DT October Issue 2020 by Digital Terminal

MARKET PLAYERS ARE MUCH OPTIMISTIC ABOUT FESTIVE SEASON IN NEW NORMAL PAGE - 08

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MARKET PLAYERS ARE MUCH OPTIMISTIC ABOUT FESTIVE SEASON IN NEW NORMAL Publisher & Editor : Rajeev Ranjan Executive Editor : Jyoti Janda Assistant Content Manager : Jai Prakash Content Coordinator : Suraj Rawat Office Coordinator : Raju Thapa Consulting Art Direction : Vikas Sharma Visualiser : Akriti Arora Production Head : Rajiv Singh

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Marketing Executive : Balvinder Singh

PAGE NO - 06 Acer Launches New Range Of Laptops, Powered By 11th Gen Intel Core Processor

BRAND FOCUS

PAGE NO - 19 Kaspersky Collaborates With Hasbro India For Its Consumer Campaign

FEATURE STORY

OPINION

PAGE NO - 22 7 IT Security Best Practices for Organisations in The New Normal Authored by Sunil Sharma, Managing DirectorSales, India & SAARC, Sophos

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Organizations Need to Redraw Cybersecurity Strategy in New Normal

I OCTOBER 2020

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ACER LAUNCHES NEW RANGE OF LAPTOPS, POWERED BY 11TH GEN INTEL CORE PROCESSOR

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Intro Acer has introduced five new laptops based on 11th Gen Intel Core Processor. The laptops are designed to support the tech enthusiasts and professionals to have a best user experience. These newly launched laptops come equipped with top notch features that boost the productivity. ACER unveiled a range of laptops with the latest 11th Gen Intel processors aimed at consumers looking power-packed performance in an ultra-thin stylish design. Acer is the first brand in India to launch the 11th Generation Intel Core platform laptops on the Intel Evo platform and first to launch with Intel revolutionary discrete graphics – Intel Xe Max based laptop. The new laptops by Acer powered by 11th Gen Intel® Core™ processors brings together ultra-thin chassis, stylish metal design, industry-leading CPU performance, immersive graphics, amazing AI acceleration, and best-in-class wired and wireless connectivity to help users focus, create, and connect at new levels. It also features like an instant wake, powerful graphics performance with Intel Iris Xe graphics, all-day battery life that can be fast charged, feature best-in-class wireless, and wired connectivity with Thunderbolt™ 4 and Intel® Wi-Fi 6 and deliver an outstanding audio with DTS sound and display to make each experience superior. Speaking on the occasion Mr. Sudhir Goel, Chief Business Officer, Acer India, stated, “Keeping up with the growing PC demand, 6

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Acer has always gone the extra mile to bring the best technology first to market for our customers. Our laptops powered by 11th Gen Intel Core Processor represent a significant leap forward in performance, responsiveness, and usability for our customers who wants to blend work, life, and passion-projects on-the-go. With added safety features like ant-microbial coating we offer a safer computing experience as well.” Prakash Mallya, VP & MD – Sales, Marketing & Communications Group, Intel India said, “The latest 11th Gen Intel Core processors are the best laptop processors we have built to maximize real-world performance on applications and features people use the most. Whether it’s productivity, rich collaboration, content creation, gaming or entertainment, 11th Gen Intel Core powered laptops with the Intel Iris Xe graphics engine offer groundbreaking capabilities that provide superior support to users through their day. Intel® Evo™ verified designs raise the bar for laptop experiences through remarkable responsiveness, battery life, performance and connectivity.”

SWIFT 5 (SF514-55T) SPECIFICATIONS: PORTABLE SOPHISTICATION WITH ANTIMICROBIAL PROPERTIES The Acer Swift 5 ultra-thin and-light laptop comes with an elegant design, powerful performance and anti-microbial coating for added protection. Powered by 11th Gen Intel Core processors and verified to meet the requirements of an Intel Evo platform, the Swift 5 has the power and www.digitalterminal.in

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performance to effortlessly run demanding applications and provides up to 17 hours of battery life for all-day productivity. The premium magnesium-lithium and magnesium-aluminum chassis are durable yet lightweight; it weighs around just 1 kg. The specially intended hinge elevates the device when the screen is opened, which enhances ergonomics while typing, provides better thermal performance, and keeps the focus on the vibrant 14-inch Full HD display. In addition, take full advantage of the plentiful array of ports such as USB-C™, Thunderbolt 4 and USB3.2 Gen 2 for fast data transfer and power delivery. The Swift 5’s touchscreen display is covered with a layer of Antimicrobial Corning® Gorilla® Glass, which has been specially formulated to reduce the growth of microorganisms.

and at 58.7Wh it’s capable of lasting for up

Price starts from Rs 67,999 onwards ASPIRE 5 SPECIFICATIONS: BREEZE THROUGH TASKS AND EASILY MAKE EDITS

to 17.5 hours. In cases of emergency, Swift 3 X can also be fast-charged to provide 4-hours of use for just 30 minutes of charge time. Price starts from Rs 79,999 onwards

Price starts from Rs 79,999 onwards SWIFT 3 X SPECIFICATIONS: DISRUPT THE STATUS QUO WITH THE POWERFUL PERFORMANCE The new Swift 3X is powered by 11th Gen Intel® Core™ processor and the revolutionary Intel® Iris® Xe MAX graphics allows consumers to do graphics intensive tasks like photo and video editing and play modern games with high FPS. It features multiple cooling modes, accessible via easy shortcut keys, dual heat pipes, and a devicelifting hinge, all combine to further enhance the laptop’s performance. It brings images and videos to life in the 72% NTSC color gamut through the use of a narrow bezel, offering up an 84% screen-to-body ratio, users see more of the 14-inch FHD IPS screen. With Acer ExaColor™ and Acer Color Intelligence™, it lessens the Eye strain and improved colors. Also, take full advantage of the plentiful array of ports such as USB-C™, Thunderbolt 4, and USB 3.2 Gen 2 port for fast data transfer and power delivery. Plugin another display via HDMI 2.0 for additional screen real estate. Also, Swift 3 X quickly connect to wireless networks with the latest tech via 2x2 MU-MIMO Wi-Fi 6 (802.11 AX) and Bluetooth 5.1. For spending all day on the move requires a large battery,

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backlit keyboard, utilize fast and reliable SSD storage and support up to Up to 1TB PCIe Gen 3 x 4 SSD memory. Besides, they support Windows Hello via a fingerprint reader for easy and more secure logins.

SWIFT 3 SPECIFICATIONS: PERFORMANCE AND PORTABILITY IN TWO DIFFERENT DISPLAY CHOICES Offering a balance between performance and design, two models in the Acer Swift 3 line is powered by new 11th Gen Intel Core processors and certified as an Intel Evo platform laptop design. Both the laptops come with a sleek metal chassis, the latest technology including Intel Iris Xe graphics and Thunderbolt™ 4. With Wi-Fi 6 (Gig +) users can enjoy a fast and reliable Internet connection for a true wire free experience. The new Acer Swift 3 (SF313-53) expands viewing with a vibrant 13.5-inch display and a 3:2 aspect ratio for 18% more vertical viewing display. The Swift 3 (SF313-53) delivers up to 16 hours of battery life for more than all-day productivity. The second variant features an ultra-thin and stylish design, the new Acer Swift 3 (SF314-59) has an aluminum chassis and a magnesium-aluminum palm rest for premium feel. The Swift 3’s ultra-narrow bezels up to 5 mm enhance the compact frame and provide a screen-to-body ratio of up to 82.73 percent, keeping the focus on the vibrant images on the Full HD 14-inch

The new Aspire 5 comes with a choice of colors and the slim 17.95mm body projects a ultra-modern look and has an ergonomic hinge design which increases airflow on the underneath. The Acer Aspire 5 is powered by the latest 11th Gen Intel® Core™ processors to address diverse computing needs and experiences. It comes with NVIDIA® GeForce® MX350 discrete graphics. The Acer Aspire 5 is easy on the users’ eyes irrespective of whether it being used for surfing, watching content, or for work. Its narrow-bezel design provides plenty of screens so you can focus on what’s in front of you with its Full-HD 14-inch IPS panel using advanced technologies like Acer’s Color Intelligence™ and eye care feature Acer BlueLightShield™. It can easily stay connected with a full range of connectivity options. The new Aspire 5 also features dual-band Wi-Fi 61 (802.11ax) improves the average network throughput by up to 3 times and reduces latency by up to 75% compared to Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac). Users have plenty of power and storage to carry out their tasks with up to1TB M.2 PCIe SSD and up to 2TB HDD. Price starts from Rs 54999 onwards

AVAILABILITY The latest Acer laptops powered by 11th gen Intel Core processors will be available to purchase from Acer e-store from November 1st week onwards. Customers can purchase from our online store by visiting the link https://store.acer.com/en-in/new-launches or our Acer exclusive stores, Flipkart, Amazon and other multi- brand outlets. Reliance Digital will be the exclusive launch partner in the large format retailer category for Acer laptops powered by 11th Gen Intel Core processors.

display. Both new Swift 3 models have a

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COVER STORY

MARKET PLAYERS ARE M ABOUT FESTIVE SEASON I Like every year, the festive season comes with a lot of hopes, excitement, joy and the most important, growth opportunities for businesses. This year too, the market players are very excited about this festive season. In the year 2020, the market lost crucial businesses due to lockdown in last two quarters. Even the buying pattern and demand saw a huge shift in all verticals. Brands are seeing this festive season as a big opportunity to accelerate their growth and are knocking on the market with good market strategies in association with channel partners. Also, work from home (WFH) and learn from home (LFH) segments have emerged as big opportunities for brands. Somewhere, the sudden surge in the demand for technology products is derived from these two segments. Hence the brands are coming up with lucrative offers on those products that are essential to set up the working/learning environment at home. In line with knowing more about the market landscape, buying trends and strategies to push growth during this festive season, DT interacted with leading tech brands. They elaborated upon the overall market operations as well as the growth prospects during Q4 2020. Check out the take of all brands in the story ahead.

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COVER STORY

MUCH OPTIMISTIC IN NEW NORMAL

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COVER STORY

ASUS IS VERY OPTIMISTIC ABOUT SALES DURING FESTIVE SEASON

ACER ASSURES TO SERVE ITS CUSTOMERS DURING THE FESTIVE SEASON

Taking note of current pandemic situation as we are still vulnerable and this will continue long way. So, we all should be very cautious during current time to stay safe from getting infected. “This year the festive season would be about exercising caution and staying indoors as much as possible. I salute everyone’s enthusiasm in such times of adversity. We are optimistic that sales will be bullish and positive. Growth has been great and the uptrend continues even during this pandemic and amidst the lockdown. We anticipate a growth of 10% YoY and will continue to churn out consumer centric and innovative products to the end consumers. We are certain with such a diverse and constant flow of product offerings the brand recall will be high. We have stepped up our digital marketing strategy aggressively since the start of the lockdown and that has proven to be extremely beneficial,” said VINAY SHETTY,

The IT industry has gained a quite healthy growth momentum in the past few months and technology brands are started getting good traction. The market is also expected to get acceleration in this festive season and brands have a lot of plans to capitalize on the opportunities. In a conversation with DT, SANJEEV

REGIONAL DIRECTOR – COMPONENTS BUSINESS, INDIA AND SOUTH ASIA, ASUS while interacting with DT.

we are expecting the momentum to continue with some exciting launches around the corner as PCs have become an essential device. Before it was a shared device now it has become an individual device like a mobile phone as learning, working, etc have moved online. We are seeing good sales across our channels. The conversions are much higher as we see more in-market audiences coming to the store. People are also preferring to buy higher-end and premium laptops as they prefer more powerful thinner laptops. Like every year, during this festive season and coming months also we are optimistic that momentum will continue.”

CHANNEL PLANS FOR CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT

CHANNEL STRATEGY FOR OND QUARTER

The channel partners will have a very important role to play during this festive season and the brands aligning with their channel partners to capitalize upon each opportunity. “We have been working closely with our channel partners who are working offline – and ensuring the footfall is consistent and arranging a lot of demo units for our products for the customers to have a look and feel. We continue to execute trainings and product based promotions since we cater to various verticals in the market from B2B and B2C. We categorically insist that all our partners follow strict COVID 19 precautions of social distancing and sanitization are followed. We also encourage partners to leverage our website and video collateral available on our social platforms to share it with their partners before they make a decision to purchase a product,” commented by Vinay.

The channel partners remain the key of business growth and work as an integral part of the ecosystem for Acer. They are the mainstay of the fourth ‘P’ of marketing i.e. “Place”. Partners are an extended arm of brand Acer to promote its products and services to end customers. On the support front for partners, Sanjeev stated, “As a channel friendly partner, we always try to bring innovative partner programs for our channel partners to get robust understandings into the technologies, product design, etc. To educate our channel partners, we run coherent and strong partner programs to cover them for the changing consumer needs, market changing aspects, and educating them on Acer products.”

CONSUMER TREND In the current situation of pandemic, the customers are moving towards online shopping and are avoiding to visit the offline stores. The offline channel partners are looking up to their vendors for adequate support in this scenario. Briefing about their support to offline partners, Vinay Shetty, ASUS said, “That’s correct, most users in the current situation prefer shopping online. However, looking at the online trend in the market we see the purchase pattern hasn’t changed much from Sept 2020. We are encouraging offline partners to drive their business online and are extending all our marketing and sales support. Helping partners to create a basic website like an information site to indicate presence of their physical shop when a customer tries to look them up on Google. We have a number of programs and online product trainings to facilitate and support our offline and traditional channel partners. Our sales team also support with leads generated online and assist with closure. Should the respective partner need to conduct business offline, we have provided masks and emphasize on strict safety norms to be followed. Adapting to change during this pandemic has proven vital for a business to thrive.”

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MEHTANI, COUNTRY MANAGER – SALES, ACER INDIA said, “At Acer,

“At Acer, we have introduced the Omni-Channel experience for our customers to provide a seamless path to purchase and serve better across channels. Our Omni Channel experience is specially devised to cater to the requirements of our Acer Exclusive retail partners in the current COVID-19 scenario. It is Acer’s first step towards a longer-term Omni-channel strategy. This unique initiative is built to safeguard ease of purchase, keep partners and customers safe, and promote business continuity. Along with our ecosystem of partners, we serve up to 20K plus pin codes through our e-store. Through this service, we also have introduced contactless home delivery solutions from partners to our customers. We are also catering to a lot of business customers to get them critical IT infrastructure to keep the business running” added Sanjeev Mehtani, Acer.

CONSUMER BUYING TRENDS The pandemic has changed the shopping behaviour of customers to an extent and tech brands have already evaluated this shift. Commenting on this shift, Sanjeev said, “I believe, both online and offline shopping are equally important, and are a large portion of customers still prefer retail purchase with touch and feel. Shelf room is as important as an e-store, and we feel both will play a vital role in our growth. As a brand, we need to be present where customer likes to shop and with our exclusive stores, partner stores, brand e-store, and e-commerce partners.” www.digitalterminal.in

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“Though the pandemic has affected the shopping habits at least in the short-term and some of the trends have been fast-forwarded in the past few months. Now with the festive coming and the mood of the nation lifting, I expect the purse strings to loosen and customers coming back into the shops more. I also see more conversions happening as the more in-market audience come to shops. At Acer, we operate both e-commerce, as well as physical stores, and move from a multi-channel to Omnichannel strategy by fast-tracking technology projects that integrate and present a ‘Phygital’ option. It allows customers the choice of the shop- online-pick up-instore, shop online, and exchange or returns in-store easily. With PC adoption going up and acceleration of remote work and learn we will see a distributed workforce and economy which can drive festive sales in smaller towns as well. We are assured that we will be able to serve our customers during the festive season,” concluded by Sanjeev.

WE ARE POSITIVE THAT THE FESTIVE SEASON WILL HELP BRING REVIVAL: BOULT AUDIO Amid Pandemic, consumption pattern has significantly changed, people have embraced e-commerce to shop and have prioritized safety and convenience. This has helped brands to increase their online presence. Boult Audio has been also aggressive in reaching to large customer base by offering quality products across all channel. To know more Boult Audio’s market plan, we interacted recently with VARUN GUPTA, CHIEF ARCHITECT, BOULT AUDIO. In this discussion, he said, “Boult Audio has a sharp focus on the Indian market, and we entered the Indian market in 2017 with the strategy to provided best audio products in affordable price. We are associated with India’s leading online platforms i.e. Amazon, Flipkart and others. Partnering with these leading channel goes beyond sales, as we work with them closely to understand the demand trends, product feedback and most importantly understanding the customer. Today, the consumer is moving towards digital medium to fulfil their needs.” Varun further added, “The festive season is going to be bustling with newer and greater possibilities. Lot of brands have started working on their advertising and digital campaigns, In order to leverage the India’s biggest event – IPL, Boult Audio is using leading platforms such as Hotstar, Facebook and Google to directly connect with the consumer and expand the reach. The campaign is to build a connection between the brand and the consumer. Moreover, the promotion is to highlight the key message of the brand through this mega event. The current quarter is important for us and we are trying to maximize the impact.”

PLANS FOR DRIVING GROWTH Boult Audio has been a strong player in the Indian market and this festive season, Boult Audio seems very optimistic about the growth opportunities. “We are positive that the festive season will

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help bring revival and add to the revenues significantly. Driven by the positive consumer sentiment and a gradual uptick in demand for value-based products, we are expecting substantial growth in sales this year. We have planned few engagement activities such as #GetSetBoultChallenge, this the social media activity which was kick-started by our Brand Ambassador Vicky Kaushal, leading to an avalanche of out of the box videos and content pieces coming from celebrities, influencers and end customers. We have already been receiving very interesting User Generated Content with customers from all over the country participating in the challenge. Besides this, we are closely working with different art communities for cocreating content with a goal to produce top quality and never seen before campaigns,” said by Varun.

CONSUMER BUYING PATTERN Talking about the shift in the buying pattern of consumers post lockdown, Varun said, “Boult Audio’s presence is across all leading online platforms. This is the strategic decision we took before introducing the brand to the consumer. The current situation has completely changed the consumption pattern. Consumers now prefer safe, hygienic, and contactless routes, resulting in increased usage of e-commerce portals which offers convenience and safety. Therefore, our efforts are focused on building a robust online channel to drive sales as well as we have been consistently upgrading channel to provide a better experience.”

ECS ANTICIPATES BIGGER & BETTER DEMAND FOR ITS PRODUCTS & SOLUTIONS Post lockdown brands have come very aggressively to capitalize new opportunities where we saw increase of demand across all verticals. While talking to DT,

RAJSHEKHAR BHATT, COUNTRY MANAGER INDIA, ECS said, “First

and foremost over all India is coming to terms with new lifestyle because of COVID-19, tailwind effect is resulted in increase in demand for ICT products during this time. Every year during festival times we do see demand for all goods increasing. Also people have realised the role of technology during this lockdown and continuity of WFH & LFH will bring bigger and better demand for our products & solutions this year.”

CHANNEL PLANS FOR OND ECS has always been a core traditional partners company who have helped the brand in establishing huge channel network across all region. “Offline is an integral part of our business & key element for our growth in India. We welcome all partners across India who wants to sell something different. We have added more partners since Unlock phases started after lockdown. We directly stay connected with partner through phone or virtual meeting platform, brief them about our products and arrange demo for their customers too so that orders are closed at ease. We offer all possible support like case locking, SPC, demo arrangement, warranty support etc to keep their interest & faith in our brands,” concluded by Rajshekhar. OCTOBER 2020 I

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SEAGATE COMMITTED TO DELIVER THE BEST-IN-CLASS STORAGE SOLUTIONS TO CUSTOMERS IN INDIA Seagate offers a wide gamut of storage solutions to help users to store and protect their precious moments captured during the festive season. They believe in maximizing data’s potential and in this festive season they are maximizing happiness for their customers in India. In a chat with DT, SAMEER

BHATIA, DIRECTOR ASIA PACIFIC, CONSUMER BUSINESS GROUP AND COUNTRY MANAGER FOR SAARC & INDIA, SEAGATE TECHNOLOGY said, “Our customers are at the heart

of everything we do at Seagate Technology – from designing solutions to delivering best-in-class functionalities and customer support. Backed by our robust partner network in India, we continue to address their burgeoning demand for smart and secure data management solutions by bringing to market innovative technologies that will meet evolving business and consumer needs. We have worked out offers with all our channel partners, both online as well as offline and customers will have a choice of buying their favourite storage product from the channel of their choice. In order to serve our customers better, a lot of our focus continues to be on being close to our partners, understanding their needs and enabling them with the right set of knowledge and tools, so that they can keep pace with the latest products and offerings and serve our end customers with right set of products.”

CHANNEL PLANS TO DRIVE GROWTH Talking about the channel plans for OND quarter, Sameer said, “Our marketing initiatives have always been focused towards empowering our partners and distributors to enable them with the right set of knowledge and tools. Our partners are essential to our success in the Indian market and it is through their support that our customers get access to the latest and greatest innovations in data storage and management from Seagate. We are committed to improving their businesses, and delivering compelling results of Seagate’s full suite of enterprise and consumer data solutions. With the growing business opportunities, our focus continues to be on engaging with the partners and distributors network. Our channel ecosystem continues to grow in numbers and reach as we better understand evolving opportunities in the current market scenario and double down on our efforts to engage with our partners and customers more closely than ever.” “We offer lots of training programs to our channel partners to achieve the above objectives, which are aligned with the latest IT industry trends and channel practices in India. We organise activities for our partners to address the right audience and customers, including participation in trade shows. We trust that, going forward in Q4 2020, these activities and our efforts will continue to help strengthen our position as a market leader in the storage, software and system industries, while enhancing our channel growth rapidly” added by Sameer.

COMMITTED TO MAKE A BALANCE

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Seagate is committed to deliver the best-in-class storage solutions to their customers in India, both online and offline. “Our partners play an essential role towards engaging with customers and ensuring we have a good understanding of their strategy and future plans. This equips us with the knowledge and insights to more effectively assess their needs and deliver the solutions and technology that they need to succeed, especially in today’s highly competitive business environment. Our focus is to align with our channel partners, online as well as brick and mortar stores, to deliver the industry’s best performing drives that offer higher capacity, unparalleled reliability, and help in maintaining a high degree of data integrity. Through our program Seagate Champions, we are helping partners sharpen their skills and get rewarded as they connect with a worldwide community of knowledge-seekers. As part of the initiative, partners can engage with Seagate through innovative and engaging tips, tricks, trainings and tools,” said by Sameer.

WE DO EXPECT A SURGE IN THE DEMAND OVER THE 2019: TP-LINK The year 2020 has been a very challenging than ever as COVID19 pandemic posed serious challenges for the organizations. However, the festive season is here and market players anticipates good business during this phase. “The upcoming festive season is going to be a bit different than the previous years. We need to have a daily learning strategy on the sales trend as in the past the lockdown has got the customer to react and have an impulse buy on electronics especially on routers. We do expect a surge in the demand over the 2019 year and are focusing more on the digital space for the brand awareness,” said BIJOY ALAYLO, VICE PRESIDENT – CHANNEL

SALES, TP-LINK INDIA PVT. LTD.

BUSINESS PLANS FOR FESTIVE SEASON The market landscape is quite changed this year and technology brands are working on building strong market plans with their channel partners. Bijoy Alaylo, TP-Link India says, “Since the reliance is more on digital mode of promotion hence we would be rolling out some online contests and also keep updating our channel about the new introductions for the consumers. Currently knowledge about the different types of solutions we can provide in networking is the best support any brand can give its channel, as there is a heavy surge in the sales and people are looking out for the best solutions in this space. So the channel partner who can guide the customer to the solution are the ones who will eventually make a good business.”

SUPPORT FOR PARTNERS “Online shopping has grown no doubt due to the lockdown restrictions. But overall the business surge is so huge that now after exiting the lockdown the channel partners can make up their lost ground faster. We are continuously into the endeavour to bifurcate the products which are available only offline and vice-versa. This helps the channel to keep their margins intact and still having an edge over the online competitors. Still keeping the facts clear is that people in the electronics space like to rely on their shop next door as faster service and troubleshooting is the need of the hour. Routers are becoming the next “mobile” as nobody can wait for the internet to be down for a moment and it’s an ultra-necessary commodity” stated Bijoy Alaylo, TP-Link India. www.digitalterminal.in

COVER STORY

AVITA ANTICIPATES 3X GROWTH IN SALES & OVERALL SURGE IN BRAND AWARENESS The festive season is always considered as a growth accelerator for market as customers wait for this time to buy their required products as brand comes up with exciting offers. While sharing the plans for festive season, Seema Bhatnagar,

REGIONAL BUSINESS DIRECTOR (SOUTH ASIA) AND COUNTRY GENERAL MANAGER (INDIA) – NEXSTGO COMPANY LIMITED

commented, “In a bid to leverage the market-friendly festive season, we are introducing an all-new laptop series packed with the latest specifications featuring a zero-cost EMI for our customers. During this auspicious quarter, we anticipate a 3x growth in sales and an overall surge in brand awareness thanks to our increasing sales numbers and brand acceptability. In concurrence with the present times, our social media engagements have also risen drastically and we are currently addressing business queries from our various trade partners across India.”

MARKET STRATEGY FOR Q4 For Q4 2020, Avita is aspiring towards a comprehensive brand expansion. “The focus remains on introducing lucrative consumer schemes such as no-cost EMI and Avita product-bundling. We wish to generate more brand awareness by initiating experiential marketing techniques for our customers to extend them a hands-on pre-purchase experience with each product. As Avita is a lifestyle brand, we are looking to achieve a strategic integration with the lifestyle industry. For our offline channels, the brand intends to launch a series of novel and affordable laptop ranges with highend specifications. We also seek to further augment our brand by creating an exclusive store network and adding 10-15 stores by the end of FY 2020,” stated by Seema.

SUPPORT FOR PARTNERS Avita’s core channel strategy has always remained channel centric which helped them establishing their feet across major market in India. Sharing more on channel strategy, Seema said, “We understand the contemporary market dynamics and evolving consumer consciousness. We also respect the essential thought behind every product purchase made by our customers. Therefore, we have appropriately differentiated our various products in terms of their pricing, specifications, and customer offerings for both the online and offline channels. This gives our various partners the confidence and comfort required to make high-sales bets for Avita laptops. We are dedicated to providing effective and efficient customer service to build the trust of our brands various channel partners. This grants them the incentive to further recommend our products to their clientele. We also strive to support our partners with exciting product offerings which help them increase their profits through higher sales-margins.”

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DIGISOL HAS TAKEN VARIOUS INITIATIVES TO ENGAGE AND EMPOWER PARTNERS The festive season has brought a joy in the market and businesses are trying to get their lost growth momentum during this quarter.

SARVESH MISHRA, HEAD OF SALES & MARKETING, DIGISOL SYSTEMS

said, “Festive season is around the corner but the things are a bit different as the ways and means, we do business have changed drastically this year. We have been seeing tremendous growth in our business especially for our FTTH line of products. As the majority of people are working from home, it has been captured that data demand from residences arose which further opened doors for Fiber to the Home products and solutions. We will introduce schemes to drive sales this festive season and announce offers on our various product segments. On marketing front, we will be running Festive campaigns to drive brand awareness and business growth. We hope that our scheme & offers will usher this joyous occasion for all our partners.”

PLANS TO DRIVE GROWTH The market players are bringing out the best offers and deals to drive growth in this festive season. The market competition is very much tough and it requires huge efforts to make things flow in the right direction. Sarvesh stated, “We will be introducing various schemes for Channel Partners and System Integrators for Q 4. Under our Digisol Cash Karo Loyalty program for Electrician & Installers we will be launching various offers that will help Electricians win rewards. Apart from offers, our focus is around empowering our partners, System Integrators, and ISPs by educating them on IT Networking trends, our products, and future technologies like FTTH, Wi-Fi 6, 5G, etc through Digisol Institute of Technical Training. Thus, we have been conducting various online training under DITT- Digisol Institution of Technical Training. Talking about offline partners, we have been interacting with channel partners across India and trying to understand their requirements post unlock. We have been offering them support by conducting marketing activities in their region and will be continue doing the same in order to acquire new customers, and drive sales.”

PARTNER ENGAGEMENT ACTIVITIES “The pandemic has accelerated the shift towards digital world however I believe there have been a chunk of customers who still prefer buying offline. Especially, when we come to big projects and bulk buying, end customers prefers buying through offline partners. We have presence both online and offline, in order to make it easier to build relationships with our existing and potential Customers. Our channel partners have always been our backbone and with their extensive support and trust towards the brand, today Digisol has become of the most preferred IT Networking brand in the industry. We have been working closely with them to explore untapped opportunities by training them, offering schemes and offers to encourage them. Being a channel focused brand, Digisol has taken various initiatives to engage and empower partners” commented by Sarvesh.

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COVER STORY

WESTERN DIGITAL FESTIVE SEASON CONSUMER OFFER IS AVAILABLE FOR ALL RETAIL PARTNERS Festive season brings a lot of opportunities for brands and predominantly it decides how the calendar year will be concluded. While sharing the expectations and plans for the OND quarter,

JAGANATHAN CHELLIAH, DIRECTOR – MARKETING FOR INDIA, WESTERN DIGITAL

CORPORATION said, “To ensure we get the best out of this festive season, which is very important period for consumers when it comes to the perchance of gadgets and gizmos, we have rolled our exciting offers across WD and SanDisk brands. We have introduced special consumer promotion to reward their purchase on leading ecommerce platforms and with our channel partners. As a part of the bonanza offers, consumers can avail benefit on WD External storage line up- My Passport (2 TB and above), WD Elements (2 TB and above), My Book, My Book Duo, My Cloud Home, My Cloud Home Duo, My Cloud EX2 Ultra, My Cloud EX4100, My Cloud PR4100 (all 2TB and above), My Passport SSD (500 GB and above) and on all SanDisk products of 128GB & above capacity. Consumers can buy products on Amazon.in immediately and also on Flipkart, Tata Cliq from 16th October, 2020.”

Jaganathan added, “Further to the extensive festive offers, we are also giving consumers an opportunity to win a HP Envy Laptop every week till 15th March 2021. All they need to do is, buy a WD or SanDisk product, share their story around ‘back up your digital life’ for WD products and for SanDisk ‘share your happy memories’ story on the microsites of WD and SanDisk. Through these festive offers, we aim to empower the consumers by helping them live their digital lives to the fullest. During this festive season, we expect to see a good demand for all category of storage. The current environment has accelerated the pace of digitization and we are also witnessing new trends such as uptake of gaming, working from anywhere, surge in content creation, smart videos and video security to name a few. These have trends have given raise to the demand for storage. We continue to make our presence felt in the storage category by focusing on contextual marketing. We are actively engaging with our consumers through our various social media platforms to initiate meaningful conversations with customers through interactive activities.”

CHANNEL PROMOTION PLANS “The festive season consumer offer is available on all our offline retail partners for both WD and SanDisk. On our client SSD and surveillance products, we have introduced special rewards programs for our channel partners to take advantage of the consumer demand and grow their business. We are also running exciting contests and training initiatives to prepare the channel partners for this season. We have gaming channel initiatives to reward partners to help consumers choose the best offering under Western Digital SSDs,” revealed by Jaganathan.

SUPPORT FOR CHANNEL PARTNERS Jaganathan Chelliah, Western Digital Corporation commented, 14

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“Channel partners are a strategic asset for us, and a natural extension of our business. We have an integrated channel marketing strategy designed basis three pillars: Education, Reward, and Engagement. To educate our channel partners, we run consistent and robust partner programs to armour them for the changing consumer needs, market dynamics, and educating them on Western Digital products and solutions. We value what the Channel partners bring to our organisation and run significant channel reward initiatives. For example, SanDisk League of Heroes, Western Digital Elite Partner Promo, and myWD™ Partner Program are some of our reward programs. We also run different programs like TechTalk- an app-based training module for channel partners, and WhatsApp business platform to engage with channel partners to address newer opportunities emerging in the current environment. Thereby, becoming more capable of creating more demand for partners to grow their business quickly.” “We recently organized our annual Partner Summit – our largest customer event, conducted virtually this year – designed to engage and interact with our channel partners (National Distributors, T2, T3 and retailers) across all business segments. This highly engaging event offered an immersive experience and was attended by over 1400 partners. The event featured eight interactive virtual stalls, four on consumer business and four on Devices, to offer a first-hand experience of our vast product portfolio. Our consumer promotion is rolled out 8000 retail partners in mobile and PC retail category,” concluded by Jaganathan.

RP TECH FORESEES STRONG DEMAND FOR NOTEBOOKS HEADSETS & WEB CAMERAS RP tech is one of the largest distributors for all top brands who sell their products or solution across Indian market. As the market has fully opened after months of lockdown, the market is witnessing a shift in the buying trends due to emergence of new segment. In a recent chat with DT,

RAJESH GOENKA, DIRECTOR, SALES AND MARKETING, RP TECH India said, “While the festive season is approaching, the

IT industry is still in the process of fulfilling the demands for Work from Home (WFH) and Learn from Home (LFH) solutions. As the Central and State governments are now contemplating to re-open educational institutes, the demand for IT products and related accessories is expected to surge in the coming months. Therefore, the fulfilment of this demand will be the priority of the industry. The festive season will surely trigger the demand for IT products. We foresee high demand for notebooks, headsets and web cameras among other IT solutions during this festive season.”

DISTRIBUTION MARKET LANDSCAPE “This is the first festive season approaching after the months-long lockdown and we are very bullish over the business prospects. Significantly, the festivities will trigger the sense of optimism among people and encourage them to spend money. We are ready to fulfil the demand and we have enough inventory and logistics to ensure timely delivery of products to channel partners through our

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COVER STORY

robust network of 50 branch offices spread across India,” confirmed by Rajesh.

SUPPORT FROM VENDORS Talking about the support from vendors during this festive season, Rajesh added, “As I always emphasis on, business is incomplete without the active participation of vendors, distributors, channel partners and end-customers. All four stakeholders complete the ecosystem of the IT hardware business in India. We are in sync with our vendors and channel partners and we hope that this festive season will trigger huge demand from end customers.”

PLANS TO OVERCOME CHALLENGES While it is a harsh reality that the COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect our lives, the Government’s intensive measures has narrowed down its spread across the country. As the economy is slowly coming back on the track and businesses are opening up, we do not see major impact of the pandemic. Rajesh Goenka, RP tech India said, “We faced several logistical challenges during the month of April, May and June due to restrictions on physical movement and transportation. But the situation has now improved a lot. India’s logistical compliance is almost 90 per cent of the peak level that was a pre-COVID period, hence, we do not see any major challenges in business execution. Lastly, digital payments are on the upswing and it is adding more efficiency to the ecosystem.”

OUR AIM WILL BE TO END THE YEAR IN A POSITIVE NOTE: MSI Diwali is one the most celebrated & cherished festivals of India. It’s also a time when brands bring out the best deals on the table. Today’s consumer has more access to technology than ever before with a constant search for better deals & MSI has something for everyone this festive season. “With 35% discount on our extended portfolio of products coupled with bundle offers, we have left no tables unturned to bring a smile and a sense of satisfaction to our customers. Promotions & branding go hand in hand, we believe in nurturing young talent and providing them a platform. With the same aim in mind our “Save time for your loved one” Diwali video has been created by a young talent who took part in our creator awards. We have campaigns running on 3 major airports (Delhi, Mumbai & Bangalore) and a lot of technical content in various forms be it articles or infographics on our socials. The aim is to help our audience understand how MSI has revolutionised technology that fits their needs,” commented SHIVANGI BHADAURIA, PR & MARKETING EXECUTIVE, MSI while interacting with DT.

STRATEGIES TO SUPPORT GROWTH As the customers have started to visit the market for festive season shopping, the market players are aligning with their partners to understand the market and changed buying behaviour of the customers. “MSI will continue to bring to its customer the best in class technology from affordable thin & light laptops to the most

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powerful beast in town. For Q4 our aim will be to end the year in a positive note with lucrative deals that our consumers cannot resist both online & offline. In order to support our channel partners, we have secret bundle offers on high end models with limited edition products like the Dragonshield Edition specially designed by Collie Wertz a renowned concept & VFX artist who has worked in numerous Hollywood films & post production projects Star Wars prequel, Iron man, Captain America: Civil War many more,” said Shivangi.

IMPACT OF ECOMMERCE ON OFFLINE BUSINESS Talking about the increase in online shopping due to fear of coronavirus, Shivangi added, “This pandemic outbreak has surely brought the importance of digitalisation in the lime light. Online shopping surely has its perks- convenience & wide choice but we cannot overlook the overall experience a customer gets in a brick & mortar model. Before purchasing a premium product such as a laptop, consumer still seek more on hand experience with a sweet price & extra bundle offers. We as a brand understand there needs to exist an Omni – channel solution which help our customers ease the buying process. Therefore, the support is not always offline but to optimise the process in turn strengthening our bond with our loyal partners. Furthermore, we are expanding our retail presence with 2 recent additions to our experience zones in Bangalore.”

WE CREATE AN OPPORTUNITY FOR THE OFFLINE CHANNEL TO MAXIMISE PROFITS: ALOGIC

The market is expected to flourish with more pace during this festive season. ALOGIC has been steadily growing in the country over the last couple of years and are primed for an explosive growth in this quarter. SURESH BALAJI IS COUNTRY MANAGER, ALOGIC INDIA PVT LTD. and has been leading the brand for Indian market. In recent chat with DT, he said, “We are firing on all cylinders and have set out on achieving our largest quarter yet. We plan to triple our sales from last year same quarter and we are strongly prepared for it as well. We have created a lot of footprint digitally and in the retail and premium stores that will continue to increase the awareness of ALOGIC as a brand. An additional investment has also been planned for this quarter considering that this would be an ambitious quarter for us.”

PLANS FOR FESTIVE SEASON Festive season is considered as the most important phase of whole calendar year. Talking about the preparations for this festive season, Suresh said, “The Q4 quarter in India is one of the largest quarters for all channels due to a higher than average consumer spending pattern. We support our partners with large amounts of spends in terms of time and effort in the steady promotion of our products and our association with the partners. We are also launching strong incentives for the sales resources of our partners to help them build up revenue in this quarter.”

ENGAGEMENT WITH PARTNERS “ALOGIC has always been positioned as a premium and exclusive brand. Though our products are available in the online and the offline space, there is excellent parity in the range of products available offline and online. Moreover, the market operating price OCTOBER 2020 I

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COVER STORY

of the ALOGIC range in India is well controlled and is never sold below MRP unless authorised by the brand. The offline channel is definitely, the larger and the channel with a higher reach to our specific target segments which are the end user corporates. By having a strict control on the MOP, we create a level playing field for the online and the offline players where they would have to rely on their service levels to work on sales. Also, since we are pretty exclusive and not present in the regular general trade channels, we create an opportunity for the offline channel to maximise profits,” concluded by Suresh.

are generally passed on as discounts, leading to unnecessary competition and interest of partners getting lost. We also have specific programs designed for the benefit of partners like for instance regular partners meet and greet ceremonies to recognize their efforts. As a company, we ensure in keeping things as simple and straightforward as we can for our partners. We have a large sales team equipped to handle queries and focus at ensuring that the programs are fully understood by the partners. ”Few factors that we focus on this quarter is good rebates and incentives, account management, front end discounts, regular trainings, service support, ease new partner onboarding processes, providing the right sales and marketing materials, progress reports and many others.”

MARKET SCENARIO FOR PARTNERS

UBON CHANNEL PARTNERS PLAYING MAJOR ROLE FOR ITS SUCCESS IN INDIAN MARKET The market players are betting big on this festive season and are expecting good business. While talking to DT,

MANDEEP ARORA, MANAGING DIRECTOR, UBON

said, “We at UBON are expecting good sales in the upcoming festive season. With the current work from home scenario, there has been a surge in demand for electronic gadgets. In the past 3-4 months, people have invested heavily on the gadgets and we are expecting the trend to continue in the upcoming festive season as well. We are very "optimistic" in terms of business growth and eyeing a double-figure growth in terms of sales. As far as brand awareness is concerned, we have recently roped in Rana Daggubati as our new Brand Ambassador. With this new association, we are betting heavily on the South-Indian market and eyeing amazing sales from the region.”

STRATEGIES TO CAPITALIZE ON OPPORTUNITIES With market competition intensifying and business becoming more challenging, classic partner programs are seen to be evolving. In today’s changing business landscape, having a trusted partner network has been more important than ever. Mandeep stated, “We are continually improving our infrastructure and processes to promote ease of doing business with channel partners. We are committed to revamping the channel experience, helping our channel partners stay relevant and future proof their business through continuous dialogue with our partners to take on board their feedback. Time-to-time we review the programs and partner engagement team (from Sales & Marketing departments) keep on motivating & inspiring partners to achieve the set goals of the programs. We are regularly offering training and certification to our partners also giving them appreciation token and will planning to increase in the coming days.” Mandeep further added, “As a company, we will ensure that our partners always get their due for the efforts they put in. We have many programs where incentives are given in kind; cash incentives

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UBON products are available pan-India through both offline & online channels which include e-commerce platforms like Amazon, Flipkart and UBON's own e-commerce channel, etc. as well as our retail partners. “Today UBON products are present in 3,000 cities of India via our offline presence. Analyzing the current scenario we have found that there is a sense of fear among the consumer in stepping out of homes thus, we have employed 24*7 home deliveries across India and will be scaling our online presence with each passing day. Our foremost aim is to cater to our customers with the utmost safety and care in this hour of difficulty,” said by Mandeep. Mandeep concluded this chat and said, “In fact, our channel partners have always been our backbone and have a major contribution to the success of UBON. Distributors bridge the gap between endusers and manufacturers and a manufacturer should treat its distributor as an integral part of their business to have a better relationship. We have been organising distributors meet from timeto-time to meet and greet our partners while maintaining a healthy and transparent relationship with clear policies and rules that would help us grow with them together. We believe in growing with our partners and work with them to develop, maintain and manage productive go-to-market relationships that ultimately help sustain a competitive advantage and create a win-win situation for both. Effective marketing support, training, incentives, problem- solving assessments and recognition programs, are some of our initiatives to instill trust and empower our partners and letting them know we value their role in the success of UBON. Thus, we optimize our channel through trust-based relationships.”

TRUKE IS FOCUSING ON AMPLIFYING BRAND PRESENCE THROUGH STRATEGIC DIGITAL CAMPAIGNS In this festive season, the tech brands are offering amazing deals on the top product line for maximum customer engagement. Also, as the craze of tech gifts is increasing among customers, it will be an amazing opportunity for brands to leverage the trend. In a quick chat with DT, PANKAJ

UPADHAYAY, FOUNDER AND CEO, Truke said, “This festive season we look

forward to offering the most amazingly-priced offers to our customers on all Truke products across different platforms. Owing www.digitalterminal.in

COVER STORY

to the unprecedented nature of the pandemic, we witnessed a lot of ebb and flow during the last two financial quarters. But thanks to the intervention of new government policies that brought respite in the wake of the pandemic-induced lockdown, the market has shown considerable signs of improvement in the last few weeks. We seek to cash in on the festive season through aggressive pricing and irresistible offers.” Pankaj further added, “Compared to the last two quarters, we envision a 4X business growth. It’s been only a year since Truke emerged in the Indian market and it is just the beginning. The brand still has many major milestones to cross in the future. In a bid to leverage the best out of the current predicament, we are focused on amplifying our brand presence through strategic digital campaigns. Presently, we are concentrating on tapping into the various online platforms for enhancing our brand awareness.”

MARKET PLANS FOR CREATING GROWTH OPPORTUNITIES Talking about the strategies and channel engagements activities maximizing the profits during this festive season, Pankaj said, “In terms of securing the market, we are majorly focusing on enhancing our customer engagement through digital and social marketing campaigns. For our offline collaborators we have also commenced operations across Delhi and Tamil Nadu offering a wide range of truke products. We are extending them the highest support service which includes offering 6 months replacement on products alongside marketing materials.”

CHANNEL ENGAGEMENT PLANS “We have devised a customized product plan for our various online and offline partners. We are also supporting our traditional offline partners through these testing times by extending them the best options in terms of pricing and margin. This will help them sustain themselves through the economic crisis,” concluded by Pankaj.

WE ARE STILL RELYING MORE ON OUR OFFLINE CHANNEL PARTNERS: VIEWSONIC

multiplex anytime soon. The emerging business models will see a lot of technology and innovation in the forefront, propelled by radical changes in consumer behaviour.”

CHANNEL STRATEGY FOR FESTIVE QUARTER This year’s events are dramatically shaping marketing trends. While the future still contains many uncertainties, the final quarter of the year could be pivotal in keeping offline partners ticking over and maximising revenue to drive towards the best possible end of year outcomes for the business. “Throughout this phase we have been considering partners as our extended hand. We have increased the digital marketing budget to support the online promotions of their social media channels. The placement on e-commerce banners, floated incentive scheme for B2B and B2C market, providing support in terms of demo units and creating demo centre for partners, marketing collateral & BTL Advertising are some of the key strategies to support our offline partners,” revealed by Muneer.

SUPPORT FOR PARTNERS The ‘new normal’ has set the stage to drastically transform the livelihood of consumers, affecting their spending pattern and shopping preference. “Consumers are preferring online shopping platforms to observe physical distancing. Even though more people are shopping online, most of them want certain assurances to be in place — including timely delivery, compensation in case an order is cancelled, contactless transactions, and higher integration of online payment platforms. We are supporting our partners in every way we can, in terms of marketing collaterals and demo units, and by ensuring that price does not clash between online and offline partners. Though we are establishing ourselves on e-commerce channels, as the new approach demands but we are still relying more on our offline channel partners as the Indian market is still not that much dependent on online channels especially for the kind of products that we have to offer, which needs proper demonstration to convince customers,” said by Muneer while concluding this discussion.

The festive season offers opportunities for brands to reach more customers as these few months are very important for Indian market. MUNEER

AHMAD, AV HEAD, VIEWSONIC INDIA, interacted

with DT and shared company’s overall plan for festive season. He said, “This season, we are planning to leverage influencers as authentic voices, across marketing tasks like new launches, brand-building, giving best price offers to online seller for end users, collaboration with e-tailers and leveraging banner promotion, along with social media campaigns around festivals, highlighting our offerings. ViewSonic India has launched some exciting range of products like M2 projectors, M1 mini and M1 mini plus projectors, which will be a perfect choice for gifting purpose. We are expecting good growth for our Home Theatre projectors, as the demand of such products is on surge during festive season and it looks unlikely that audience would be looking forward to visiting www.digitalterminal.in

OCTOBER 2020 I

AI REPORT

SPENDING ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TO GROW SIGNIFICANTLY IN INDIA

International Data Corporation (IDC) has published a new report analyzing the India Artificial Intelligence (AI) market to provide an all-inclusive view on the growing customer demand for AI in India. The report also explores the businesses’ approach across the core AI pillars including, strategy, culture, data, skills, and ethics. Enterprises are relying on AI to maintain business continuity, transform how businesses operate, and gain competitive advantage. According to IDC's Worldwide Artificial Intelligence Spending Guide Forecast, India's AI spending will grow from US$300.7 million in 2019 to US$880.5 million in 2023 at a CAGR of 30.8%. "COVID-19 is pushing the boundaries of organizations' AI lens. Businesses are considering investments in intelligent solutions to tackle issues associated with business continuity, labor shortage, and workspace monitoring. Organizations are now realizing that 18

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their business plans must be closely aligned with their AI strategies," says Rishu Sharma, Principal Analyst, Cloud and AI at IDC in India. The latest report provides comprehensive coverage of the market overview including AI spending, enduser adoption plans, the business value of AI investments, and COVID-19 impact. The report also provides insights on evolving end-user plans as they progress on their approach to adopt AI. Other key highlights of the report are: • Enterprises rely on AI to maintain business continuity, transform how businesses operate and gain competitive advantage. As per IDC's 2019 Cognitive AI Adoption Survey, almost 20% of enterprises are still devising AI strategies to explore new businesses and ventures. • As per IDC's 2020 COVID-19 Impact Survey, Wave 7, half of India

enterprises plan to increase their AI spending in 2020. • Data trustworthiness and difficulty in selecting the right algorithm, are some of the top challenges that hold organizations back from implementing AI technology. “The variety of industry-specific tech solutions supported by emerging technologies like IoT, Robotics, Blockchain, etc. are getting powered by complex AI algorithms and are cloudenabled to reach their max potential. In India BFSI and Manufacturing verticals are the two biggest spenders of AI across different use cases making almost 37% of the AI spending in 2019,” said Ashutosh Bisht, Senior Research Manager for IDC's Customer Insights and Analysis group. “With the fast adoption of cloud technologies in India, more than 60% of AI Applications will be migrated to cloud by 2024,” added Bisht.

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BRAND FOCUS

KASPERSKY COLLABORATES WITH HASBRO INDIA FOR ITS CONSUMER CAMPAIGN

Kaspersky Consumers stand a chance to win premium Transformers figures, cashbacks and many more exciting prizes with a purchase of Kaspersky consumer products in India Kaspersky teams up with Hasbro in India for a consumer campaign which begins from 15 September – 31 December 2020. For every single purchase of Kaspersky solutions including Kaspersky Internet Security (KIS), Kaspersky Total Security (KTS), consumers are assured to receive cashbacks of up to 100 rupees and win Transformers figures and toys every week and many other exciting prizes such as electric scooters every month. Transformers fans were in for a treat with the premiere of Chapter One – SIEGE - of the highly anticipated Transformers: War For Cybertron Trilogy on Netflix. The Series raises the stakes of the Autobot and Decepticon war with Chapter One having six, twenty-two minute episodes, complete with a new animation look and style that presents the Transformers bots like you’ve never seen them before. The Transformers: War For Cybertron Trilogy plunges deep

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into events that live at the heart of this legendary franchise, with SIEGE shining a spotlight on a critical timeframe in Transformers history on Cybertron. “We are very excited to partner with Hasbro for this exciting campaign that gives our consumers the opportunity to get one step closer to the fascinating world of Transformers. The series showcases how two great leaders come together to save the world with all the potential advancements in technology and what the future would look like utilizing disruptive technologies. It’s similar to what we do at Kaspersky --- as we contin

ue to stay ahead of potential threats and explore new solutions to fight against them to secure the cyber world. But we don’t stop there. We continue to support our customers in transforming the future while building a safer world together!” expressed MR. DIPESH KAURA, GENERAL MANAGER, KASPERSKY (SOUTH ASIA). Consumers who purchase Kaspersky Internet Security and Kaspersky Total security online on buymysecurity.com or from retailers will be able to redeem their cashbacks via e-wallets, and 5 lucky winners would be selected every week to win premium Transformers toys and figures. Consumers also stand a chance to win an electricscooter every month from the period between September - December 2020.

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CYBER SECURITY

INDIA AMONG TOP TWO MOST CYBERATTACKED COUNTRY DURING LAST 3 MONTHS Check Point researchers issue warning to organizations worldwide against surging ransomware threats, after conducting a study that revealed a 50% jump in the daily average of ransomware attacks in the last 3 months alone, compared to the first half of 2020. • US ransomware attacks doubled (~98% increase) in the last 3 months, making it the #1 most targeted country for ransomware, followed by India, Sri Lanka, Russia and Turkey •Ryuk ransomware now attacks 20 organizations a week • Percentage of global healthcare organizations impacted by ransomware double. Healthcare sector is now #1 most attacked industry in the US Security researchers at Check Point conducted a global study that showed significant increase in ransomware threat frequency within the past 3 months. By leveraging their threat intelligence engine, Threat Cloud, Check Point researchers calculated a number of insights and observations around the latest global ransomware trends. Threat Cloud is derived from hundreds of millions of sensors worldwide that are supplemented with AIbased engines and exclusive research data from Check Point Research.

KEY INSIGHTS • Daily average of ransomware attacks jumped 50% in last 3 months, compared to 1st half of 2020 • Ryuk ransomware now attacks 20 organizations a week • Percentage of healthcare organizations impacted by ransomware globally nearly double, making it the #1 most attacked sector in the US • Top 5 countries ranked by the most ransomware attacks in the last 3 months: 1. US (~ 98.1% increase) 2. India (39.2% increase) 3. Sri Lanka (436% increase) 4. Russia (57.9% increase) 5. Turkey (32.5% increase) • Top 5 global industries most impacted by ransomware threats in the last 3 months 1. Communications 2. Education & Research 3. Government & Military 4. Software vendors 5. Utilities

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Pic Credit - https://crimepulse.com

• Top ransomware types in last 3 months: Maze and Ryuk 1. More sophisticated attacks, such as Double Extortion. In this attack type, hackers first extract large quantities of sensitive information, prior to encrypting a victim’s databases. Afterwards, attackers will threaten to publish that information unless ransom demands are paid, placing substantial pressure on organizations to meet hackers. 2. Willingness to pay. Hackers deliberately choose a ransom price that targets are more willing to pay. This way, victims of ransomware opt to simply pay the price, instead of dealing with the headache and time required to recover their IT systems. Furthermore, targets are more willing to pay in order to avoid additional stress given the challenging economic times we’re living in due to coronavirus. Though, this can change once coronavirus is behind us. Unfortunately, paying the ransom creates a vicious cycle: the more these type of attacks "succeed", the more frequently they occur. 3. Emotet’s return opens new entrypoints. After a five-month absence, Emotet has surged back to 1st place in the Most Wanted Malware Index, impacting 5% of organizations globally. Emotet is an advanced, self-propagating and modular Trojan. It was originally a banking Trojan, but has recently been used as a distributor of other malware or malicious campaigns. Emotet operations sell their infected victim's details to ransomware distributers, and because they are already infected, these victims are vulnerable to more attacks. This makes ransomware attacks even more "effective" to the attacker since more

infected targets means more entry points for ransomware attacks. Unfortunately, I suspect ransomware threats to get far more worse as we turn the new year. I strongly urge organizations everywhere to be extra vigilant.” HOW ORGANIZATIONS CAN PROTECT THEMSELVES • Train your people. Training and educating users on how to identify and avoid potential ransomware attacks is crucial. As many of the current cyber-attacks start with a targeted email that does not even contain malware, but only a socially-engineered message that encourages the user to click on a malicious link, user education is often considered as one of the most important defenses an organization can deploy. • Continuously backup your data: Maintaining regular backups of data as a routine process is a very important practice to prevent losing data, and to be able to recover it in the event of corruption or disk hardware malfunction. Functional backups can also help organizations to recover from ransomware attacks. • Patch your systems: Patching is a critical component in defending against ransomware attacks, as cyber-criminals will often look for the latest uncovered exploits in the patches made available and then target systems that are not yet patched. As such it is critical that organizations ensure that all systems have the latest patches applied to them as this reduces the number of potential vulnerabilities within the business for an attacker to exploit.

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CHANNEL FOCUS

AVITA Launches Its New Exclusive Store in Jalandhar AVITA has announced the launch of its new store in the city of Jalandhar. The store will be an intrinsic part of AVITA’s burgeoning offline sales channel. AVITA has largely focused on aftersales services during the pandemic outbreak, ensuring ongoing customer satisfaction and retention. Now, the brand is looking at bringing the best, stateof-the-art offerings right to its customers. The new store in the bustling city of Jalandhar will successfully bring the brand closer to its target audience. Speaking on the launch, Ms. Seema Bhatnagar, Regional Business Director (South Asia), Nexstgo Company Limited, said, “Since

its inception, AVITA has leveraged retail stores as its strength and an avenue to connect with our customers to gain their trust. Now, we are taking the next step in our growth trajectory by introducing a store in the heart of Jalandhar. We believe that this store will add immensely to our customer experience and bring us close to our goal of delighting customers with feature-rich, vibrant laptops.”

Iris Computers Supplies Acer Laptops Worth Rs. 11 Crore to Allahabad High Court Iris Computers has received a major and a prestigious order for the supply ACER Laptop Computers from Uttar Pradesh's Allahabad High Court to enable the court to establish its ONLINE judicial delivery system in order to maintain the social distancing norms to keep the judiciary and their clients safe from the effects of the dreaded Corona Virus effects. “This particular order of ACER Laptops is worth Rs 11 Crores, it is very prestigious since the order has come from one of the Oldest High Court in India and this consignment is to be delivered within a period of three months and the entire lot of were already been dispatched” said Mr. Sanjiv Krishen, CMD, Iris

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RP Tech India Signs Distribution Agreement With Cambium Networks RP tech India is pleased to announce a distribution agreement with Cambium Networks. Headquartered in Rolling Meadows, Illinois, United States, Cambium Networks is a leading global provider of wireless networking solutions. RP tech India will ensure seamless availability of the broad portfolio of networking solutions of Cambium Networks through its robust distribution network spread across pan India. With the addition of Cambium Networks, RP tech India has further strengthened its networking portfolio. RP tech India will offer Cambium Networks’ multigigabit wireless fabric of solutions to system integrators and solution providers catering to the SMB and Enterprise verticals. Announcing the partnership, Mr. Rajesh Goenka, Director, Sales & Marketing, RP tech India, said, “We are pleased to join hands with leading global networking and connectivity company Cambium Networks. With our wide reach, technical and sales expertise and deep insights into the networking market, we are confident to help them grow their business in India.”

ESET Assigns Ingram Micro to Distribute Its Security Solutions in India ESET announced it has partnered with Ingram Micro, the world's largest technology distributor, to offer its security solutions for businesses on the Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace in India. To better support SMBs in the current business climate, ESET is providing a monthly subscription option to customers.

Computers. Mr. Krishen further added, “This order is also significant from various accounts since the company received the order soon after the National Lockdown period. This module suited every one, so it was well accepted, it also helped us restart business.”

“Cybersecurity is now a major priority as the Digital India initiative has rapidly driven businesses to increasingly rely on technology. In tandem, threats by cybercriminals have also grown more sophisticated, thus cyber resilience has become crucial to supporting this development. Through this partnership, resellers in Ingram Micro’s distribution network will have access to our latest security solutions, which will enable them to secure their customers from ever-evolving threats,” said Parvinder Walia, President of Asia Pacific & Japan, ESET. “We are excited to be working with Ingram Micro which has a strong reputation in the distribution of tech solutions. Their extensive channel ecosystem will assist us in broadening our brand presence and product availability across India.”

OCTOBER 2020 I

OPINION

7 IT SECURITY BEST PRACTICES FOR ORGANISATIONS IN THE NEW NORMAL Authored by Sunil Sharma, Managing Director- Sales, India & SAARC, Sophos When the COVID-19 pandemic hit India, organisations across the country had to think quickly about how to ensure business continuity and keep employees safe. The solution: Work From Home. Previously, this was more the exception than the norm, but companies were quick to adapt and many had to do so almost overnight. Today, remote working has become widely accepted as a business best practice whatever the circumstances. In fact, some of the biggest names in business today, such as Google, Facebook Inc., and Twitter have announced that they are open to the concept of allowing employees to work from home permanently. This has led other organisations to consider its feasibility.

for example, phones left in cafes, laptops stolen from cars. Most devices include native encryption tools such as BitLocker – be sure to use them. You also need to be able to lock or wipe devices should they be lost. Implement application installation restrictions and a Unified Endpoint Management solution to manage and protect mobile devices.

One important factor that has stood out during the pandemic is the heightened vulnerability of widely dispersed computing devices, networks and systems, coupled with an increase in the number of cyberattacks targeting them. In addition to fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses found themselves scrambling to secure the critical data on their networks as hackers around the world looked looking for loopholes to exploit a decentralized workforce. With homes looking set to remain offices for some time to come, IT managers are having to get to grips with new security priorities.

Applying web filtering rules on devices will ensure that users can only access content appropriate for ‘work’ while protecting them from malicious websites.

HERE ARE 7 TIPS TO HELP YOU AND YOUR DISPERSED ORGANISATION TO STAY SECURE 1. ENSURE DEVICES AND SYSTEMS ARE FULLY PROTECTED Go back to basics – ensure all devices, operating systems and software applications are up to date with the latest patches and versions. All too often malware breaches an organization’s defenses via a rogue unpatched or unprotected device.

3. ENABLE WEB FILTERING

4. CREATE A SECURE CONNECTION BACK TO THE OFFICE Using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) ensures that all the data transferred between the home user and the office network is encrypted and protected in transit. Plus, it makes it easier for employees to do their jobs. 5. MAKE SURE PEOPLE HAVE A WAY TO REPORT SECURITY ISSUES With home working people can’t walk over to the IT team if they have an issue. Give people a quick and easy way to report security issues, such as an easy-to-remember email address.

2. ENCRYPT DEVICES WHEREVER POSSIBLE

6. MANAGE USE OF REMOVABLE STORAGE AND OTHER PERIPHERALS

When people are out of the office there is often a greater risk of lost or stolen devices;

While working from home, there is a heightened chance of employees using

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portable, and often unsecure storage devices on their official systems. Given that 14% of cyberthreats get in via USB/external drives*, it is recommended to enable device control within your endpoint protection to mitigate and manage such risks. 7. SCAN AND SECURE EMAIL AND ESTABLISH HEALTHY PRACTICE Home working will likely lead to a big increase in email as people can no longer speak to colleagues in person. The crooks are wise to this and already using the coronavirus in phishing emails as a way to entice users to click on malicious links. Ensure your email protection is up-to-date and raise awareness of phishing. www.digitalterminal.in

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Awards 2020 NOMINATIONS STARTED!! for Nominations Queries Contact - jyoti@digitalterminal.in, for Sponsorship Contact - rajeev@digitalterminal.i n or Call @ 9899600302 / 9654690377

FEATURE STORY

ORGANIZATIONS NEED TO REDRAW CYBERSECURITY STRATEGY IN NEW NORMAL

The COVID-19 pandemic forced organizations to adopt work from home (WFH) model to maintain business continuity. This new model provided a greater opportunity for cybercriminals and opened windows to steal confidential data. Global organizations saw an increase in cyber incidents and phishing attacks topped the charts as threat actors began to put phishing emails where employees get stuck. According to a Cisco study, 73% of organizations in the country have experienced a 25% or more jump in cyber threats or alerts since the start of COVID-19. Increasing data breach incidents in new normal forced organizations to deploy effective security solutions and make their IT infrastructure stronger than before. As organizations began to embrace the WFH model, security solution providers came in rescue with their best security solutions to protect them from falling victim to such cyberattacks. To learn more about the cyber security industry landscape and opportunities for business partners in this domain, DT interacted with several security industry leaders. Read the story below to know more about the cybersecurity market in India.

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FEATURE STORY

CYBERSECURITY CHALLENGE The home Wi-Fi networks are mostly vulnerable and poses high security threats. Therefore accessing the corporate data over such vulnerable network is very risky and it could lead to data breach. The remote workers are not aware of the potential threats and it has become a serious concern for organizations in this new normal. Elaborating about this whole cybersecurity scenario during WFH, PAMELA ONG, SALES DIRECTOR – APAC, ESET said, “With remote working as the new norm, endpoints once resided within the four walls of the office have now turned into scattered endpoints that are out of the workplace and beyond the physical reach of organisations. Their existing cybersecurity infrastructure might not be designed for a large number of staff working remotely who are accessing corporate data through home networks. Cybercriminals understand this and have taken advantage of the new vulnerabilities caused by remote working. For instance, Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), a solution which allows remote computers to connect to the corporate network, has seen a growing number of attacks. ESET’s telemetry has shown that the daily RDP attack attempts against unique clients that were blocked by our products worldwide have increased by around three-fold in May compared to that in early December 2019. Employees may also be more susceptible to targeted attacks and phishing emails especially those that impersonate the organisation’s management, HR or finance department." PAMELA ONG further added, “From a cybersecurity perspective, the challenges for organisations go beyond just finding the right security tools. For instance, policy configuration is a key aspect which is often neglected by organization or employees might be using easy to guess passwords with no additional layer of authentication www.digitalterminal.in

and protection. Businesses must ensure that they have a robust cybersecurity plan designed with remote working in mind, that incorporates cybersecurity training for staff, remotely enforceable IT policy as well as access to the right experts to protect their IT infrastructure and digital presence.” Talking about the rising concern of cybersecurity in the new normal where organizations are dependent over remote workforce, MURALI URS, COUNTRY MANAGER, BARRACUDA NETWORKS INDIA said, “The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digital transformation and cloud adoption among the

organisations to ease the burdens placed on the traditional business model and support the shift to remote working. However, many have been impacted by multilateral security concerns that have emerged while some are not even aware of the risks involved in connecting remotely. Phishing is still a top threat vector for attackers because remote employees continue to fall for such scams. In the key findings from a recent research report titled “Brave the new normal: How companies in the Asia Pacific are overcoming security challenges in a remote workplace”, it was identified that employees from 79% of Indian companies reported an increase in email phishing attacks after shifting to 100% remote working.” “Despite this, security has taken a back seat in many organizations primarily due to budget and resource constraints. Maintaining safe security practices is essential, but a step easily overlooked in the frantic rush to get everything set up to support remote working. More employees working from home means that more devices are connecting remotely, outside of the secured corporate network. It’s critical to understand what remote workers are doing with data that is rapidly going out

of control. That means, organisations will have to rework the ‘new normal’ to make it more effective and more secure or else they may experience reputational and financial damage at a time when they can least afford it,” stated by MURALI URS. In the current scenario, most organisations have allowed their employees to work-from-home. BRIJESH MIGLANI, SECURITY CONSULTANT, FORCEPOINT commented, “The main challenge with remote connectivity is to provide the secure internet and application access. Many CISOs are making sure that employees who are working-from-home get secure access to data and network. Once connectivity has been established for the user to the application, the next challenge is to make sure data-in-transit, or data exchanges, or file manipulations are captured and protected. During this time, where employees are working remotely with no IT support on site, they are more likely to fall victim to sophisticated phishing attacks that are mainly designed to hijack employee credentials.” BRIJESH further added, “We are also seeing more employees access cloud apps and wanting to overcome bandwidth limitations by storing data locally, a huge risk for compliance. IT teams need to get a handle on how to secure the workarounds: employees using personal cloud storage solutions to store work-related files, or employees emailing work-related files via their personal free email accounts to circumvent file size limitations. Broadly, the three challenges any organisation should be concerned about are edge protection, which is typically the user machine or endpoint; data protection, which is typically the data exchanged by the user; and user protection, which is based on user behavioural activities. For the first time in modern business, CISOs aren't working within templated security programs. They are realising that it is no longer enough to secure a perimeter within four walls – it’s about people. People are the new, true perimeter in this new normal. And it is critical to have visibility into the behaviour

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of people and data, wherever they are.” Pandemic forced organisations to setup work from home for its employees, for business continuity. Sharing his thoughts about the cybersecurity landscape in the new normal, SONIT JAIN, CEO, GAJSHIELD INFOTECH said, “Unfettered access to enterprise applications, data and other IT resources were provided even when they were out of the

secured network zone and from devices which were not under their control. While business processes had minimal impact, cybersecurity became a big challenge for enterprises. “With security not in place for this new normal, they were open to various attacks. We saw an increase in cyber threats like Phishing attacks that hid behind COVID-19 update mailers, websites, malicious apps and website that faked to provide important update, health tips and more to lure more users. We also saw an increase brute-force attacks and Man in the middle attacks on these remote users. In all of these attacks, enterprise data was most vulnerable and companies had to prevent it from being breached/leaked via public networks. These were some of the challenges that the enterprises are facing with the new remote working setup including insider threats that involved internal employee leaking data, motivated for monitory benefit or vengeance against the organization,” added by SONIT JAIN.

EFFECTIVE SOLUTIONS The new normal has brought immense challenges for organizations as several reports have mentioned that Indian organizations are being attacked the most in APAC. Therefore IT teams are looking to deploy the robust security solutions to strengthen their IT infrastructure. Talking about the support, ESET is providing to organizations, PAMELA said, “Our cloud-

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based solutions allow organisations to remotely deploy endpoint security products as well as to maintain visibility and manage their endpoints through a secured webconsole. Besides protecting scattered endpoints, these solutions also enable IT admins to work productively from home without compromising their capabilities to secure their organisation’s IT infrastructure. We have also recently launched the ESET Enterprise Inspector (EEI) in India, so large organisations can protect themselves against advanced persistent threats (APT) and targeted attacks. EEI is a sophisticated Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) tool that increased visibility necessary for large organisations to see, understand, block and remediate any issues across all their endpoints.” PAMELA added, “We understand some businesses may not be prepared to deploy such tools as it requires a team of security experts who can perform round-the-clock threat monitoring and hunting. This is why we have worked with a local partner in India, Sattrix Information Security Pvt. Ltd., to offer Managed EDR security service to enterprises that want to enhance their cybersecurity infrastructure, but lack the expertise or the human resources to do so.” MURALI URS, Barracuda Networks India commented, “Considering that a lot can be at stake if organisations fail to take cybersecurity seriously, we are delivering innovative security products that are easy to buy, deploy and use. For email protection, we offer Barracuda Total Email Protection that combines a complete email protection portfolio in a single bundle to protect users and data from email-borne threats, which includes Barracuda Sentinel, an AI-based solution to offer protection against targeted spear-phishing attacks and account takeover which traditional email gateways cannot, while Barracuda Essentials make email safe for business with email-filtering, spam blocking, encryption, archiving, and backup. Our automated incident response provides remediation options to quickly and efficiently address attacks.” MURALI URS, further stated, “Cybercriminals can target all endpoints that might be less protected than the usual corporate desktops as distracted remote employees are more susceptible to accidentally sending sensitive information to the wrong people. Barracuda CloudGen Firewalls are the first line of defense for

any business network to safeguard against advanced threats. Recently, we introduced Barracuda CloudGen WAN, the first secure global SD-WAN service built natively on Microsoft Azure to optimize user’s network performance and minimize cost. We also have Barracuda PhishLine, a computerbased awareness training and simulation solution to help organisations educate their employees about recognising any potential threats and eliminating highly specialized spear-phishing attempts.” “Forcepoint’s technologies and solutions are built for critical times like the present COVID-19 situation. Forcepoint offers human-centric cybersecurity solutions for enterprise and mid-market organisations and distributed networks that safeguard uses and data,” said by BRIJESH MIGLANI. “Our approach is around understanding what really matters most to organisations, which is their people and their interactions with content and critical data. The premise that users could access data from anywhere, irrespective of the location (they may not necessarily be in one office location -- they could be in a branch, at a customer location, at home, airport, or anywhere). Data could also be residing anywhere -- in the data center within the same office, or in an outsourced data center, or as many customers prefer to continuously move their data to the cloud. We provide security for all three layers, that is the Edge, Data, and User.” “The Forcepoint SASE platform protects remote users by providing them secure access, secure data exchange and adaptive user protection. It includes technologies like Secure Web Gateway, Next Generation Firewall, Remote Browser Isolation, Web DLP and Zero Trust Network Access. Forcepoint Cloud Security Gateway brings together our market-leading Secure Web Gateway (SWG), Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) and Data Loss Prevention (DLP) technologies into a single centrallymanaged cloud service. It provides full visibility and control for remote workers, sites and on-premises facilities. It is a 100% cloud-native centrally-managed single service which eliminates the complexity of purchasing, administering and supporting multiple products or solution bundles. For data protection, we provide Dynamic Data Protection. For work-from-home users, an end-point agent on the machine plays a major role on the data layer. The endpoint agent helps protect data leakage www.digitalterminal.in

FEATURE STORY

as well as in-transit data. In the last six months, we have seen the trend of people focusing on Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). So, Forcepoint end-point agent also supports the remote user protection on the VDI platform,” further added by BRIJESH MIGLANI. Briefing about GajShield’s solution offerings, SONIT JAIN said, “GajShield’s Data Security Firewall uses a data-first security approach that applies security to the most valued asset to organizations, being data. With the help of GajShield’s Enterprise Cloud Solution, the data security firewall ensures that all users, roaming or otherwise, are secured when they access enterprise data and applications when they are out of the enterprise network. Work from home normal has made it easy for threat actors to breach enterprise data. Our solution works in identifying these threats actors and allow the enterprise to put in policies to protect against them. Our Enterprise Cloud Security enforces remote user traffic through the enterprise security infrastructure even when they on a public Wi-Fi network. Thus, bringing even roaming or WFH users under enterprise security policies and protection.” SONIT JAIN further added, “GajShield security platform helps in gaining visibility over various threat vectors with its Deep packet Inspection (DPI) capability combined with Contextual Intelligence Engine. This helps enterprise to understand various threats to its data and take necessary action to prevent data exploitation while keeping malicious applications, website and other threats away from them.”

CHANNEL PLANS The evolving cyber threats are continuing to harm the organizations in this new normal hence the security solution providers are aligning with their partners to fulfill the surged demand. Channel partners stay updated about the development as brands engages with partners on regular interval to make them aware about challenges, solutions, and opportunities. Sharing the details about channel engagement activities, Pamela said, “As a channelfocused business, we listen to our partners when it comes to creating new product offerings as well planning for the go-tomarket strategy. We prioritize consistent communication with all our channel partners as an important process, especially during this period to ensure they are able to www.digitalterminal.in

capitalize on our solutions that are centred around remote working. PAMELA further added, “Recently, we have introduced the cloud-based ESET Remote Workforce Offer bundle which provides businesses with as few as five devices, with advanced protection against cyberthreats through solutions that are remotely deployable and manageable. This has also allowed our channel partners to offer customers with savings of up to 50% compared to purchasing individual products. In the coming months, we will continue to update our product offerings including introducing a new product that will be able to safeguard cloud-based productivity applications. The threat landscape is constantly evolving and creating new cybersecurity challenges. ESET remains committed in securing the digital world so everyone can enjoy safer technology.” “At Barracuda, we provide innovative security solutions to our partners that are easy to buy, deploy, and use. Whether they need to secure Office 365, cloud applications, or physical environments, our partners can provide a SaaS solution or resell our appliances to meet their customers’ needs. They can sell these solutions traditionally or provide them as a managed service, so there’s flexibility in how they work with us as well” said MURALI URS. “Customers nowadays are rapidly adopting cloud solutions, and our channel partners have to meet those evolving needs. Barracuda is helping them secure that journey from on-premises, physical environments to the public cloud by providing the solutions and support required. For instance, we recently introduced Barracuda CloudGen WAN, the first secure SD-WAN service built natively on Microsoft Azure, to optimize user’s network performance and minimize cost.” MURALI URS further added, “We also help our partners illustrate these security needs with tools such as our Threat Scan for Office 365. This scan detects threats like spear phishing that traditional email systems may have missed. An additional tool our partners are leveraging is the Barracuda Vulnerability Manager. This tool examines customers’ web applications and identifies vulnerabilities to known threats. These tools provide reports that help the partners assess and identify security vulnerabilities in their customers’ systems so they can demonstrate the need for solutions to

resolve the issues. Our goal is to enable our partners to identify opportunities, engage with their Barracuda sales team, deliver strong value propositions, and deploy and manage our best-in-class solutions. Ultimately, we want to help partners grow their business, boost their profits, and protect their customers.” Forcepoint is a 100% channel company and all business happen through partners. They are an extended arm who interact closely with Forcepoint customers across all domains such as manufacturing, enterprise, government or defence. “During the current pandemic, we worked with our partners to ensure we are extending all kinds of support to them and to help them solve our mutual customers issues. We have hired dedicated channel managers for the west, the north and the south to drive engagement with a broader set of channel partners, which is a very important part of our business. We also help our channel partners sell more. During the COVID-19 times, it is very difficult for our partners to go and acquire new customers, but they can offer more products to our existing customers, which in turn can bring more ROI to them. We have launched channel sales plays which are enablement tools for partners to sell deeper into our existing mutual accounts,” commented by Brijesh Miglani. BRIJESH MIGLANI stated, “Our plan for Forcepoint in India is to provide humancentric security solutions in a very simplified way. Most of it would be converged and cloud delivered so our customers won’t have to invest in hardware and resources to run these solutions. As we continue down the path towards a SASE, cloud-powered future, we are extending the platform to offer products and services (like Dynamic Data Protection and enabling risk adaptive security across the portfolio) via the cloud. Cloud Security Gateway and Forcepoint Private Access represent our initial steps toward this future” “We currently offer virtual deployment options that is fast and easy setup. Out hardware-based appliances are also capable of being remotely configured. We also offer 24*7 support using our remote support system, reachable via, phone (toll-free), chat (www.gajshield.com) and mail (support@ gajshield.com). In the coming 6 months, we aim to expand our partner community and reach deeper into the remotes of Indian market using our strategic partners across the country,” concluded by SONIT JAIN.

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PRODUCT REVIEW : AVITA LIBER V The market is filled with enormous tech brands that promise to give best-in-class laptops under a good price range. But it’s not always that easy for a consumer to rely upon such lucrative promises. So, in order to empower our readers, we did review of AVITA’s newly launched laptop LIBER V. We used this laptop for more than 15 days and have finally come up with this honest review.

OUT OF THE BOX DESIGN The AVITA LIBER V laptop comes in a white box with an adapter and a charging cable. The quality of the charging cable and adapter is very good. The laptop comes with metal chassis that increases its durability and extends the life of the laptop. Apart from this, you will have better experience while holding it as this laptop weighs only 1.25 grams due to its slim design. We have got this laptop in matte black color but you can choose from any of the wide color options. AVITA LIBER V is available in 14+ color options which is a great thing for consumers. The next thing we saw on this laptop is an out of the box design, this laptop has a top-up webcam that brings a unique change in the dynamics of this laptop. Also, its unconventional design helps you to easily open / close the laptop because sometimes we face problem in opening the laptop due to uneasy grip on laptop’s body. So the first impression of the AVITA LIBER V is quite amazing and we have liked this laptop based on its looks so far.

BEZEL LESS DISPLAY The AVITA LIBER V is available in three different sizes, 13.3 inches, 14 inches and 15.6 inches. We reviewed the 14-inch laptop, but we didn't feel that we were actually reviewing the 14-inch laptop all because of its nano edges. Yes, this laptop has 3.7 mm nano bezels thereby you get 78.2 % screen to body ratio. You might get surprized with the viewing experience on this laptop as the laptop has an IPS display with 1920×1080 pixel FHD resolution. The content quality gets enhanced on this IPS display and its 178° wide viewing angle helps you to clearly watch the content from side angles.

COMPACT KEYBOARD AND EXTRA LARGE TOUCHPAD And if we talk about its keyboard, so the LIBER V comes with a full size and compact backlight Keyboard. This keyboard is well designed and you will have a great experience on this keyboard while typing. The compact size of the laptop is suitable for fast typing. The backlight feature of this keyboard helps you in using the laptop in low light conditions or if even if you are travelling. AVITA LIBER V has an extra-large touchpad which will make your working hours easy. The free hand movement is very important

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while indulge in any important work and this extra-large touchpad will help you to do so. The touchpad's ultra-responsiveness helps you perform tasks easily and at the same time saves you time. Overall AVITA has given a good combination of compact keyboard and large touchpad for the convenience of consumers.

ULTRA-RESPONSIVE FINGERPRINT SENSOR One of the key benefits for LIBER V is its fingerprint sensor to boost your security. Security has become a serious aspect nowadays and the people who store confidential data on their device understand the value of data security very well. So keeping this vital factor in mind, AVITA has equipped this machine with fingerprint sensor.

POWERFUL PROCESSOR LIBER V laptop features Intel 10th Gen, Core i5 processor with 1.60 GHz speed which ensures seamless performance. This laptop comes in two storage variants 8GB + 256GB SSD and 8GB + 512GB SSD. AVITA has integrated solid state drive in this laptop which boosts the performance manifolds and reduces the lagging issues. When we switched on the laptop, it took hardly 10 seconds to boot-up and the device was ready to use due to the i5 processor and SSD. Also, you get preloaded windows 10 on this laptop with a lifetime warranty. LIBER V laptop is a good device for content creators or video editors as the configuration is really up to the mark. Meanwhile, if you gets too stressed due to battery backup, then you should not worry about LIBER V as the brand promises 10 hours of battery backup. We used this laptop for

almost 2-3 days and we didn’t charge it on a frequent basis. We had a very good experience with this laptop and it gave quite good battery backup.

IMPRESSIVE PERFORMANCE We must say that the laptop gives an amazing user experience and doesn’t disappoint you at any point. Its processor, battery, display, design everything is innovative and it can be a good device if you are looking to buy a performer laptop for work from home or learn from home purposes. AVITA LIBER V truly impresses with it’s performance and delivers value for money user experience through its high-end features.

PRICE AND AVAILABILITY If we talk about its price, then the brand has priced this very competitive as compared to other PC brands who offer similar product configurations. This laptop is available in 8GB + 256GB and 8GB + 512GB storage options and its starting price is 41,490. This laptop is definitely an ideal device in this range because if you look at other brands with the same features, then you will have to spend 50 to 60 thousand

DT REVIEW After using this laptop for many days and testing its compatibility and performance on different measures, we find this laptop excellent on our all parameters. We give this laptop four stars out of five which shows it’s importance & commitment from Avita to bring best machines for Indian customers.

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Premium Lifestyle Laptops Performance meets Style. FHD IPS anti-glare display for comfortable viewing experience and wide-angle view.

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10th generation processor for ultrafast and dynamic performance.

Top up camera for better perspective and a bigger screen size.

LIBER V Rediscover Innovation

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Thin & light design for easy handling.

Slim and light build for easy mobility. Lightning fast SSD for brisk performance.

FHD Touchscreen for interactive innovation. Extended battery life for prolonged performance. 2-in-1 mode (Detachable Keyboard) for work and play.

FHD IPS bezel-less display for immersive visuals. Extended battery life for unstoppable functioning.

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