Global cybersecurity major Sophos has recorded a 60 per cent growth in its India business in the last financial year, outperforming the broader domestic market growth by four times, a top company executive said.

India is now the largest contributor to the company’s Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ) operations and is currently the number one growth region for Sophos globally.

“The cybersecurity market in India is growing at approximately 15 per cent. In the last financial year (FY26), we grew at 60 per cent, which means we are growing at four times the market (rate),” Gavin Struthers, Senior Vice President – Asia-Pacific & Japan, Sophos, told PTI in an interaction.

Struthers attributed this “phenomenal achievement” to the rising awareness of the importance of cyber resilience and increased regulatory focus, including the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act.

The company currently employs over 1,500 people in India, making it the largest employee base for Sophos across all countries. Globally, the company has about 5,500 employees.

“It’s a very important market for Asia Pacific and Japan, and it’s a critical market for us globally, especially in light of the growth and the opportunity we’re seeing in the market,” Struthers said.

Struthers highlighted a “cybersecurity poverty line” affecting organisations that lack “MESI” — an acronym for Money, Expertise, Capability (C), and Influence (I).

He explained that even large organisations with Chief Information Security Officers (CISO) can fall below this line if they lack the expertise to run operations or lack influence over their entire environment, particularly regarding third-party and supply chain risks.

“If you look at the top-five CISO challenges in India, one of them will be third-party and supply chain risk. So you might have a very strong fortress with a strong moat and all layers of security, a defence system, but you are connecting with several third-party partners or vendors, other SaaS vendor applications… If there’s a compromise in one of those applications or partners, you then actually are a victim or a casualty. That’s what the poverty line speaks to,” Struthers pointed out.

He flagged that identity-based attacks have become a primary vector, noting that India is the “number two country in the world” for phishing.

“We know that attackers don’t break in; they log in,” Struthers said, adding that ransomware should also be viewed as an identity-based problem.

On the impact of artificial intelligence in cybersecurity, Struthers said AI has made phishing more sophisticated, making it “really hard to distinguish between… what is real and what is compromised…”.

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