Credit: Dreamstime
Kaspersky Lab has appointed Sandra Lee as head of channel sales across Asia Pacific (APAC), replacing Naina Parhar who held the position since January 2018.
Parhar will now take on the newly created role of enterprise partner account manager for the region.
While head of channel sales, Parhar was responsible for driving and restructuring the vendor’s channel distribution and setting up the small and medium sized business (SMB) telesales business.
Previously at Plantronics, Lee joins Kaspersky Lab with 20 years of experience across the ICT sector, with a background in channel strategy and partner business management.
In her new position, Lee will be responsible for expanding the vendor’s channel network, and growing its relationship with the regional partner community, focusing on SMBs and enterprise markets.
“I am pleased to be joining one of the top cyber security companies which does not seem to rest on its laurels,” said Lee.
“The continuous innovation within Kaspersky Lab’s technology portfolio presents tremendous growth opportunities for our customers and partners and I am ready to help further boost the partner program and create even more fruitful relationships with our business partners."
Lee was also the director of alliances and channels for the APAC region while at Plantronics, spearheading regional channel strategy, alongside the execution of new reseller partner programs and distribution frameworks.
Credit: Kaspersky Lab Prior to Plantronics, she held various positions with Blue Coat, Microsoft, Motorola, Ilog and Citrix.
The appointment comes as Kaspersky Lab continues to add distribution partners across APAC, in a move designed to provide new service offerings through its updated partner program in support of the SMB and enterprise market.
“Kaspersky Lab has just rolled out its business strategy for the year,” said Stephan Neumeier, managing director of APAC at Kaspersky Lab. "The development of our enterprise sales team have become more and more strategic for the company so it is now fundamental to identify the right talents to help us build a top notch enterprise and SMB channel.
“Sandra's rich leadership experience in building high-performance channels organisations is a big win for the company and we are excited to expand our capabilities even more with her at the helm of our channels."
The security vendor spent much of 2018 combating Russian spying allegations, which were unproven but nonetheless damaging to the firm’s reputation.
Eugene Kaspersky, company CEO, denied the accusations and to a large extent allied such such fears through the firm’s global transparency initiative, which involves moving much of its core infrastructure from Russia to Switzerland, including customer data storage and processing for most region.
Software assembly is expected to be moved to Switzerland as well, including threat detection updates, which is expected to be supervised by an independent third-party.
Furthermore, by the end of 2019, customers in Singapore, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Europe and North America can expect to have their data stored and processed in Zurich.
