Exclusive Interview with Ashish Tandon, CEO, and Co-founder of Indusface

Since most businesses use online platforms like websites, mobile apps, or APIs for their client interactions, they are prone to cybercrime a lot through the internet. To protect them from such threats, Indusface is using its advanced technology-driven platform, reports such vulnerabilities and threats to the users, and provides virtual protection and security until the software vulnerability is fixed. Analytics Insight has engaged in an exclusive interview with Ashish Tandon, CEO, and Co-founder of Indusface.

How does your company's strategy facilitate the transformation of an enterprise?

We are living in a digital world where opportunities, as well as risks for digital businesses, are constantly on the rise. Our client's businesses use online platforms such as websites, mobile apps or an API to interact with their subscribers, partners, vendors, or employees. Since these applications and platforms are exposed to the internet, they are also vulnerable to a lot of security risks and cybercrimes. This is where Indusface, using its advanced technology-driven platform, reports such vulnerabilities and threats to the users and provides virtual protection and security until the software vulnerability is fixed. We have built an award-winning fully managed platform integrating a web application scanner, web application firewall, DDoS, BOT Mitigation, CDN, and threat intelligence engine to provide holistic support and safety to more than 3000 customers across the globe.

Which industry verticals are you currently focusing on? And what is your go-to market strategy for the same?

As a leading Application Security SaaS company, Indusface serves a diversity of clientele across almost all major verticals. In today's time, digital operations are a must for every enterprise, and that makes every company a potential client for us. Currently, some of our major clients include TCS, ICICI Bank, HDFC Ergo, Aegon Life, Aditya Birla Finance, Larsen and Toubro, Marico, Titan, Tata Power, Start TV etc as well as Start-Ups and SaaS companies such as Darwinbox (Unicorn), SastaSundar (a Flipkart company), NamasteCredit, Qwikcilver (A PineLabs Company), Shopclues, etc., among others.

We are attracting customers across the world through our experienced sales team as well as a Channel Network comprising of Managed Security Providers like TCS, Tata Communications etc, and Distributors/ VARs like Redington etc.

What is your leadership mantra?

Indusface has walked down a journey from 1 Million ARR ( Annual recurring revenue) to 5 Million ARR. The process of achieving the right product that fits the market took almost 2.5 years. Over the years, leading one successful venture after another has taught me several leadership lessons. I believe that nothing can be overpowering if we have the will to do it. The key is to be a team player, choose the right teammates, and do the homework on what needs to be done, who will do it and how. At no point in time should one be overawed by the competitors' offering or scale. These thoughts have held me in good stead throughout my journey.

What are some of the challenges faced by the industry?

The only thing constant with technology is that it is changing. Therefore, the security landscape, tools, and risks are all dynamically altering themselves each day. In such a scenario, it is the biggest challenge to build the right kind of software and service combination which addresses the customer's concerns and offers efficient, effective and quick protection. We have been using best-in-class technologies, big data and analytics to ensure that our solutions are able to identify and respond to evolving as well as future threats.

What are the key changes that you have brought into the analytics domain at Indusface?

• We have built a high-performance Big Data Analytics platform
• Big Data Pipeline will be used for all cases needing complex analytics. eg. DDOS and bot mitigation, behavior analysis, and custom requirements
• In near future, this will be extended to use advanced Machine Learning techniques to provide fully automated, real-time, high-quality protection

What have been the most significant challenges that you have faced at the forefront of analytics?

The most important challenge was to organise the data for the high-performance Big Data Analytics platform

The industry is seeing a rising importance of Big Data Analytics and AI. How do you see these emerging technologies impact the business sector?

In the wake of the pandemic, there has been a real surge in digital transformation. Companies are hurriedly adopting new technologies and launching platforms to connect with their audiences. More often than not, security is only considered an afterthought. As security solutions providers, it is important to quickly and accurately identify vulnerabilities and threats in the new normal. That's where big data analytics and AI offer advantages that have helped us create superior and robust cyber threat analysis and prevention systems. The diversity of data gathered from sources like applications, networks, computers, cloud platforms, IoT sensors, APIs, databases, etc is enabling the security analysts and system administrators to plan a framework that can cope with existing and emerging threats. There is no doubt that the success of any cyber security solution is going to be dependent on the integration of AI and big data analytics in the times to come.

What would you advise aspiring big data and analytics candidates?

I would advise all aspirants to focus on outcome-oriented actionable use cases while implementing Big Data and Analytics projects.