FireEye to invest $ 50 mn in R&D in next 4-5 years in India

NEW DELHI: Cyber security firm FireEye today said it will invest up to $ 50 million (about Rs 272 crore) in research and development (R&D) on Internet security products in the next 4-5 years.

The California-based firm today launched its R&D centre in Bangalore which will develop and test new products. It will also hire 250 people in the next 5 years.

"We will invest $ 50 million in our R&D activities in India in the next 4-5 years to develop cutting-edge cyber security solutions," FireEye Founder and Chief Technological Officer (CTO) Ashar Aziz told reporters here.

The R&D centre is an important milestone for FireEye's global expansion and the company expects it to play a key role in innovation in security products, he added.

The company also announced appointment of Sridhar Jayanthi as the Vice President (R&D) and Managing Director, India operations.

Prior to FireEye, Jayanthi was McAfee's Managing Director and Senior Vice President (Engineering).

"We plan to expand our operations here in India and expect to hire 250 people in the next 5 years," Jayanthi said.

Stressing on importance of research on Internet security, Aziz said cyber attacks have become more sophisticated and are now easily bypassing traditional signature-based defences like next-generation firewalls, IPS, anti-virus and gateways compromising the majority of enterprise networks.

The FireEye platform is deployed in over 40 countries and more than 1,000 customers and partners including over 25 per cent of the Fortune 100 companies have deployed it, he said.