Famous personality in the security industry, Vishak Raman, has come back to mainstream security business. After quitting Fortinet, Raman was with Tata Communications.
In his new role at FireEye, he is designated as senior regional director for India and SAARC and will be based out of Bangalore. An industry veteran, Raman has worked for major security companies like WatchGuard and Fortinet. His career’s longest stint was with Fortinet—he was there for over a decade from 2003. He was senior regional director for India and SAARC when he quit in 2014 to join Tata Communications.
According to media reports, Cybersecurity company FireEye wanted a senior executive to drive the India business because Ramsunder Papineni quit in January 2016 after a three-year stint. He previously held leadership roles at WatchGuard Technologies as country manager.
“As India becomes increasingly connected with technology and its economy grows more reliant on intellectual property, cyber security has become a matter of national and economic security. Business leaders and governments across India are growing increasingly concerned by the significant risks posed by cyber-attacks,” said Eric Hoh, president for Asia Pacific and Japan, FireEye. “I have every confidence in Vishak’s leadership and his ability to further our mission, helping organizations in the region improve their cyber security,” he added.
“India’s cyber security is approaching a critical juncture, and FireEye is ideally positioned to strengthen our defenses with a combination of technology, expertise and threat intelligence,” Raman was quoted by a media publication.
During his stint in Fortinet, he set-up business in India, developed the business from ground Zero to 15,000 customer installations. He was also instrumental in having developed the channel strategy in India – signed up Tech pacific India (now Ingram Micro) in March 2004, appointed Tier-1 and Tier -2 Channels in India.
Before that at WatchGuard, he set-up Watchguard India office in November 2001 and developed the business from a small customer base of 6, with more than 200 customers in India. He also developed the WatchGuard Channel Strategy in India – Ingram Micro as master distributor with 30 Watchguard Secure Partners (WSP) spread across the country.