Ban Ryong, director of PAGO Networks, said, "PAGO MDR is confident of South Korea and Southeast Asian market growth with differentiated technologies and strategies."
"We believe that it is the best methodology to respond to both the approach of the Pago MDR service and customer security issues."
RSAC 2024, the world's largest cybersecurity conference, was held from May 6-9 2024 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco with 40,000 information security officials and industry officials from 130 countries attending.
Daily Security met with Pago Networks (CEO Kwon Young-mok) and Ban Leong Ang director at RSAC 2024 to hear about Pago Networks’ differentiated technology and overseas business strategies.
Pago Networks currently has more than 400 customers from large, medium, and small businesses in various fields such as domestic energy, semiconductors, chemicals, food and beverage, retail, healthcare, and IT infrastructure suppliers.
In particular, most customers are introducing and utilizing the Pago premium MDR service "PAGO DeepACT" along with the introduction of EDR, NDR, and XDR products.Meanwhile, it established a corporation in Singapore on August 8, 2023, with confidence that the MDR platform business has a chance of winning overseas through overseas business feasibility studies from 2022, and has completed the establishment of a white labeling service partner system that can collaborate with five countries, including Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam.
Pago Networks is planning to expand its power around the Southeast Asian market by recently recruiting Ban Ryong, who has been engaged in global business activities for more than 20 years in the cyber security field.The following is an interview with Ban Ryong Director at the RSAC 2024 site.
■ How did you join Pago Networks?
"We believe that it is the best methodology for responding to customer security issues and the approach of Pago Networks to provide MR services."
As an MDR service company, Pago Networks plays a very positive role in the cybersecurity market. Whenever CEO Kwon Young-mok visited Singapore and other countries for the launch of the PAGO MDR ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) business over about two years from the first half of 2021, just after COVID-19, we always met to share and discuss numerous opinions.
Excluding other IT experiences personally, I have been working in the cyber security sector for more than 20 years and have experienced numerous partner companies and customer companies.
One of the ASEAN customers once said this:
"Why are security incidents constantly happening at customers when security companies are growing and solutions are increasing?"
I once thought this part very carefully and came to think that Pago Networks' approach to providing MDR services could be the best methodology to respond to customer issues together.
It is also true that government agencies in ASEAN countries are also concerned about the cybersecurity systems faced by companies that do not have sufficient budgets, resources, products, or technologies.
The PAGO MDR strategy does not only detect and respond to malicious codes using products, but also tracks the fundamental penetration process of malicious codes or malicious behaviors and suggests additional security countermeasures.
Of course, all threat investigation processes, and threat hunting processes are included.
Despite the recent introduction of AI-based security solutions by numerous customers, it is difficult to find examples of successful and good use of the product.
However, PAGO MDR's expert-based capabilities combine to help the AI-based security solutions introduced by customers work perfectly, and they see this part working quite positively in the market.
After understanding the PAGO MDR service's approach for about two years, they joined to help pioneer the ASEAN market together and solve practical security issues for customers.
■ How are you settling your PAGO MDR business in the ASEAN market?
"Expand the establishment of a suitable partner for each ASEAN country"
There are several countries with different cultures in the ASEAN market, and each country has a distinctly different market approach and different ways of forming business relationships.
I have been pioneering the ASEAN cybersecurity market from the perspective of various global vendor companies over the past 20 years, but I think it is a market that is difficult to access globally.
In this situation, there was a part that needed to be recognized first to pioneer the ASEAN market. It had to be pointed out that △ PAGO Networks is not a product reseller, but a service company. As a service company, expanding a new business to ASEAN is markedly different from the concept of general product export.
△ No one in the ASEAN market was aware of the existence of PAGO Networks.
It was also important to keep in mind that the size of the △ PAGO Networks company was not a global business company from the beginning, but a small company.
Despite being such a small and unknown company, I had to think about what to start with without any relationships with various customers in ASEAN countries and without corporate branding or service branding.
Accordingly, PAGO Networks' top mission was to establish a suitable partner for each ASEAN country.
Fortunately, I was able to meet a partner who was accurately aware of the understanding and necessity of MDR services. We have entered a very strategic partnership and are working closely with partners who have moved away from the existing sales method of providing only product reselling and maintenance and have embraced a change to providing clear and high-quality MDR services.
After understanding the PAGO MDR service's approach for about two years, they joined to help pioneer the ASEAN market together and solve practical security issues for customers.
■ What are the differentiating points of PAGO MDR services?
"Differentiate PAGO MDR, AI Brain + Human Expert Brain at the same time"
The MDR market is already causing a lot of confusion to customers. If you look around, all cybersecurity vendors provide MDR services.
It is a phenomenon similar to when concepts such as UTM, next-generation firewall, and XDR came out in the past. As such, it seems that it is a service that anyone can provide, but it is never easy to provide satisfactory services, and it is not easy to receive recognition from customers for proper services.
In RSAC 2024, many security companies promoted that they would provide MDR together, and it was confirmed that there were many independent MDR vendor booths.
Compared to several global security companies, PAGO MDR presents a strategy to simultaneously provide "AI Brain + Human Expert Brain" as a clear market position.
Although many MDR vendors have adopted a method of providing services while using existing security solutions, PAGO MDR is the beginning of a differentiation point by providing services such as threat analysis, validation, threat hunting, TI extraction/sharing, and threat communities by expert groups while providing optimal AI-based security solutions, EDR, NDR, and XDR.
■ How does PAGO MDR service secure expert manpower such as threat analysts in each country in order to expand in the ASEAN region?
"Automate Threat Detection and Response Processes…"Enhance MDR Service Partner Training Program"
First, PAGO MDR has invested heavily in automating internal threat detection and response processes over the past seven years. In other words, not all tasks depend solely on threat analysts.
This is evidenced by the fact that the PAGO MDR service is well maintained despite the fact that the number of Pago Networks threat analysts is significantly smaller compared to the actual increase in the number of customers.
In particular, scalability is very important in the service business, so there must be a way to respond flexibly even if the number of customers suddenly increases or the number of threats to deal with increases. This is the fundamental reason why PAGO MDR is investing in internal process automation to cope with this.
Second, we have established a PAGO MDR white labeling service partner system for each ASEAN country, and from the second half of 2023, we are providing MDR service partner training programs, not just product technology training. It is an educational program that contains all the experience of the past 7 years, and it is being implemented step by step for ASEAN partners.
Third, since I already experienced that there will be more demand for MDR services from customers in ASEAN countries, I decided to establish the PAGO ASEAN SOC/MDR Center directly to provide smooth support and fast service support system using English.
The location has been decided to be in the Philippines, where all personnel will also be hired in the Philippines and will play a pivotal role in the ASEAN PAGO MDR business.
★Information Security Representative Media Daily Security / Daily Secu, Korea's leading security media!★
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