ColorTokens is on the cusp of significant expansion in the Asia-Pacific region. Following our recent announcement of this growth, including substantial deals in Australia, Hong Kong, and Japan, I am taking this opportunity to reflect on the momentum and opportunities ahead.
As the newly appointed Vice President of the Asia Pacific for ColorTokens, I am both honored and thrilled to lead our efforts in this region. We have made some key hires and will continue to attract top talent in APAC. With the combined experience of Jagdish Mahapatra, our Chief Revenue Officer, and myself, we are well-positioned to chart our course forward.
Having been in the IT industry for over 30 years, I feel this role is a culmination of years of experience from working at large global organizations like IBM, SAP, Cisco, NTT, Oracle, and most recently Cloudflare. These experiences, combined with the knowledge and insights gained from amazing colleagues, have equipped me with the best set of tools to drive ColorTokens’ growth agenda.
Our Vision for APAC is Ambitious
Leveraging Singapore’s status as a strategic hub, we aim to increase our customer base by 40% year over year, driven by a 100% partner-driven go-to-market program. Our commitment to growth is guided by:
- A clear vision from the executive leadership to address customer pain points and drive future direction.
- A rapidly expanding ColorTokens’ solution portfolio that caters to customer needs and requirements, coupled with a long-term vision and outlook.
- The unique opportunity to cultivate a high-performance, diverse team committed to exceeding customer and partner expectations.
Now that I have been in the role for over 90 days, here are some key learnings and observations.
Understanding the Market Context
Complex digital infrastructure leaves gaps where cyberattacks and breaches become inevitable, making security a priority. The world has realized long ago that either you have been hacked, or you do not know about it yet. Our focus is on building an always-on cyber defense program that goes beyond checkbox regulatory compliance and becomes ready to stop a breach from turning into an embarrassing crisis.
In 2023, APAC experienced the highest year-on-year surge in weekly attacks, with an average of 1,823 attackers per organization—a 16% increase, according to Check Point research. The trend continued into 2024, with a 30% rise in weekly attacks on corporate networks in Q2 compared to Q2 2023, and a 25% increase compared to Q1 2024. There has been a general increase in cyberattacks across all industries, with a staggering 221% rise compared to 2022.
So, there’s an urgent need for organizations to shift from a ‘breach prevention’ approach to a ‘breach readiness’ approach. It is no longer enough to prevent breaches; we must be prepared to defend our digital infrastructures by visualizing, containing, and disrupting cyberattacks.
Most security and risk leaders are increasingly considering that investment in tools that can prevent breaches by stopping initial access and intrusive cyberattacks is not enough anymore. The best cybersecurity tools fail not because the tools fail, but due to several factors. These include lack of accurate asset management, lack of proper patch management, lack of change governance, human error compounded by uncontrolled use of IT applications called shadow IT, SaaS, and now AI tools.
MITRE ATT&CK has proven to the world that most attackers get past initial defenses and execute lateral movement to successfully create cyber crises. By the time cyberattacks reach the last line of defense—lateral movement—we need to be prepared to visualize, contain, and defend to prevent breaches from becoming an unmanageable crisis. And this is where microsegmentation comes into play.
Technological Edge
Microsegmentation is a zero trust architecture-based methodology of creating zones and conduits in digital environments to isolate systems and groups of systems from one another and secure them individually. It is designed to enable granular partitioning of traffic to provide greater attack resistance by reducing both the attackable systems and those that can be laterally accessed when one system is breached, called the blast radii.
Microsegmentation secures applications by expressly allowing particular application traffic and, by default, denying all other traffic, where attacks can be detected, quarantined, and disrupted while isolated critical business can continue as usual. Microsegmentation also provides security leadership with panoptic visualization, which is the ability to distinguish between things that can change faster than others so that the enterprise can adapt itself to contain an ongoing attack.
ColorTokens calls this breach-ready microsegmentation. In the future, this can be made autonomous so that an intelligent breach-ready capability is able to defend and disrupt attacks with minimal human intervention. This comprehensive approach ensures that breaches are not only prevented but managed effectively if they occur, making digital resilience a reality and ensuring organizations protect their crown jewels effectively.
Partnerships and Collaborations
The global market for microsegmentation is projected to reach US$12.47 billion by 2030, according to Exactitude Consultancy. I am seeing a strong demand in APAC, with numerous enterprise customers seeking to strengthen their cybersecurity posture. To support this demand, we will continue to invest in the channel and lean on our existing partners to drive growth. Selling through and with our partners is essential to driving business growth, enhancing market competitiveness, and meeting diverse customer needs effectively. It allows us to leverage partners’ strengths while focusing on innovation and core competencies, ultimately delivering value-added solutions to our customers worldwide.
What’s Ahead
In the coming months, we are committed to building on our momentum in the APAC region. Our goal is to reduce your breach risk profile by 50% within the first 90 days. Our approach to progressive microsegmentation implementation leverages automated discovery of security gaps, policy templates, traffic visualization, and global best practices, enabling us to deliver on our promise.
This approach is already resonating strongly with our customers, as we help organizations rethink their breach readiness strategies. Our expanding partner ecosystem and the support from our experienced leadership team are instrumental in driving our growth strategy, allowing us to help you become digitally resilient and breach ready. Let’s protect your crown jewels and stop breaches before they escalate into crises.
To know more about breach readiness strategies and digital resilience, please contact us here.
