Sophos Day: interview with Ricardo Maté

Tomorrow is the main event in Spain for the cybersecurity company Sophos. This is Sophos Day, where attendees will be able to learn about the company’s news as well as see the current state of cybersecurity and the main cyberthreats. We spoke with Ricardo Maté, Regional Vice President South EMEA & Emerging at Sophos about what the keys to the event will be.

Interview with Ricardo Maté, Regional Vice President South EMEA & Emerging at Sophos

What will Sophos Day attendees see?

Sophos Day attendees will have the chance to hear a preview of the Sophos Threat Report presentation for the 23rd year, in order to understand the changing landscape of cyber threats.

On the other hand, they will hear from Ricardo Maté, VP South EMEA, the Sophos Cybersecurity as a Service strategy and how Managed Detection & Response (MDR) services are the pillar on which said strategy is based.
An important aspect of the value proposition of said service is the integration of third-party Cybersecurity solutions in the Endpoint, Firewall, e-mail, Network, Cloud and Authentication, which will be presented by Dave Mareels, founding partner of the company SOC.OS. recently acquired by Sophos.

They will attend a round table of CISO’s who will talk about the challenges for companies in Cybersecurity and how Cybersecurity as a Sophos Service allows them to Reduce risk, improve the efficiency of their IT teams and reduce costs with respect to setting up their own cybersecurity services within the company.

Eduardo Sanchez, CEO of AllPentesting, will talk to us about the Silent Intruder, analyzing the attack vectors that cybercrime uses to access even within any company.

We will continue with the presentation by Alberto Ruiz, Sophos Presales Director, of the XDR (Xtended Detection & Response) solution and how to use it to carry out prevention, detection and response beyond the endpoint.

And finally, the new products from Sophos, such as SASE, Zero Trust Network Access, Firewall and NDR (Network Detection & Response) that will be carried out by Ivan Mateos.

Cybersecurity is one of the increasingly important pillars in the strategy of companies, what has changed in recent years in the cybersecurity strategy?

Companies have embarked on a Digital Transformation process that is already unstoppable.
Cybersecurity has become essential in this process and without the appropriate measures, any company or public body, regardless of its size or sector, can be a victim of Cybercrime.
This means that currently a majority of companies are considerably increasing their investments in Cybersecurity.
In fact, IDC predicts that the sector will grow by 7.7% in Spain and Gartner predicts worldwide compound growth of 11% for the next 5 years.

Therefore, Cybersecurity already has visibility and presence in the Boards of Administration and Management of most companies and organizations.

What problems do you see in companies’ cybersecurity strategy?

The complexity of Cyberattacks, and the professionalization of cybercriminal groups are causing the vast majority of companies and organizations to be affected by serious cybersecurity incidents such as Ransomware or data theft and leakage.

To stop these attacks, manufacturers are increasingly launching more powerful and effective solutions, but also more complex to use. Cybersecurity has become something tremendously difficult to manage, together with the lack of resources trained for a tremendously changing environment.

For this reason, for the vast majority of companies, thinking that they are capable of managing all this complexity themselves in a 24/7 monitoring, detection and response environment is a mistake.

Your function covers a large number of countries. What differences do you see between the strategies followed in Spain compared to the rest?

The truth is that the Cybersecurity market is governed by exactly the same parameters and criteria.
Cybercriminals do not understand borders, Industry or sector-type languages, they are only governed by the return they can get from their cyberattacks and therefore we see the same requirements and trends in all markets.
It is true that we are currently seeing a very strong investment in Cybersecurity in the Public Administrations of Spain, as a consequence of the Next Gen Funds, and that it may be ahead of what we see in other neighboring countries.

What goals, in terms of growth, is Sophos setting itself?

Sophos’ objective is to offer the best solutions that guarantee the highest level of Cybersecurity to its Clients and Partners, constantly innovating in the launch of Products and Services. Hence the Cybersecurity as a service strategy and the launch of our Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services with more than 12,000 Clients worldwide, positioning us as the world leader in this type of service.

Where is Sophos’ strategy currently focused in terms of new solutions? What are the needs you see in companies?

As I have previously mentioned, the Sophos strategy is based on offering Cybersecurity as a Service to guarantee the best Cybersecurity results for any company or organization regardless of its size or its status in Cybersecurity, offering less risk in the face of attacks, greater efficiency of the equipment IT and lower cost. It is very important to highlight that with our MDR services, we can not only include telemetry from Sophos products, but also from any Cybersecurity company on the market.

In addition, we are demonstrating that our service is one of the most efficient on the market, being able to respond to any threat in less than 38 minutes when the industry average is 16 hours.

Apart from our MDR solution, we continue to improve our XDR and Firewall products, we have launched an NDR (Network Detection & Response) solution, Zero Trust Network Access and new Wi-Fi and Network Switch solutions within our Advanced Cybersecurity Ecosystem strategy .