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Forcepoint says the days of segmented cyber protection are numbered.

The global cybersecurity company, which prides itself on a "human-centric" approach, is rapidly rolling out a converged suite of products to simplify how organisations defend themselves in a world where users and data are everywhere.

Speaking with TechDay's managing editor Sarah, Forcepoint Australia Solutions Architect Matthew Band and Asia Pacific Strategic Business Director Nick Civites outlined the company's vision for securing modern businesses and why their newest offerings matter for IT managers in the region.

Forcepoint's foundation is clear: "Humans are the perimeter and solutions should support them," Civites said. That philosophy has shaped the company's core focus on user protection, data protection, and edge protection. But, as both experts explained, the approach has broadened and consolidated in recent years to meet shifting threats and customer expectations.

"Forcepoint's got a great portfolio of products," Civites explained. "People may know us for our web security gateway, for our next generation firewalls, for our data loss prevention and our insider threat offerings. But right now, what we have done and what we are doing is really consolidating these into platforms around data and user and network protection."

This drive towards integration is seen in Forcepoint's most recent innovations, such as the Dynamic Edge Protection suite and what Civites says is the world's first Secure Access Service Edge (SASE – pronounced "sassy") offering that takes behavioural analytics into consideration.

"We have a fantastic user protection portfolio and a fantastic set of network edge technologies that add really innovative methods for connecting sites and adding security to those," he said. "I think that Forcepoint has evolved a lot as a company and these offerings, these new offerings, are not just challenging the way that we approach the market but also the way our customers are building their networks and their systems for the future."

One example is Forcepoint's Cloud Security Gateway. "If you think about the way the industry has moved and the way we adopt and use technologies, people want their cloud security in the cloud," Civites said. "You want your proxy in the cloud, you want cloud access security broker (CASB), you want all of these things delivered in the cloud to protect your access to those cloud resources and the internet in general."

Forcepoint has bundled these traditionally disparate capabilities into a single product, the Cloud Security Gateway, giving organisations an "outcome" rather than just a technology. "When you buy into Forcepoint's SASE platform, you're actually getting that outcome as a whole," he said. "You get the CASB outcome, the ability to protect your cloud applications, protect your data in those cloud applications, web security you would expect from Forcepoint, advanced malware detection and sandboxing, and remote browser isolation for those who want that extra level of security."

As hybrid work patterns become entrenched, Band and Civites stressed that customers need more than just cloud protection. "Our customers want even more," Civites said. "They know they will still have a hybrid scenario for a long time; they will still have on-premises applications for a long time. So we're building the ability to take them from the cloud back into their environments – eliminating the need for a VPN so your user can work anywhere."

This vision culminates in Forcepoint Private Access, soon to be launched in Australia, which enables secure access to both cloud and on-premises applications from anywhere in the world without the complexity of legacy VPNs. "No matter where a user is, they can get access to those cloud resources, those internet resources, and micro-tunnel back into their on-premises applications," Civites said.

Critically, Forcepoint is also weaving in its heritage in behavioural analytics, which underpins its insider threat and data loss prevention solutions. "We're taking those and adding them in 2021 to that offering so that a customer not only is getting that network protection and that data protection, they're also getting user protection in a risk adaptive way across those platforms," Civites said.

Band, who works closely with Forcepoint customers in the region, has seen the enthusiasm first-hand. "I think the days of segmentation of technology are numbered and almost gone," he said. "The lines are blurred now from where users are storing information, where data is held. We're seeing a proliferation of data going to cloud applications and being sought on-premise, and users being able to work from anywhere and everywhere. So a converged platform, being able to tell a story back into an organisation where it's a simplified management platform, one place to go and control and look at your users from endpoint to network to cloud, is what we see as the way of the future."

Forcepoint's efforts are supported by significant investment in local infrastructure. Civites described a robust presence in the Asia Pacific region, with teams and partners across nearly every country, especially Australia and New Zealand. "We have professional services that can deliver our products and our outcomes to our customers," he said. "We really don't have any resource limitations in terms of delivery of our services and because we are a global organisation, we can even tap into our Americas and European teams for additional support as required."

Band emphasised Forcepoint's commitment to data sovereignty and full technical localisation: "We have localised data centres, built out here with full redundancy. Data sovereignty is obviously a significant factor for us as well, so everything is localised. From a technical perspective, we are fully localised," he said.

Civites added, "Not only have we made investments in cloud platforms like AWS and others, we're also expanding our local infrastructure in region. The way that we're building our services allows us to put them into any cloud and into telcos so that we can ensure we have the right performance, governance, policies, and data sovereignty for our customers."

For potential partners or end-users interested in working with Forcepoint, Civites said the process is straightforward. "For partners, it's really easy, reach out to your distributor. Same thing with customers – reach out to your partner. More than likely they'll have some way to get back into Forcepoint," he said. "You can always contact us through our website or through your local Forcepoint representative. There's phone numbers, forms, any way possible now to be contacted. I don't know if it's a blessing or a curse, but you can get in touch with anyone here very, very easily."

Looking ahead, both men believe converged, adaptive, and locally rooted cyber security solutions are the only way to keep pace with the rapidly changing digital landscape. As Band reflected, "What we're trying to bring to the market and what we've brought to the market successfully is the ability to converge all those into one successful and singular platform to deliver back to organisations of any size. So, we're pretty excited on the topic."