When it comes to IT infrastructure services, there is only one name that comes to mind – Kyndryl. The world’s largest startup spun out from IBM in 2021, offering expertise in IT infrastructure services from design to modernisation in over 60 countries with clients from all over the world.
A couple of months ago, when a cybersecurity software update shut down millions of Windows devices globally, the world woke up to a scenario that science fiction writers and policy experts have warned of for decades. In the hours and days that followed, large and small companies and institutions worked to resolve the issues in their IT estates; some didn’t know where to start.
At Kyndryl, the teams immediately mobilized to help customers recover their IT systems and lessen disruption. Based on insights from Kyndryl experts, we learnt about the actions businesses can take now to reduce the risk of being a victim of a cyber event, reduce the scale of impact and speed time to recovery if they are impacted despite preparedness.
According to Conal Hickey, Kyndryl’s Security and Resilience Leader and Vice President of Strategic Markets, the CrowdStrike incident has taught businesses that trigger events can lead to a breakdown of the IT systems they are dependent on, but that what is important is how businesses recover from the breakdown.
“The learning here is that there will always be a trigger event, and the question is how well businesses can prepare for that. Kyndryl’s point of view is that it is not just about cyber readiness. It is about the ability to recover those critical business processes.”
Conal Hickey, Kyndryl’s Security and Resilience Leader and Vice President of Strategic Markets
“The learning here is that there will always be a trigger event, and the question is how well businesses can prepare for that,” he said, explaining that the CrowdStrike outage was an example of a trigger, with other examples being an insider threat or even a cyberattack.
“Kyndryl’s point of view is that it is not just about cyber readiness. It is about the ability to recover those critical business processes,” he said, adding that the event also reminded executives at the board level of how fragile and related their business operations are to IT risk, and about the importance of investing in cyber resiliency and operational resiliency.
Closer to home, Malaysia was not exempt from the adverse effects of this phenomenon either, but there has been a positive spillover effect.
“People are beginning to think about their ability to withstand an ongoing attack and recover from it. What we are seeing is a lot more consciousness that penetrations or breaches are going to happen,” said Effendi Azmi Hashim, Managing Director of Kyndryl Malaysia and Indonesia, pointing out that this was a step beyond the traditional approach of only protecting and anticipating.
“My statement of arrival in ten years will be that we are the preferred go-to partner for mainframe modernisation migration while being able to offer the processing power clients need to run and accelerate their businesses.”
Effendi Azmi Hashim, Managing Director of Kyndryl Malaysia and Indonesia
Datuk Muhammad Azmi Zulkifli, Chief Executive Officer of InvestKL said “Cyber events can take many forms. Some are caused by bad actors maliciously breaking things, but some can be caused by a bad patch, human error, siloed ways of working, ineffective vendor management and more. This outage highlights the critical importance of being cyber resilient and that small and medium enterprises also needed to take heed of the CrowdStrike Incident.
Such matters should not be overlooked, considering many small and medium enterprises form part of the value chain of large companies,” he said.
A Welcoming Ecosystem
Kyndryl saw an opportunity to be part of and grow with the ecosystem in Greater Kuala Lumpur, considering three of its allied hyperscalers – tech giants operating global networks of data centres – are making Greater Kuala Lumpur an investment location. The alliances allow Kyndryl to be at the centre of client transformations while clients transition between the mainframe and the cloud, with the hyperscalers acknowledging Kyndryl’s expertise in mainframe infrastructure.
“Greater Kuala Lumpur specifically has the right ecosystem. Doing business with the market here is seamless because it is already established, it is mature and secure,” noted Effendi, adding that several regional and global clients also expected Kyndryl to serve and support them from here. Kyndryl also recently launched a Mainframe Modernisation Centre of Excellence in Greater Kuala Lumpur, in partnership with cloud service provider Amazon Web Services, which Effendi noted was Kyndryl as an organisation “doubling down” on its investment here.
According to Datuk Muhammad Azmi Zulkifli, CEO of InvestKL, Greater Kuala Lumpur is a digital-ready hub for multinational corporations. He highlighted that InvestKL has successfully facilitated the entry of over 140 leading global companies into the region, establishing regional hubs, centers of excellence, research facilities, as well as talent and innovation centers.
“Greater KL offers a seamless landing pad for investors,” Datuk Azmi remarked. “When we combine the forward-looking policies of a pro-business government with a multilingual, multicultural talent pool and cutting-edge technological infrastructure, it creates an ideal environment for global companies. Furthermore, the local ecosystem is a dynamic blend of multinational corporations, startups, research institutions, and academic bodies—fostering collaboration and driving innovation.”
“Here, we have the forward-looking policies of a business-friendly government, the multilingual and multicultural talent pool, and the technological infrastructure coming together to form a welcoming landing pad for interested investors.”
Datuk Muhammad Azmi Zulkifli, Chief Executive Officer of InvestKL
Talent Development For the Future
Kyndryl also expressed an interest in developing local talent, skilling up local graduates and taking on interns to bolster the years of shared experience among Kyndryl’s workforce at the Centre of Excellence, and to capitalise on the availability of the language skills here to better support the region.
“We’re talking about launching a programme to reach out to universities and start to integrate better with them. I think access to highly skilled graduates and undergraduates will be a key differentiator for us,” said Hickey, noting that Kyndryl has previously helped co-design university courses, and offered graduate or undergraduate placements to provide real-life experience.
He also shared part of his discussion with local financial institutions, and the insight that most clients do not have the luxury of starting with greenfield talents, instead needing to balance the needs of security against pivoting to new types of workloads for the applications on the mainframe.
“What better avenue than to get those skills coming out of university, and helping position them where we see the growth opportunities, both for domestic businesses and service providers?” he added, believing that the Centre of Excellence will grow larger to become more global rather than regional, and modernising to better fit client needs, with local talents being skilled enough to handle it.
Effendi sees the Centre of Excellence here becoming a workforce centre for Kyndryl, with certain skills and capabilities as the centre evolves over the coming years. He also personally believes the centre is a Malaysian asset as well.
“My statement of arrival in ten years will be that we are the preferred go-to partner for mainframe modernisation while being able to offer the processing power clients need to run and accelerate their businesses,” he said.