Tenable helps customers analyze networks
By identifying the open vulnerabilities and analyzing the networks, Tenable Network Security helps manage the vulnerabilities of its
customers. The company’s flagship product NESSUS, by virtue of its product, has become the standard in vulnerability assessment. Tenable
Network Security is presently focussing on BFSI and service providers and also paying equal importance to the SME sector as its solutions
are widely used in this sector. Though the network security is a highly competitive market, the company still sees an ample opportunity.
Discussing about the solutions and the market, Manoj Taskar, Country Manager, India &
SAARC, Tenable talked about its channel network and partner opportunity.
Please b rief
company?
us
about
your
Tenable Network Security Solutions is
into Vulnerability Management and helps
customers in analyzing their networks, as to
what are the open vulnerabilities in them,
helping them remediate what is happening
in the network. This company was formed
in 2002 and has been the market leader since
then by virtue of its product called NESSUS
which is like an industry standard now
in any vulnerability assessment. NESSUS
is like defector standard in vulnerability
assessment.
Any
consultant,
any
network
vulnerability manager uses NESSUS tool to
do his activity. This is the tool that we have
from our own portfolio and we have built a
whole lot of solutions around that to ensure
that costumer gets more meaningful insight
rather than getting a raw launch.
Which is the area of operations
that you are concerned with?
The business that we are focusing on now is
banking finance – BFSI and service providers.
The tool is common across the platform,
be it a pharma company, a call centre BPO,
manufacturing etc. Anyone whose maturity
level to understand the security level is there,
he is our customer. The focus is more on
banking & finance and service providers. It
is completely driven by the fact that it is a
compliance-driven activity. They have more
regulations, guidelines to follow and that is
how we help them.
How important is the
segment for Tenable ?
SME
SME is an important segment because the
single largest product that we have NESSUS
brand is used extensively across the market.
It sells on its own merits. So the smaller
companies which can’t do a continuous
monitoring, they rely on that tool to do their
audit assessments. So it is a very important
segment for us to address.
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first it is a product sales per set. Second, the
product also requires a lot of professional
services which the channel can deliver to
the customer. Product sales is one and then
they have effected this engagement to the
customer from professional services point of
view, because they have to teach the customer
how to use the product, generate reports
for them continuously. So this is a ongoing
engagement which gives them a continuous
access to the customers all the time. It also
helps them in upselling other products to the
same customer, so it works both the side.
How competitive is the network
security market in this country?
Manoj Taskar
Country Manager, India & SAARC
Tenable
What is the USP of Tenable?
The USP of Tenable is to provide
complete analysis, from a vulnerability
standpoint for security, whether it is active
or passive scanning, whether it is an event
correlation – all put together.
How are your solutions different
from your competitors?
So the uniqueness that we bring to
the table is something called as passive
vulnerability scanning, which none of the
competitors have. Some of the places where
the devices or the assets are very critical,
you don’t have access to those – we have
something called as AGENTS, which can
sit on them and do complete assessment and
feed continuous reports to us. He can use it
in the hybrid mode, so it can do the active
scan, the passive scan, agent-based scan – all
fit together to one single dashboard to give
one single-window view on how the entire
enterprise is behaving.
What kind of opportunity do you
see in terms of market productions
and channel expenses?
It is a dual benefit for the channel, because
It is very competitive. There are a lot
of players in the market and everyone is
competing for that type of security piece but
at the same time there is enough in the market
also for everyone to have. If you have a USP
and if you have something which is required
by the customer which you can offer, there is
a place for your play. For us it’s 100% channeldriven. So we rely heavily on the channel so
they can bring the value to the customer. For
that we are enabling our channels enough to
ensure that they can talk different for us, than
any other player in the market.
What is the market share you have
in India?
It is very early for me to say that because
we started our operations only in May. So we
are still in the phase of setting up. Tenable’s
product – NESSUS is the single widely used
tool across the board. It is difficult for me to
categorize in terms of numbers, because it’s a
retail product – people buy it today, people
buy it tomorrow and they use it. If they are
done with it, they just renew it again. So it’s a
retail product for me to categorize and say that
is the total numbers of Licences being sold, we
don’t keep a track on a regular basis. It comes
once in a year to us and this is the entire chunk
that happened in the region and then we sell
upsell on those licences directly. n
Aparna Mullick
[email protected]