Covering Disruptive Technology Powering Business in The Digital Age

Big Community had the opportunity to meet with Data Security Experts, Halo Data’s CEO Resham Ganglani during the BIGIT event held in Starling Mall, Malaysia. Resham, who’s company is headquartered in Singapore, while operating out of Malaysia and Indonesia, gave a presentation to vendors and clients during the event on the importance of understanding which data needs securing and how to do it effectively.

Resham sharing his thoughts at the BIGIT event

“I think Malaysia, compared to the surrounding countries, is well positioned to be part of the digital economy because for starters, Malaysia has a large population compared to Singapore, they have an educated population and they also write in the alphabet. Which is what code is about. It is a whole new language to learn. The potential is there”, explained Resham when asked if the Malaysian market is successfully adopting the digital economy into her nation.

“They have a lot of bright and young people and a young economy compared to say Singapore, an aging economy. So there’s a lot of opportunity and potential in Malaysia. Big Data per-se has a lot of use cases in large populations and I think the governments push towards a digital economy with many different bodies participating, gives a platform for businesses like ours and others, to come in”, he said adding that Malaysia has the long established and new systems in place focused on technology that sets the direction and tone.

“The only thing that is difficult is when you have a wide spectrum economy, you have a large geography, everyone doesn’t move at the same pace,” he shared. “For instance in some states, grab is popular while in others, no one uses it. So its all a matter of adoption, education and connectivity.”

Having a strong mobile infrastructure such as what we have in Malaysia, makes it easier in the long run and would just be a matter of time before everything picks up.

“In terms of the digital economy, Malaysia is well positioned, with a large potential for growth.” He added that he liked Malaysia’s system of giving every state its own opportunity to grow as opposed to just being centralised at the capital.

“Infrastructure wise, Malaysia is competing with Singapore to be datacentre of the region”, he said that in comparison to other regions where the natural climate of hurricanes and earthquakes threaten the very lives of the people living there, this region is relatively unscathed by such situations and poised to grow exponentially.

“That provides the ideal platform for datacentres to be hosted. With that, there are a lot of datacentres hosted in Malaysia and in Singapore. As long as the connectivity is maintained, I think as a country and as a region, these two main countries will have a lot of opportunity.”

“However, if you want to be a datacentre nation and host data, the next challenge and the next frontier comes next year when Europe launches the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Those regulations are far more stringent than the Personal Data Privacy Act (PDPA),” saying that although its similar, but still different.

Fines ranging from 4% of global turnover or 20million Euros await companies who defy the privacy rulings. Resham adds that since many European companies have their offices here, the ruling will take effect here as well.

“As long as you are hosting European data, you are obligated to protect at least personal data. Therefore in order to become a datacentre nation where people host data in the country, then those kind of laws need to be taken more seriously.”

Resham shared that their company provides a spectrum of solutions to assist in the region to help with growing the digital economy.

“We represent about 14 companies who are leaders in the industry and we are the Asian representatives. We bring the best of breed, the latest in data security and we are more focused on internal threats,” he said.

He explained that the most dangerous link in any organisation is the person with complete access. While not many people are aware of that threat, it is a very real situation in the world today.

“Therefore when you give people access, you must protect it. You can’t give them freedom. They can roam freely in a controlled environment and that’s what we try to achieve. If you look at one of the worlds greatest data breaches, they were from the inside. They have access to everything and that’s where we focus on. Because we focus on a variety of solutions, we bring the latest, we bring compliance, and that’s what we strive to provide.”

“We try to help organisations, not in reducing their productivity, but we would like to help them work securely and productively. Security is not meant to be a productive barrier, its just meant to safeguard data”, he said.

(0)(0)