Fortinet hosts India VIP Customer Forum in Athens

Fortinet conducted its third edition of India VIP Customer Forum in Athens, Greece. Over 80 CIOs and senior IT decision makers from India and SAARC, spanning  key verticals like IT, BFSI, e-commerce, healthcare, retail, manufacturing and media, attended the event held from15th to 19th July 2015.

The VIP Customer Forum 2015 presented a platform where CIOs and IT decision makers discussed current security trends and analysed how to address its evolving challenges. The forum delivered network security information and threat intelligence through a mix of plenary sessions, networking and roundtable discussions on a wide range of topics like advanced threat protection, datacenter protection, specialized security solutions that complement a firewall, and support services required to  keep pace with the demands of the enterprise market.

What are the threats targeting Indian Enterprises?

During January – April 2015 FortiGuards labs has recorded over 30.9 million IPS (Intrusion Prevention System) detections in India and about 400,000 detections of ShellShock alone, which still continues to infect Indian systems. Besides, India accounts for 16 percent of the Botnets detected in APAC with about 84 million bonnet-infections. FortiGuard labs has also recorded 105,000 antivirus detections. The malware MyDoom still continues to circulate in India and is the No. 1 malware with 20464 detections.

The most interesting malware is Dorkbot, with 4,066 detections in India. The Dorkbot worm gained publicity in late 2011 after an attack on Facebook’s chat system. Users received a message with a bogus link which appeared to come from one of their Facebook friends. A similar Dorkbot worm appeared later in the same year, this time preying on Twitter users. Downloading and installing Dorkbot malware opens a backdoor on infected computers and allows remote access, potentially turning the computer into a botnet. Last year, FortiGuard labs discovered that Dorkbot has evolved to Blastware with self destructing capabilites, which makes it even more dangerous.

“India has become a potential target with its high Internet penetration, and users opting for online banking, retail and credit cards. Cashless transactions are a norm and e-businesses hold increasing amounts of personal data” said Rajesh Maurya, Country Manager India and SAARC at Fortinet, “These factors along with inadequate security concerns among CISOs was the main agenda at the VIP Forum where security experts from Fortinet brainstormed with CISOs to devise a security plan to help them protect their networks.”

The event educated and assisted Indian CISOs with threat intelligence to help them devise the right strategy to protect their enterprise networks.

Prasenjit Mukherjee, GM-IT at BSES Power said: “Fortinet's VIP Customer Forum 2015 helped us understand global trends that are currently changing the security landscape, and also the best practices that enterprises should adopt to secure their business.”

“The event addressed key issues that we face today − protecting enterprise data while it goes through the virtualization and cloud transformation. The sessions articulated the role of physical devices in a virtualized environment and complementary solutions that tackle such problems. The event has given insights to current advanced threats and prevention methods which are essential for today’s trend of using cloud, BYOD, enterprise social network and mobility,” shared Radhakrishnan G, VP Systems at Biocon.

V Sendil Kumar, VP IT at Shriram Value Services said: “With a growing level of sophistication in cyber crimes, we need to address the security needs of the extended enterprise − whether network, branch, cloud, mobile, data center or other complex environments. The VIP Forum was a good platform for us to understand how enterprises can evolve and stay one step ahead of attackers.”

Jayanta Bhowmik, Group CTO at Apeejay Surrendra Group adds: “We have tried to keep pace with key trends like BYOD, mobility, virtualization and cloud. Keeping the environment secure alongside these trends is the biggest challenge we face today. The Fortinet VIP Customer Forum 2015 addressed the evolving threats that an enterprise network faces, and made clear the need for implementing a comprehensive advanced threat protection framework.”