Cloud migration and compliance top cyber security trends in India: Mark Hughes, BT

Pradeep Chakraborty Aug 21, 2018

BT recently opened a new cyber security operations centre in Gurgaon, India. The new centre joins 15 already existing cyber security operations centres around the world.

BW CIO caught up with Mark Hughes, president, BT Security, to find out more. Excerpts from an interaction:

BW CIO: How can BT ensure cyber security for Indian businesses?

Mark Hughes: We have over 300 people working in India with high technical skills. For the Indian market specifically, we have world class portfolio of security products and managed services. We are expanding this business further.

We have seen our business growing rapidly over the last couple of years, and we are sure that this trend is going to continue at a much faster rate. I think, the fact that we're opening our new centre, only shows the opportunity that the Indian market brings for us.

BW CIO: Tell us more about the new cyber SOC in Gurgaon?

Mark Hughes: We inaugurated our new cyber security operations centre in Gurgaon, which will employ a further 100 cyber security specialists.

BT is one of the largest managed security service providers in the world with anexisting network of cyber security operations centres and around 3,000 security professionals. All this makes it possible that we can take security to the next level.

The new centre joins 15 already existing cyber security operations centres around the world. Our latest SOC here in India focuses on how we can gather and track information for our customers, and correlate it with the analysts, who then detect threats or cyber-crime.

Services that the new centre will provide will be much more proactive. Our centres have created hundreds of new jobs with very skilled employees. This hub is equipped with the latest, sophisticated security technologies.

BW CIO: What are the cyber security trends in India?

Mark Hughes: The foremost trend that we are witnessing is how organizations manage their cloud migration. One key thing is increasing use of hyper scale type organizations like Amazon Web Services. When a lot of this happens in and out of the public cloud, one needs to be completely aware of the security it provides.

While this opens a whole range of opportunities to accelerate businesses to use software as a service, it also brings forth the questions as to how would one manage security around it? Access and controls need to be thought about carefully, along with bringing all of these services together. From my perspective, that's one big trend going around, where you use advanced cloud services without compromising on the security of your organization.

The second is compliance. There is an increasing regulation coming from many different types of regulators, particularly as they change their regulatory regimes. We saw the latest change with the introduction of GDPR. So that's another trend – where national governments and other regulatory bodies are driving compliance issues for businesses.

BW CIO: What is the importance of digital disruption in every industry – especially with the use of AI, robotics, chatbots and how will it impact/strengthen security.

Mark Hughes: Adoption of new technologies such as mobile, cloud, AI, IoT and chatbots are fundamentally changing the way we do business. They create a huge range of opportunities, allowing business to build their capabilities far more quickly, lowering barriers to entry, allowing innovative new services.

However, they also bring significant risks, by creating a more complicated network environment for cyber security. For example: more breakout points to the internet, a network environment that keeps changing, far more encrypted data travelling across networks, and company data stored across third-party cloud environments.

BW CIO: In your opinion, how important is trained workforce?

Mark Hughes: Trained workforce is an asset. And, it's not just as a skilled workforce, it’s being skilled and being trained as well. So, coming with skills that are appropriate, and which are constantly being updated for the environment that they're working in, is something that we take extremely seriously. We have a strategy in terms of how we look at talent, as there are not a lot of people in cyber space industry with the right skillset.

The foremost step is about attracting the very best talent out there. And then clearly developing it further when they come to work with us. To attract, develop and retain the top talent is really important, and within that acquiring skills and training them to understand the approach that we take to deliver cyber services to our customers is another.

Ultimately, a lot of what the individual do in our teams, and in the cyber SOC, is about really mission critical activity for most businesses. If they can't get their job right, and they don't understand the context of what they're doing, that could have a serious impact on our customers. So, it's not just about having skills, it's also about being able to understand the context of what is actually being delivered to a customer.

BW CIO: Do you think security or lack of it brings in an opportunity for you?

Mark Hughes: Well, to begin with, we do not believe anything can be 100 percent secure. A business is just like an individual. We are taking risk-based decisions all the time. In fact, one of the reasons why people get ahead in business and in life is because they make different types of judgment over others and can convert risk into an opportunity.

So, seeing a business as not being 100 percent secure often presents an opportunity, as it means that business is making risk- based decisions as to where they want to go and what they want to achieve.

We, at our SOC, convert that risk to an opportunity, thereby helping our customer by providing a safe and secure environment to work in. We highlight the potential risks to our customers and provide an ecosystem to them so that they can achieve their goals with minimum hazards. This is complimented by our security, which provides an environment which is efficient, where we investigate things quickly, and where we work on the next steps based on the outcome.

At BT, we understand that it's not just about identifying that there might be a vulnerability, but that we are able to find a solution to the problem. This is what clearly differentiates us from our competitors.

BW CIO: What is the role Indian government playing when it comes to adaption of digital economy?

Mark Hughes: India has a strong IT sector and a considerable number of qualified IT workers. A key requirement for these highly skilled personnel is to keep ahead of the learning curve and continue refining digital skills, so as to keep up to speed with rapidly advancing technologies.

The Indian Government’s vision for a Digital India is a strategic call to embrace the opportunity for India as one of the leaders in the third industrial revolution, and the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) that has never been greater. Hence, for India to achieve the ambitious goals laid out in the Digital India programme, development of digital skills needs to take centre stage.

BW CIO: BT is doing some interesting work with internal agencies life Interpol and Europol. please tell us more about it.

Mark Hughes: BT and INTERPOL shares threat intelligence data relating to criminal trends in cyber-space, emerging and known cyber-threats and malicious attacks. With this partnership, we are committed in taking the appropriate measures to secure any information which either party fears is compromised.

We are very proud of the fact that BT is the first telco in the world to sign this type of an agreement with INTERPOL. We firmly believe that the way to combat cybercrime is by sharing data between security specialists and government agencies. Only by sharing the information we can act together to secure our network and our customers; nation states, global business and international organisations.

BW CIO: What is BT’s strategy in removing complexity from customers digital transformational journey and making them cyber security complaint?

Mark Hughes: At BT, we provide a seamless digital strategy connecting digital customers, digital employees and the overall digital business. Along with these offerings, we are also making investments and developing propositions to continue improving these areas.

BT manages IT infrastructure all over the world, and has a strong security business that protects the information that goes over the network. Media & broadcast, and finance are other areas that represent strong domains for us in terms of propositions, especially in the global markets.

To sum up, BT’s focus is on delivering digital transformation for its customers, enabling global collaboration and setting itself apart with a differentiated customer experience. BT brings these propositions to the Indian market.

BT’s current CEO report focuses on two primary concern of Indian CEOs, which are security concerns (47.4 percent) and lack of technology skills (42.1 percent), which are seen as the biggest barriers in providing a better digital customer experience. This is an area where BY has a wealth of knowhow and can help Indian businesses.