What brings you to India right now? How have your conversations been with the government?
These are such incredible times in technology overall and security specifically, and obviously India is one of the most important markets in the world. Beyond that, India is also our biggest R&D hub outside of Israel. So, for us, it’s meeting our customers and partners on the one hand but also making sure that we take advantage of the incredible talent that is here. Whether it’s our own employees, universities we work with, business leaders, or political leaders, meeting with them is incredibly important for us. I’m glad to be here.
Are the engagements mostly with the government or businesses?
It’s both. At the end of the day, cybersecurity is something that every industry, whether it’s public, private, defence, etc., needs to be aware of. We’re all interdependent. You cannot be a resilient nation if you don’t have a resilient grid, electricity, utilities, defence capabilities and banking system etc. All of these things intersect. When you think about a very large, sophisticated, and advanced nation like India, the challenges are immense, and the only way to create resiliency is to look at it from different perspectives.
How is India placed in your overall strategy and vision?
First and foremost is working with our partners to make sure that we can enable them to be our frontline folks. It’s to get the right people across the board. That’s why we already have five offices in India. I believe we can play a much bigger role in security for AI.
At the same time, India is unique because we’re not just looking to be a vendor, we’re also looking to hire more talented individuals, especially in our R&D centre in Bangalore, where there is unique talent.
Finally, it’s understanding more of the strategic trends happening in India as a nation, which is one of the most important technology hubs in the world today and is amongst our top five markets.
What are your thoughts on AI regulation?
It’s very difficult to regulate something that is happening so fast. Usually regulation comes from a lot of experience and trial and error, which is what happened in the past. It’s very prescriptive.
AI regulation needs to be more descriptive. That is, what are the outcomes that are unacceptable rather than ‘do this and that’? Because the changes are so fast, I think a rear-view regulatory mindset of a descriptive manner is not necessarily going to cut it. The leaders here (in India) are tech savvy, and understand that this is the new nature of the regulatory environment. I would also say it needs to be very collaborative.
How do you see enterprise investments increasing in cybersecurity?
It’s a growing industry. Security has always been very important, and now it’s critical. It used to be an engineering problem and now it’s a board and CEO problem. Most CEOs understand that a part of their AI transformation comes with security in mind, and they’re willing to make the investment.
Now, there are obviously competing needs because I think we’re all realizing that these models don’t come cheap. So, there is going to be a competitive environment for where the investments are going to go. Ultimately, whether on a personal level, company level, or country level, we need to find that Goldilocks balance between taking advantage of these technologies and mitigating the risk.
India is the third-largest start-up ecosystem in the world. Are there any categories of start-ups catching your attention?
There is a thriving entrepreneurship spirit and culture, but there’s also unique talent coming from some of the best universities, and that’s why we want to be out there speaking to them at a very early stage. In the next few years, we’re going to see not just sort of a linear progression but also new capabilities emerging. We will find some of it organically and the rest will be by seeing things that the start-up industry community is doing.
We’re looking at different companies around the globe and making the decisions as we go. There’s so much noise in the market right now, so we are looking for the ones that actually have not just a great idea but also the depth of technology, the culture fit, and ultimately go and make these acquisitions.
How do you look at competition? What kind of competition are you seeing in the Indian market?
Most of our incumbent competitors are US-based. When you think about the start-up ecosystem, for us, it’s more of a collaboration ecosystem and a greater opportunity. Generally speaking, of course there is no lack of hype in the market, and competition is aggressive. I think we can only win by coming forward with some of our heritage capabilities, for example, the concept of proactive prevention first, which is becoming more and more important, and at the same time coming with novel capabilities, again especially around AI.
What has been the investment in India by Check Point so far?
In the last few years, it’s been over $100 million. We have hundreds of people in India, and we’re continuously growing it. We’re talking double-digit growth in terms of our investment year over year, and I believe that that will continue.
There’s been a lot of buzz about Check Point stock not performing well. What are your thoughts?
Obviously, we want it to perform better. For us, 2026 is a transition year. We have probably the best security capabilities in the world in different areas and our engineering is second to none. But we also have to invest and be aggressive in our go-to-market, whether it’s marketing, sales, etc. So, we made a meaningful transformation to our go-to-market, and this should lead to a better performance in the near future.
In these times of geopolitical turbulence, is cybersecurity a greater concern?
Absolutely. In the last few decades, it’s been one of the tools in the toolbox of nation states, and it’s becoming more so. The barrier to entry is lowering because of AI, and the attack surface is growing. When you combine these two trajectories together, it becomes a more potent weapon, and securing against it is becoming harder and more important.
How do you think the security landscape is going to evolve in the coming time?
Some of the beliefs and paradigms that we have today will change. For example, a lot of what we do manually today will become completely automated. Detection and response, which is sort of the norm today, will become less relevant because by the time you detect and try to respond, it’s already game over. We’ll see a lot more automatic remediation and we’ll see more and more consolidation. We will need to play nicer together on an open platform.
