional areas – protect, detect and respond.
Bhaskar Pramanik, Chairman, Microsoft India, said, “At Microsoft, we put trust and security at the core of everything we do. India stands at an exciting threshold today as we embrace the power of mobile and cloud computing. Data is becoming the driver of growth and innovation across every sector and will catalyze the 4th industrial revolution. We believe security of critical information is imperative for our corporate customers, just as it is vital to ensure security and privacy of citizen data and transactions. Our first investment towards this was setting up our local data centers in India last year, and today’s launch of the Cybersecurity Engagement Center is the second. Our cybersecurity investments in the country underline our relentless commitment to partnering India in realizing its digital vision.”
Madhu Khatri, Associate General Counsel, Microsoft India, “We want to collaborate with our customers, our partners and with the Government to combat cyber threat in India. As governments and enterprises embrace digital transformation and strive for resilience, a holistic and agile security platform is ever more critical. This is where Microsoft’s unique threat intelligence innovations and trusted cloud ecosystem offer them powerful protection against security threats.”
The new centre plans to expand public-private partnerships. Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) aims at fighting global malware, reducing digital risk and protecting vulnerable populations. It does so by combining big data analytics, forensics and legal strategies.
The new centre will also work at making a pool of resources available for security specialists. As part of Microsoft Consultancy Services (MCS), a dedicated India-based response team will offer security consultancy services to enterprise customers, the company states in a press release. The team will work closely with enterprises to understand their business goals, challenges and technical maturity to develop enterprise security strategies.