During GITEX 2023, we had the opportunity to interact with many organizations. One of them was Bulwark Technologies, which is a leading cybersecurity VAD in the region. We spoke to Jose Menacherry, Managing Director, Bulwark Technologies to understand his strategy in the region. Excerpts.
What are the brands that you are representing in GITEX 2023?
For Bulwark, this is our 20th GITEX participation. We are in the 23rd year of operation. Basically, being a valuer added distributor for cybersecurity, we are representing some of our major vendors. We have got vulnerability assessment tools for web applications, full range of products for file transfer, DLP, data classification, PKI – based password-less authentication solutions and endpoint security. These are from various companies including Heimdal, Nexus, Fortra, etc. We have got iStorage, which offers encrypted USB drives, and also have Mimecast for cloud e-mail security solutions. Mimecast also has DMARC and security awareness training solutions. These are the major ones. But we have got almost 30 + vendors with us in our portfolio. There are so many other solutions we handle. So, we would like to meet our customers and discuss what are the latest offerings we have and also listen to their concerns and see what best we can do.
“Whenever we take up a new product, we try to have the proper technical expertise to fulfil the customer’s requirements.”
Jose Menacherry, Managing Director, Bulwark Technologies
What has been your journey so far from a geographic standpoint?
We started in the year 1999 in Dubai as our head office and expanded to the end- customers through the resellers, channel partners and the system integration companies in the Middle East. We cover all the GCC countries, plus Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, etc. through the partners. We have got a dedicated team of people handling different regions. Recently we have started our operation in Saudi and do the local billing as per the requirement of the partners and customers in that region.
What is your focus now?
If you take a few years back, the awareness was not there. People were reluctant to invest in cybersecurity, but now the total situation has changed. Even COVID taught us the way how the digitization happened across the region and globally. In a fast pace, they had to make everything digitalized and allow people to access remotely wherever they are to run the operations and to run the business. With that, a lot of security related issues also pop up. That needs to be addressed in a proper manner. So, the customer organizations understand the relevance of having proper security solutions in place. Because of that you can see a lot of new requirements coming up. Also, today, there is increased dynamism and sophistication in the cyberattacks. They use advanced technique, tactic, and strategy. The customers also need to respond with proper solutions. We are here to just scan the technology space and identify the right solutions to meet each and every requirement of the customers and different industry verticals. This helps us to equip ourselves with trained resources within our organization to handle all those products.
Whenever we take up a new product, we try to have the proper technical expertise to fulfil the customer’s requirements. Therefore, we can do proper implementation and configuration, so that the customer gets the ROI for the solution what we sell through our partners.
If I can add here a lot of security services are growing, SOC Services are being subscribed by the customers. Are you also offering SOC services or solutions?
You might also see that globally the major issue is that there is a scarcity of trained resources – especially in the cybersecurity domain. The gap is too big. Every company cannot afford to have that highly skilled people within the company. So, they start taking services from the security service providers. Bulwark as a distributor is working with the system integration companies and managed service providers to offer solutions and further, they extend that to their customers. Most of our solutions have got MSP model.
What is your goal for the next 12 months?
Now, since we have started our office in Saudi, we have been equipping that with more resources – both from sales and pre-sales side. That will continue and we will be adding more people to the Saudi operations as that is one of our focus areas in the region apart from in other GCC countries. I expect that on the revenue side we should grow in multiplication – in the manner of two times of my expectation for the next 12 months.
Any product line you want to add for the next 12 months?
In fact, very recently, we added a survey solution in the vulnerability space. We already have web applications and vulnerability scanning solutions. We also added mobile application security solutions from app Appknox. We have signed up Holm Security for the network vulnerability and OT security. We have continuity software which is addressing the backup vulnerability because now most of the company see the ransomware attack is still going on globally and this region also experiencing the same. People rely on the backup of their data all the time. Once the backup is vulnerable, you have to take special precautions. So, continuity software offers special vulnerability assessment solutions for the backup.
