Trend Micro appoints Baker as UK boss

Former sales director tells CRN what partners can expect from the cybersecurity vendor under his leadership

Trend Micro's Ross Baker has been appointed the general manager and VP of sales for its UK&I operations.

Baker has been with the cybersecurity vendor for seven years, operating as its sales director. His promotion will see him take charge of the vendor's UK market strategy; sales and partner teams; marketing and its technical bench.

He has been in the new role since the start of this month and told CRN that he has bolstered the leadership team with some new additions, including Bharat Mistry, former principal security strategist at Trend Micro, who will be the vendor's new technical director for the UK, and Kate Emery-James who rejoins the Trend Micro UK team as sales director after two years with F5 Networks.

These appointments were a strategic move to add an element of "certainty" for the vendor's UK employees, Baker explained.

"We live in a world where there is not a lot of certainty at the moment, so I wanted to create certainty for the sales team and the tech bench, and clarity around what I expect from everybody," he said.

"People have some liquidity within who they report to, as well as homeschooling and lockdown and all the other stuff that we're going through. So we're endeavouring where we can to create as much certainty as we can for them.

"We've heard from our executives as to what our strategy is globally, our job now is to ensure that we create clarity as to what our local strategy is, how we're going to execute on that and how we're going to prioritise locally."

That certainty isn't exclusive to Trend Micro's staff, claims Baker. The new UK boss said he wants it to permeate through its partner channel too. It is particularly needed at the moment, as MSPs find themselves the subjects of constant attacks from cybercriminals, he said.

"I talk to a lot of MSPs and their biggest threat isn't another MSP, their biggest threat is the nation-states targeting them," he elaborated.

"If you're an MSP at the moment, and you're targeted by nation-states, not only have they penetrated and breached that MSP, they've breached every one of their customers. Every day, I have an incident response report from my team telling me about another UK company that we're aware of is under attack in some way."

Baker said that there will not be a major strategy overhaul under his leadership this year, stressing that it is all about ensuring certainty and clarity for Trend Micro, its channel and its customers.

"What Trend Micro does is relevant to today," he reiterated.

"If you look at the threat landscape and you look at business challenges, we're all trying to ensure that we can be profitable, successful and ultimately survive.

"Trend Micro has such a relevant set of technologies, a relevant message and a team of people under myself that are there to help, and we're always growing that team. [Our partners can expect] that certainty and that relevance and that there's going to be no major overhaul and business as usual."