Osca St Marthe, Executive VP Global Solutions Engineering at SonicWall, discusses the importance of having a Zero Trust approach and highlights the key elements underpinning SonicWall’s classification as a leader in its field.
Can you tell us about your Zero Trust approach and how you remain committed to operating with a robust cybersecurity posture?
In the last 12 months, we’ve acquired a company called Banyan, which is now our cloud secure Edge offering tied to our Zero Trust. We firmly believe in never trust; always verify. That fundamentally means we need to know what the users are doing within our environment, what the devices are doing and what applications they’re accessing. In understanding those three components, we can provide a more mature security risk posture around engagement.
The other consideration is continuous monitoring. Trusted devices today could be a very different story tomorrow. We therefore want to make sure we provide robust check-in and monitoring for those users, devices and applications.
Why is SonicWall’s Cloud Secure Edge (CSE) an attractive choice for SMBs, MSPs and beyond?
For SMBs, they’re looking for simplicity, ease of deployment and at the same time, best-in-class security. For our MSPs, it’s about scalability. We must be able to scale and our cloud native architecture delivers that service.
Both SMBs and MSSPs are focused on cost-effectiveness. Making sure we’re at the right price point at the right time and we’re meeting them on their journey and trying to solve their issues from an outcome perspective, is key.
What are some of the key elements underpinning SonicWall’s classification as a leader in its field?
We’re proud of being in this dynamic, ever-evolving cybersecurity industry for 30+ years. We’re a pure play cybersecurity company in excess of 17,000 partners worldwide and still investing.
Our focus is on three things. One is being channel-focused. We partner with our channels to ensure our customers are receiving best-in-class best practices around our cybersecurity, but also ensuring they’re getting the right value.
The second is our platform. Our solutions need to work better together, but we also need to integrate with our customers’ environments.
Third and finally is ensuring we’re focused on the customer outcome and not just on the technology.
Can you shed light on some of the conversations you had with potential new customers at GITEX?
The conversations we typically have are around doing a better job of streamlining services. Some customers have a plethora of different vendors doing the same thing in their environment and they’re looking to work more efficiently. That’s where our managed security services offers them the opportunity to wrap that into a one-time service which they can use to streamline those 15 vendors into maybe six or seven. No one’s ever said having more vendors makes them more secure – they’re always looking to get more cost-effectiveness from fewer vendors.
Another conversation we have very frequently centres on AI. That’s probably top of mind for several individuals but if you look at securing your fundamentals, ensuring best practices around your architecture, your design, patching, vulnerability, all these things are fundamentally important.
Another one to note is around collaboration. Many partners and customers aren’t necessarily looking to rip and replace – they’re looking for us to work with them and with their extended partners to build up best-in-class security.
What will the cybersecurity industry look like in 2025 and how will SonicWall adapt?
We still see patch management and taking care of the basics as critical for next year. It’s great to have an eye on AI and technologies but you’ve also got to make sure best practices are covered.
As mentioned, collaboration will be key. We need to work together and more of our customers are interested in being less of a vendor and more of a partner.
I think every industry will be trying out AI and looking to us as thought leaders to see how we can help them leverage AI in their environment and work more effectively.
