Interview with Simon Azzopardi , SECUNIA Vice President, EMEA and APAC.
BK Team: Can you please introduce yourself to security kaizen magazine readers?
Simon: My name is Simon Azzopardi and I am Vice President EMEA and APAC for Secunia
BK Team: Can you please give us a quick overview about secunia? And the products you provide?
Simon: Secunia is recognized industry-wide as a pioneer and global player within the IT security ecosystem, in the niche of Vulnerability Management. Our award- winning portfolio equips corporate and private customers worldwide with Vulnerability Intelligence, Vulnerability Assessment, and automated Patch Management tools to manage and control vulnerabilities across their networks and endpoints.
BK Team: How do you place secunia among other companies providing similar products, what differentiate you?
Simon: The biggest differentiator is we are most passionate about and what we consider the heart and soul of Secunia, its Vulnerability Intelligence. Secunia has one of the largest Vulnerability Databases which contain vulnerabilities since 2003 for over 50,000 advisories and in addition to the above all the intelligence is test and verified by our researchers before we issue our advisories.
BK Team: Who are your biggest customers, and which products do customers require most?
Simon: Most of our customers are from the following verticals: Financial Services, Government, Defence, Education, Energy and Utilities, Healthcare and although most of our customers ask not to be named here are some customers which allow us to use their name: Evernote, Commerzbank, Deutsche BundesBank, Siemens, University of Oxford and many more.
BK Team: How do you see the market in Middle East and the Emerging Markets?
Simon: The Middle East market is very much an emerging market when it comes to network security. We are still moving from a reactive to a proactive approach and although this is moving faster within the enterprise segment, it still isn’t fast enough. 2013 alone saw many high profile cases where hackers were using known exploits to attack banks and government entities, which resulted in tens of millions of dollars of losses. This has made people sit up and take notice and prioritise security within their 2014 IT spend. At Secunia we will be on hand to help our partners and customers with education, training and ultimately the protection that they need.
BK Team: Do you have offices in the Middle East? Do you have plans to expand here?
Simon: Currently we are represented by EMT Distribution and we plan to expand with them in this great market and open a regional office soon.
BK Team: Many customers can’t feel the importance of security in their enterprises; do you contribute in developing security awareness to community?
Simon: Yes. Every quarter we publish the Secunia Country Reports for 12 European countries and the US. The Country Reports provide insights into the State of Security on PCs in the respective countries, detailing the share of Microsoft and third-party programs on private PCs, and providing a Top 10 of unpatched vulnerable software on the PCs.
In Q2 2014 we plan to start publishing Country Reports for countries in the Middle East as well.
In addition to the Country Reports, every year we publish the Secunia Vulnerability Review, which analyzes the evolution of software security from a global, industry, enterprise, and endpoint perspective. It presents data on vulnerabilities and exploits and the availability of patches and correlates this information with the market share of programs to evaluate the true threats.
We also have 2 free consumer products, that we offer to private users to help them stay secure: the Secunia PSI 3.0 for PCs and the Secunia PSI for Android.
The Secunia Personal Software Inspectors (PSI) are free computer security solutions that identify vulnerabilities in third-party (non-Microsoft and non-Android respectively) programs, which can leave your PC or Android device open to attacks.
Simply put, the PSI scans software on your system and identifies programs in need of security updates to safeguard your PC against cybercriminals. It then supplies your computer with the necessary software security updates to keep it safe. The Secunia PSI even automates the updates for your insecure programs, making it a lot easier for you to maintain a secure PC. Using a scanner like Secunia PSI 3.0 is complementary to antivirus software, and as a free computer security program, is essential for every home computer.
