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Exabeam is embracing the future of cybersecurity in Asia Pacific. 

Gareth Cox, Vice President of Sales for APJ at Exabeam, says the company's regional ambitions are underpinned by a firm commitment to channel partners, innovation in the cloud, and a sharp focus on urgent cyberthreats facing organisations today.

Exabeam, which has been in operation for eight years, first made waves at a Splunk conference where it offered analytics and automation layered on top of existing logging platforms. Cox outlined the evolution: "When we first launched our platform, we launched it actually at a Splunk conference. We added analytics and automation on top of the logging platform or Splunk, and then in 2015 we were QRadar's partner of the year, adding analytics and automation on top of their logging platform." Since then, Exabeam has steadily climbed from "visionary" to "undisputed leader" in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for SIEM (Security Information and Event Management).

Today, Exabeam derives half of its business from enhancing other logging platforms - whether on-premise or cloud - and the other half from providing full end-to-end SIEM solutions. "We're completely open in that manner," Cox said.

Channel-first in Asia Pacific

Unlike competitors that divide sales between direct and channel sales, Exabeam is exclusively channel-driven in Asia Pacific. "We're 100 per cent channel - the company has never taken any business globally, ever," Cox revealed. "We are a technology company and what we're looking for is partners to help add value to our customers."

These partnerships run deep. As Cox explained, value-added partners help with deployment, can run managed services on top of Exabeam's solutions, or consult on developing tailored cyber use cases for clients. "That is our main focus," he said. "We have three main regions where we focus in - so it's the ANZ region, Southeast Asia, and Japan - and we're looking to do further expansion in the future."

Cybersecurity threats: The old, the new, and the unknown

The Asia Pacific region is no stranger to the world's most persistent cyber threats. According to Cox, "It's been a challenge for organisations for years." As businesses embrace digital transformation and cloud adoption, IT security operations are being redefined. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated this move, spreading infrastructure across multiple cloud service providers and transforming the threat landscape.

However, the basics remain stubbornly relevant. Cox explained, "There's some stats where the amount of phishing attacks have gone up by around 500 per cent, and if you look at the Verizon Data Breach Report for the last 10 years, the number one attack vector has been credential-based attacks." He noted that despite all the innovations, many organisations still struggle to establish what constitutes "normal" behaviour within their environments, let alone spot lateral movement or compromised accounts.

Cox warned that adversaries are adopting new tactics, including machine learning and AI, to penetrate company defences. "A lot of companies today are still using correlation rules and old methods to actually identify what is abnormal and normal," he said. "There's still the old cyber threats, there's also a lot of challenges... with the adversary using machine learning and using AI to get into environments today."

Innovation pipeline and regional expansion

The future looks dynamic for Exabeam, both from a product perspective and in terms of regional focus. The firm has recently announced a new CEO, Mike DeCesare, whose brief is to oversee a rapid phase of growth and to prepare for a public listing in the next two years. "We've had a huge quarter," Cox noted. "We also took on a huge round of funding where we're really focusing in on building out our cloud platform. We've moved from a solution that was on-prem, we went to the cloud, and now we're moving all our innovation into the cloud."

This transition to the cloud is not just a technical migration but a strategic pivot. "Our view is you need to secure the cloud via the cloud," Cox explained. "Everyone's innovating in the cloud because it's faster, more efficient moving forward."

Regionally, Exabeam is gearing up for expansion. "We're going to be doing further expansion in APAC, looking at cloud focus-friendly countries," Cox said. "New Zealand is a great market - they've got a very cloud-first philosophy - so we're working and setting more business partners in New Zealand." The company has signed an exclusive distributor in the country and has similar efforts underway in Australia, Southeast Asia and Japan. Looking ahead, Cox envisions moves into India "probably in the next 12 months and building out teams up there too."

How to connect

For those in the Asia Pacific interested in Exabeam's offerings, Cox encourages engagement through channel partners. "The best way is to go to our website. On our website there it has the ability to request a demonstration and basically our sales teams would call up the user or the partner and get the right teams in touch," he explained. He highlighted the importance of local presence: "Also locally here we have a number of local partners that are on our website and distributors. In Australia, our distributor is ArchTIS, in New Zealand our distributor is Exclusive, and they also have the ability to facilitate meetings."

As the interview concluded, Cox reflected on the future, his excitement evident. "Our focus really is to move forward on innovation of the cloud, but when we look at our channel models, we're going to be doing further expansion in APAC," he said. "So, exciting times ahead."