Founded in 2010 Nexagate is Malaysia’s leading Cybersecurity Consulting & Services Provider and one of Asia’s market leaders. The full-service cybersecurity firm is on the mission to elevate the digital resilience of the business world. With trusted security solutions and services to more than 250 clients across various verticals, Nexagate dives deep into the nuances of cybersecurity and effectively meets the security requirements of organizations that run sensitive workloads. From Security Risk & Compliance to Security Audit & Testing, and Managed Security Protection, Nexagate is relentlessly working towards strengthening the cybersecurity posture of various industry giants. The company serves clients in the ASEAN region, specifically Singapore, the Philippines, Laos, and Indonesia. Led by Founder & Managing Director Khairil Effendy, with more than 300 projects completed, Nexagate is changing the future of cybersecurity.
We sat down with Khairil to know about his vision, mission, and plans for Nexagate.
Securing businesses. Winning trust
Khairil Effendy: “Nexagate is made out of 2 words – Nexa and gate. Nexa is the root word for Nexus, which means Connection that links two or more things together. Nexagate then means the keeper that ensures connections being made are safe and secure. Here at Nexagate, we embrace the culture of Excellence through core values such as Islamic Moral Values (distinguishing from right or wrong), Result Driven, Eager to embrace change (being innovative), Exceptional customer service, and Always strive for continuous improvement. We offer our service starting with highly regulated industries with critical information infrastructure like the public sector, Banks and FSIs, Telco Providers, and FinTech. Since there is a trend toward embracing Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR4), we have begun to explore emerging markets like Healthcare and Manufacturing which also include smaller and medium-sized enterprises. All our services are certified with ISMS ISO 27001, even the NSI Platform which conforms to ISO/IEC 27017 as a Cloud Service Provider.”
The aim is to safeguard
Khairil Effendy: “At first, I started this business because of my family. I wanted to create more time with my wife and daughter and start my own business. In 2010, I met up with Naim, now our deputy managing director, who forecasted the rising trend in cybersecurity. We started with getting our first ISMS certification and the rest was history.
We believe that everyone, regardless of individuals and organizations, big or small, deserves to be safe when interacting and engaging within cyberspace, having that peace of mind to perform business or personal activities. Organizations include Government Agencies, Enterprises, and extend to Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises, regardless of Industry. We aim to help organizations regardless of any size improve their security processes, achieve compliance and protect their data with our range of cloud-based managed security solutions and our award-winning, patent-pending NSI Unified Cybersecurity Management platform.”
The level of impact of cyber risks can be medium to high, especially when it impacts the branding of the victim organization which then loses its trust from its customers. Cyber-attacks trends have increased significantly since the pandemic started, where we see incidents of data leaks and also fraud cases amounting to millions
Services that simplify cybersecurity
Khairil Effendy: “Nexagate empowers organizations by offering the following services:
Risk & Compliance services– To help guide organizations establish, implement, maintain, and improve management system controls based on the international standards (ISMS ISO 27001:2013)
Security Audit & Testing services– We assess information infrastructures with regards to vulnerabilities, which includes Penetration testing and Security Posture Assessment. We are internationally recognized by CREST, a UK-based accreditation body, as the 200th member in the world. We have also explored cloud and OT as emerging services.
Managed Security Protection services-We offer 24/7/365 Security Operation Centre services which provide Continuous alert monitoring, validation, automated containment, escalation, and 24/7 threat monitoring. Nexagate Cyber Fusion Centre (CFC) monitors clients’ cloud security 24/7 to identify genuine incidents and provide the actionable guidance needed to remediate them. We also partner with technology partners such as Amazon Web Services, (AWS), F- Secure, SPLUNK, FireEye, and many more to provide the best protection to our clients.
Nexa Security Intel- We have also developed an award-winning, patent-pending NSI Unified Cybersecurity platform to help organizations regardless of size to establish or improve security processes, detect vulnerabilities and threats, and protect their critical information.”
NSI: Offering visibility, offering certainty
Khairil Effendy: “The level of impact of cyber risks can be medium to high, especially when it impacts the branding of the victim organization which then loses its trust from its customers. Cyber-attacks trends have increased significantly since the pandemic started, where we see incidents of data leaks and also fraud cases amounting to millions. Not to mention ransomware attacks that can cripple an organization altogether when their data has been wiped out by hackers.
The key is to have an integrated cybersecurity strategy in place with total cybersecurity visibility. This starts with awareness from the Key Stakeholders (i.e.: Management, Board of Directors) which then buys into establishing best security practices in places, which can be as simple as enforcing endpoint protection being installed on all staff laptops and also password/screen saver policy. Then, the organization can look into investing in more effective solutions as it matures. This is why we developed the NSI so that clients can have visibility on their cybersecurity solutions be it from the people, process, and technology perspective.”
Outshining others
Khairil Effendy: “We are ISO 27001:2013 certified for all our scope of services. We are recognized by CREST, an international accreditation organization for providing penetration testing. Nexagate was inducted into CREST as member number 200 back in July 2020. Our latest partnership as Acunetix’s 1st Managed Security Partner within the APAC region. Acunetix is a globally renowned technology company for web application penetration testing. We are among the only 5 local companies that have been certified by CSM for Penetration Testing Service Providers. We are Cyber Security Malaysia (CSM) PTSP-certified. Nexagate is also among the top 3 companies that have won in the inaugural Cyber100 Competition for 2020. CYBER100 (“Challenge”) is a Cybersecurity Innovation Challenge Program. It is a collaboration between Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) and the National Cyber Security Agency (NACSA) to meet the ever-growing demand for cybersecurity solutions. This positions NSI as one of the Local solutions highlighted under Pillar 3 of the Malaysia Cybersecurity Strategy 2021-2025, a 5-year national strategy. We won the Malaysia Technology Excellence Awards 2021, Winner of Cybersecurity – Computer Software. Category for delivering technology excellence via NSI.”
Creating a pragmatic future
Khairil Effendy: “We believe that our people come first. Nexagate’s leadership team will continue to grow our team members’ competency according to our vision to become the cybersecurity household name with APAC by 2027. Challenges include the scalability of a service business and also maintaining the same level of excellence when we grow towards the bigger market. This has influenced our strategy to invest our effort towards developing the NSI as the Super App for cybersecurity in becoming a Platform Centric Cybersecurity-as-a-service Provider with a Global reach. We definitely will leverage our technology partners’ expertise in upskilling our team members too. With our strong culture of excellence, we are confident to continue to rise to the challenge. Ultimately, our aspiration is for better cybersecurity for everyone, where no one is left out from being safe within cyberspace.”
