Chennai– With digital initiatives in India unleashing new opportunities for cybersecurity companies, Symantec Corp on Tuesday said it was strengthening the capabilities of its security operations centre (SOC) in Chennai to make it the largest of its SOCs in the Asia Pacific and Japan region.

“The reason we are enhancing the capabilities of the Chennai SOC is because of the qualities of the people here,” Peter Sparkes, Symantec’s Senior Director, Cyber Security Services, APJ, told IANS over the phone.

The Mountain View, California-headquartered cybersecurity giant employs over 500 certified cyber security professionals across its six global SOCs.

The other five SOCs are located in Singapore, Japan, Australia, Britain and the US.

“The Chennai facility currently has 140 security experts and it has the capacity to add 60 more immediately and an additional 200 at a later stage,” John Lionato, Vice President and Head of Global Operations, Cyber Security Services at Symantec added.

The company said its SOCs analyse over 150 billion security logs worldwide each day to provide enterprise-wide protection, helping organisations strengthen their defences and respond to new threats as they emerge around the clock, all year round.

With enhanced capabilities in the Chennai centre, customers in India and across the globe can now expect enriched access to security intelligence insights, and faster detection and response through greater regional coverage and visibility of the threat landscape, the company said in a statement.

The expanded SOC will offer the full suite of Symantec Cyber Security Services capabilities, helping customers reduce operational costs while extending the capabilities of their security teams.

In addition to being the largest Symantec SOC in Asia Pacific and Japan to support regional customers, this facility will also support customers and other Symantec SOCs across the globe, the statement added.

“Symantec’s SOCs are powered by the world’s largest civilian threat intelligence network, harnessing the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), to comb through trillions of telemetry elements. This unique capability provides protection against advanced cyber threats in an increasingly connected world,” said Greg Clark, Symantec CEO. (IANS)