ESET foresees stronger growth in APAC in 2026 - CRN Asia

ESET foresees stronger growth in APAC in 2026 ESET believes the SMB market in the region presents a huge opportunity as the cybersecurity vendor looks to expand its presence in more markets in the region. Aaron Raj 21 April 2026 • 4 min read SHARE At RSAC 2026, ESET demonstrated upcoming AI protection capabilities designed to safeguard how employees interact with AI tools. Expected to be launched later this year, the new features will expand visibility in the ESET PROTECT Platform to investigate emerging risks tied to everyday AI usage and agentic AI adoption across an enterprise. With shadow AI among the main problems organizations face today, Parvinder Walia, President of APAC Region, ESET believes that as technology changes rapidly, it can sometimes go into the wrong hands. “What we see is that artificial intelligence is helping the bad actors more today. Even those who are not qualified as bad actors, AI is enabling them to be better at their work. So ESET is working towards raising awareness around these lines. And we have had very successful summits where the public and private sector are coming together to acknowledge the impact of AI,” said Walia. For Walia, it is quite heartening to see business leaders not just talk about technology but also discuss its usage in terms of ethical means, progress of people, and also building an element of trust and security within the consumer or the users of it. While there is a strong need for cybersecurity among enterprises in the region, the SMB market in particular is a sweet spot for ESET. He explained that ESET restructured is a market approach, taking a more strategic focus on markets of high value and high potential. In fact, ESET’s APAC SMB Cybersecurity Report revealed that 70% of respondents are targets of cyberattacks despite high confidence in cybersecurity. 50% rate lacking a dedicated cybersecurity team and keeping up with the latest threats as one of the top three cybersecurity challenges. This was also one of the reasons why ESET launched two Managed Detection and Response (MDR) subscription tiers recently. The ESET PROTECT MDR for small and medium businesses (SMBs) and ESET PROTECT MDR Ultimate for enterprises across Asia Pacific (APAC) including Hong Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand. The MDR subscription tiers were previously launched in Australia, India, and Singapore. ESET’s MDR services ensure organizations of all sizes and cybersecurity maturity to stay one step ahead of all known and emerging threats, effectively closing the cybersecurity talent gap, and facilitating expert consultations for incident management and containment in a fully managed experience. Growth in APAC According to Walia, ESET continues to see strong growth in the APAC region. Japan in particular is a strategic market for the cybersecurity vendor because of the requirements in the market. This made ESET strategically plan its growth and expansion in Japan while classifying the rest of APAC as strong growth markets. “So, the first strategy we implemented was to make Singapore as a hub for the region to look after the other markets in the region. Today, we have established independent focus teams for Singapore. We redefined our partner program that how we interact with our resellers and distributors, what kind of benefits we give to them, what kind of value proposition we show to them,” he said. Walia also highlighted that the next focus was to improve the presence in India because India is growing so rapidly as well. At the same time, Walia also pointed out that as there is a lot of consolidation happening in the cybersecurity industry, what’s interesting about ESET is that it’s a 40-year-old private company that has strong trust and credibility in the market. “We are one of the only cybersecurity companies coming out of Europe, where our owners are all researchers and programmers in the past. Our focus has always been on evolving technology. And it's such a big pride coming from such a small country like Slovakia, and we want to keep this legacy. We are not forced to bring in certain technology to please any shareholder. We only bring in to please our customers or to take care of them and prevent them from cyber threats. It's a huge difference to be honest,” Walia said. “Our scale may not be as large as some organizations, but our reliability is stronger than many of the bigger players,” he concluded.