CXO Insight Middle East - Unleashing Innovation

ISSUE 33 \ AUGUST 2021

UNLEASHING INNOVATION How Petrofac is transforming IT for tangible business outcomes

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CONTENTS

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PRODUCTS

HOW PETROFAC IS TRANSFORMING IT FOR TANGIBLE BUSINESS OUTCOMES

UNLEASHING INNOVATION

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PLUGGING THE GAPS PROACTIVE APPROACH TO 30 12 APROTECT YOUR ASSETS THE DEMOCRATISATION OF THE 32 18 AHEAD OF INNOVATION CYBERSECURITY GAME

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NEWS

CASHING IN 34 ON CLOUD

ORACLE ACADEMY LAUNCHES UPSKILLING PROGRAMME IN SAUDI

TURNING THE 20 HEAT DOWN

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MANAGEENGINE STUDY REVEALS INSIGHTS ON TECH MATURITY POST COVID-19

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LOOK BEFORE YOU 42 MAKE THE LEAP

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WINNING IN THE CUSTOMER ERA

UNLOCKING THE FUTURE

PUBLISHED BY INSIGHT MEDIA & PUBLISHING LLC

ADAPTING TO THE NEW NORM

HELP AG INTRODUCES MANAGED ADVANCED WAF SERVICE

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EDITORIAL

WHEN OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS

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ast month, I’d an opportunity to moderate a roundtable with some of the top technocrats in the UAE to discuss low-code, no-code platforms in the broader context of digital transformation. This gave me some valuable insights into the digital transformation roadmap of leading enterprises and how they are leveraging digital technologies to create new business models. Though the current pandemic crisis has hammered the businesses, it has a silver lining – many of them have realised the value of fast-tracking digital transformation.

It is no exaggeration that Covid-19 has put IT on a pedestal as a result of companies looking for new ways to drive business growth. In fact, one of the CIOs who participated in the discussion remarked in jest that staff in his company now know where IT is now in the building.

The pandemic has helped these technology leaders to get management buy-in and budget for IT projects like never before. The crisis has triggered one of the biggest surges globally in

technology investments, and there is a sharp focus on new technologies such as the cloud, automation, and analytics. On its part, IT organisations have now realised they can no longer afford to operate like the way they did before, and they have to support the business to adapt to ever-changing market realities. The Covid-19 crisis has forced many companies to rethink their business models, and the onus is on IT to collaborate with the business to overcome challenges.

The role of CIOs is going to change in the post-pandemic world, and all of them will have to navigate the new responsibilities successfully. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for IT leaders to take the lead and steer their organisations through these disruptive circumstances to the new normal. They have to think about what is important for the business instead of focusing solely on the IT dimension of their organisations. As they say, in every crisis lies great opportunity, and don’t let it go a-begging.

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While the publisher has made all efforts to ensure the accuracy of information in this magazine, they will not be held responsible for any errors

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NEWS

ORACLE ACADEMY LAUNCHES UPSKILLING PROGRAMME IN SAUDI

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racle’s global, philanthropic educational program, Oracle Academy, launched an upskilling programme in partnership with Mentor Arabia and Tamkeen Al Shabab to engage, inspire and prepare the next generation of leaders and technology innovators in Saudi Arabia.

The program will provide core computing literacy to meet the demands of the future of work by training 10 volunteer educators in Oracle Application Express (APEX).

Upon completion, the candidates will implement their knowledge in APEX by training up to 100 Computer Sciences graduates.

Oracle Academy’s partnership with Tamkeen Al Shabab will provide holistic training that will cover various skills needed for participating students to excel in their future careers. While Tamkeen Al Shabab will equip them with the key soft and life skills, Oracle Academy in parallel will develop their

MANAGEENGINE STUDY REVEALS INSIGHTS ON TECH MATURITY POST COVID-19 ManageEngine has announced results from its recent market study, The 2021 Digital Readiness Survey.

The survey discovered that 86% of organisations worldwide are using artificial intelligence (AI) more than they did two years ago. However, only 35% of the global respondents reported that their confidence in the technology has significantly increased.

The focus of the study was to understand technological and process maturity in a post-COVID world, in areas such as remote work, security, business analytics and AI. ManageEngine commissioned Dimensional Research to conduct a 6

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Rajesh Ganesan, Vice President, ManageEngine

survey of 1,210 qualified executives and technology professionals from small businesses to large enterprises.

Researchers investigated geographical trends from North America, Australia and New Zealand, the United Kingdom, India and Singapore.

Organisations worldwide mainly increased their use of AI to improve business analytics (63%), increase

technical capacities by offering them and their educators exceptional training and a range of high-quality, free courses that cater to varying levels and industries.

To name a few – some of these courses will include Java Fundamentals; Java Foundations; Artificial Intelligence with Machine Learning in Java; SQL Fundamentals; Oracle Application Express (APEX) Development Foundations and more.

The additional curriculum for Computer Science teachers covers Java and Database and offers teachers the option to take this learning into their anytime, anywhere online classrooms using the Oracle Academy free resources hosted online.

Students will also have the opportunity to undertake the Oracle Foundations Associate Java and Oracle Foundations Associate Database exams through Oracle University, which are aligned to the Oracle Academy curriculum.

operational efficiency (62%) and enhance the customer experience (60%). While a majority of global respondents (94%) believe that AI will meet business expectations—and 65% stated AI had delivered measurable business results— some fears remain around the technology’s performance.

“The potential for AI to improve business efficiency and the customer experience was firmly on show through 2020, with AI handling everything from increased customer service volumes to oversight of self-service processes,” said Rajesh Ganesan, Vice President at ManageEngine.

“While AI is being handed more responsibility and is applied in more business-critical use cases, our research shows this is a double-edged sword and that more work is needed to embrace the technology and lift internal capability to ensure AI achieves its promise.”

HELP AG INTRODUCES MANAGED ADVANCED WAF SERVICE

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elp AG has launched a fully cloud-delivered Managed Advanced Web Application Firewall (AWAF) service that proactively improves the security posture for organisations relying on webbased applications.

The service is in line with Help AG’s service centric evolution that offers customers uninterrupted access to leading cybersecurity technologies powered from in-country platforms with round-the-clock access to cybersecurity talent on a pay-as-you-go model.

Using cutting-edge Web Application Firewall technology, it protects customers’ web-hosted applications from attacks, which target known and unknown exploits, without interrupting legitimate traffic.

Stephan Berner, Chief Executive

Stephan Berner, CEO at HelpAG

Officer at Help AG, said, “In today’s digital age, enterprises rely heavily on web applications to perform their day-today business functions. With more and more applications moving to the cloud, customers are increasingly exposed to sophisticated attacks wherein hackers take advantage of attack vectors that bypass traditional network and hostbased security technologies.

“Help AG’s Managed Advanced Web Application Firewall service enhances customers’ cybersecurity posture and offers them industry-leading protection and an assurance of uninterrupted webhosted business applications.”

“The service provides them with round-the-clock proactive defense, support and management, no matter where the end user is located.”

SANS INSTITUTE LAUNCHES INTERACTIVE CYBERSECURITY COURSES SANS Institute, the global leader in cyber security training and certifications, announced its upcoming live online training program ‘SANS Summer Dunes August 2021 Live Online’, to be held from 14th – 19th August. Designed to offer flexible access to cyber security training taught by real-world practitioners, the event enables Gulf professionals to protect their assets by learning critical skills in a hands-on labs in a virtual setting.

Expert instructors will help participants develop skills in topics such as network penetration testing, advanced incident response and threat hunting to defend their organisations against ever-increasing cyber threats.

‘SANS Summer Dunes August 2021

Live Online’ will feature two new GIAC-certified courses: ICS410: ICS/ SCADA Security Essentials, aimed at industrial cybersecurity professionals; and MGT551 Managing a Security Operations Centre (SOC), aimed at those looking to build SOCs. The challenging market conditions of the pandemic forced regional enterprises to re-evaluate their cybersecurity practices as they pivoted from a cloud-last to cloud-only perspective, while unsecure habits of remote workers also exacerbated regional and global data breaches.

“Through its ambitious vision, the Gulf is on course to become one of the world’s most digitised economies. While a truly networked region will be the

Ned Baltagi, Managing Director, Middle East & Africa at SANS Institute.

catalyst for exponential business and civic progress, these opportunities also mandate the need for vigilant protection of corporate and government networks,” commented Ned Baltagi, Managing Director – Middle East and Africa at SANS Institute.

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NEWS

SAP EXPANDS ‘INNOVATE TO WIN’ SERVICE

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AP has expanded SAP Innovate to Win, a service designed to help customers get enabled on innovation frameworks and mindsets and apply these to build an internal culture around innovation and agility.

Available for companies of all sizes and from all industries, SAP Innovate to Win is an innovation enablement and coaching service that helps

companies to tackle their individual business challenges.

The company piloted the program in the Middle East and North Africa region, and have now expanded to support enterprises around the globe with virtual, in-person, and hybrid format options.

The customised service enables teams within organisations to adopt Design Thinking — defined by The HPI School of Design Thinking (HPI D-School) as a human-centered, iterative, team-based mindset that leads to breakthrough innovations — and to build digital prototypes using SAP technologies. It also uniquely includes Business Model Innovation, Blue Ocean strategy, positive psychology, and creative coaching.

HPE SETS UP SALES CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE IN EGYPT Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has announced the opening of a new regional Sales Center of Excellence (CoE) in Cairo, Egypt, to serve the Middle East and Africa region. The sales hub will build on strong growth opportunities in the digital economy and will respond to customer demand for secure connectivity, remote work solutions, data analytics capabilities and as-a-service solutions. HPE will also launch an accompanying recruitment drive in the region.

The new Cairo Sales CoE hub has been designed to deliver a scalable and competitive site focusing on innovation and skills, as part of HPE’s long-term commitment to Egypt. The hub will provide an engine for career 8

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Raif Abou Diab, Managing Director, Gulf & Levant, HPE

development and will foster future leaders in the region. HPE will build on and deepen its ongoing collaboration with local universities and research institutes in addition to the technology and entrepreneurship centers in Egypt to recruit graduates and develop local expertise and capabilities for the technology sector.

As part of the expansion, planned new hires for the Cairo Sales CoE

The standard program is delivered in seven different modules over the course of six weeks. With an emphasis on learning by doing, users complete field work in between each module to apply their learnings. This culminates in the final module when they then pitch the concepts they’ve developed to be utilised in realworld situations. SAP also creates a “maturity assessment,” or checklist, to help teams stay on track to achieve their objectives.

SAP Innovate to Win is also designed for different types of professionals.

First, the programming can be geared to people specialising in IT who want to collaborate more efficiently with the business side of an organisation. With SAP Innovate to Win, IT professionals are better equipped to communicate with different kinds of teams and move from conversations centered on tech requirements to those focused on outcomes.

are expected to nearly double HPE’s current sales resources in Egypt.

HPE will also create new positions for apprentices, early careers and experienced hires to start work at the new hub. Graduate hires will work across sales, presales, sales supporting functions and channel, participating in a structured training program, including a two-year Sales Academy. Upon completion they will be able to move across various sales roles in the region.

“The opening of the Cairo Inside Sales Center of Excellence highlights our commitment to Egypt and its incredible talent pool,” said Raif Abou Diab, Managing Director, Gulf & Levant, HPE. “Egypt is vibrant, innovative and growing, so is well aligned with our business and our culture. HPE continues to focus on investing in growth and bringing together the brightest minds, creating a rewarding workplace that cultivates talent and advances the way we live and work.”

SALESFORCE LAUNCHES APPEXCHANGE CHAT AND TRUSTED REVIEWS

Woodson Martin, GM of Salesforce AppExchange

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ppExchange is home to over 6,000 apps and consultant listings that extend Salesforce to help customers innovate faster and drive quicker time to value.

With over 9 million customer installs and 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies using AppExchange solutions, AppExchange has long been an innovation hub for customers looking to transform their businesses — and for partners developing solutions and providing expertise across the Salesforce Customer 360.

And now, with the addition of AppExchange Chat and Trusted Reviews, it is even easier for customers to connect with partners directly and to make smarter business decisions — without ever leaving a partner’s AppExchange listing.

“Customer expectations have changed drastically during the pandemic — and AppExchange is innovating to meet these expectations by enabling customers to connect directly, in real time, with partners,” said Woodson Martin, GM of Salesforce AppExchange.

“In addition, with Trusted Reviews, customers can be more confident in their AppExchange install decisions.”

The new AppExchange Chat feature, built in collaboration with ISV partner Qualified, enables partners to add Chat functionality to their AppExchange listings, making it possible for customers to chat with real partner experts and get questions answered without leaving AppExchange and leverage those answers to make better informed business decisions in real-time.

Customers can easily find partnerbuilt solutions enabled with Chat functionality through the AppExchange Chat collection page. The collection page currently includes over 25 apps and consultant listings from Chat pilot partners, including Qualified, Vonage, Natterbox, 360 SMS, OwnBackup, Copado and Conga. These listings are ready-to-install solutions that span five categories, including: collaboration; productivity; customer communication; data management and analytics; and finance and accounting.

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NEWS

FORTINET EXPANDS SECURITY SERVICES OFFERINGS TO PROTECT DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURES

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ortinet has announced an expansion to its FortiCare and FortiGuard security services offerings, adding a new security service called FortiTrust. FortiTrust security services offer user-based licensing across all networks, endpoints and clouds, which traditionally have been siloed. Initial service levels are being offered for zero-trust network access (ZTNA) and identity verification, with more offerings forthcoming.

John Maddison, EVP of Products and CMO at Fortinet, says,“As the digital attack surface expands with billions of edges that need to be protected, organizations are struggling to support an array of point security solutions and disparate services. Solution and services sprawl has now grown too difficult and too expensive to manage when they are siloed across various form factors. According to Gartner,

organisations are moving towards security solutions with integrated services offerings. Fortinet is redefining services by expanding its security services options – which currently include FortiCare and FortiGuard – with FortiTrust, enabling a unified offering with one licensing model for flexible consumption options across networks, endpoints and clouds.”

FortiTrust provides security services that follow the user across an organisation’s entire security platform, enabling organisations to easily manage and secure across all form factors.

FortiTrust adds to Fortinet’s existing FortiCare and FortiGuard security services portfolio. FortiCare services are available for all Fortinet Security Fabric products.

FortiCare offers three levels of services, including Essential, Premium and Elite, all providing 24×7 technical support and timely issue resolution. FortiCare also

offers several product and account-based services options to address the unique needs of any organization. Through FortiCare, organisations have access to Fortinet experts to help accelerate technology implementation, provide reliable assistance through advanced support, and offer proactive care to maximise security and performance of Fortinet deployments.

pleased to be the technology vendors of choice for UWC and look forward to our collaboration. We believe this partnership will mark the beginning of a long-standing business association as we embark on the journey of digital transformation for UWC,” said Anas Abdul-Haiy, CEO and Deputy Director at Proven Consult.

Committed to creating smarter businesses with its team of experts,

Proven Consult, in partnership with UWC, will work to create value through implementation of digital technologies.

The company aims to enhance business performance and implement Intelligent Business Automation as a core functional area within UWC in order to further enable technological efficiencies and achieve uniformity, integrate digitization, and improve functionality across various verticals within the organization.

This joint venture between two industry pioneers aims to realise Saudi Vision 2030 with the combined goal of promoting technological advancement in the Kingdom, while at the same time placing Saudi Arabia on the world map in terms of technological advancement.

PROVEN CONSULT AND SAUDI ARABIA’S UWC TO DRIVE DIGITALISATION IN LOGISTICS Proven Consult and warehousing logistics service provider in Saudi Arabia United Warehouse Co. (UWC) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to fast-track digital transformation in the logistics industry.

As per the partnership, both companies will collaborate in advancing technological transformation through the deployment of latest technologies.

“At Proven Consult, innovation is at the heart of everything we do. Our goal is to support businesses prepare for a digital future and change the way they conduct operations. We are extremely 10

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John Maddison, EVP of Products and CMO at Fortinet

SOPHOS ACQUIRES REFACTR

Joe Levy, CTO, Sophos

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ophos has acquired Refactr, which develops and markets a versatile DevSecOps automation platform that bridges the gap between DevOps and cybersecurity. Based in Bellevue, Washington, Refactr launched in 2017 and is privately held.

As DevOps and security teams continue to adopt “IT-as-Code” approaches to managing their environments, Refactr’s ability to automate any of these processes enables teams to scale. For example, with Refactr’s platform, DevOps teams can augment existing continuous integration, continuous delivery and continuous deployment (CI/CD) workflows, and cybersecurity teams can leverage the platform’s visual drag and drop builder. Refactr has leading customers in both the private and government/public sectors, including the Center for Internet Security and the U.S. Air Force’s Platform One. Sophos is optimizing Refactr’s DevSecOps automation platform to add Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) capabilities to its Managed Threat Response (MTR) and Extended Detection and Response (XDR) solutions. The SOAR capabilities will also help automate Sophos’ Adaptive Cybersecurity Ecosystem, which underpins all of Sophos’ product solutions, services, threat intelligence, and data lake.

“First-generation SOAR solutions have moved our industry forward in significant ways, but we’re now witnessing an evolution where more and more businesses are becoming software companies, and our security solutions need to evolve in parallel.

As we’ve seen in recent supply-chain incidents, attackers are increasingly targeting software development pipelines, and defenders need the ability to shift further left of attackers.

The industry needs SOAR to mature into more capable and generalisable DevSecOps solutions, and Sophos’ acquisition of Refactr will help us lead the way,” said Joe Levy, chief technology officer, Sophos.

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VIEWPOINT

A PROACTIVE APPROACH TO PROTECT YOUR ASSETS AS THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD BECOMES EVER MORE CONNECTED AND COMPLEX, THE NEED TO EMBED PERVASIVE CYBERSECURITY POLICIES IS PARAMOUNT, SAYS TIM GRIEVESON, CHIEF INFORMATION SECURITY OFFICER, AVEVA

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n an age of rapid digitisation and always-on connectivity, the industrial landscape has never been more ready for transformation. Post-pandemic, companies have learned radical lessons about how to run and optimise systems in unpredictable operational times. As such, global organisations have been compelled take decisive action by putting technology at the very heart of their business processes. Cybersecurity is a key business differential in ensuring these operations are secure and resilient.

With the rapid and significant need to enable remote work and team collaboration, software solutions like Cloud, Edge and IoT can pave the way for improved business performance and procedures. But with great opportunities also come challenges. As such, more complex industry technology solutions demand a heightened focus on cybersecurity and securely enabling the work-from-anywhere culture.

It’s no accident that the latest forecast from Gartner predicts worldwide spending on information security and risk management technology and services is predicted to grow 12.4 percent to reach $150.4 billion in 2021.

Cybersecurity was the top priority for new spending, with 61 percent of the more than 2,000 CIOs surveyed increasing investment in information security this year, the IT research firm said. Security services including consulting, hardware support, implementation and outsourced services represent the largest category 12

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of spending in 2021, at almost $72.5 billion worldwide.

Industrial risks According to global cybersecurity analysts, industrial systems are still not yet sufficiently protected against the new and multi-faceted risks of digital transformation, despite being susceptible to increasing risks for many years. In order to be effective, company cybersecurity policies must proactively and holistically pervade the entire organisation. A balance should also be struck between mitigating risks and

enabling new business initiatives. What’s more, it’s imperative that companies focus not only on training staff but also on selecting appropriate and best-of-breed technology partners who build security into the ecosystem of how they operate as opposed to charging extra or having security as an add-on.

Key security considerations Industrial businesses that embrace transformation and have a holistic view of cybersecurity are benefitting from diverse technology ecosystem development, including connected devices, edge

control, apps, analytics and cloud services, which are enhancing business performance at an unprecedented pace.

It’s vital that your organisation’s approach to security is part of the organisational culture – using components that meet recognised standards and include encryption by default. Security must be integral to the design of any process or operation and fundamentally baked into the services that support the operation of your systems and business objectives.

Company checklist The tsunami of risks focused on operating technology (OT) ranges from the exposure of intellectual property and lost production systems or data to serious fines and reputational loss.

Cybersecurity is a multi-faceted discipline requiring a proactive approach across the business. For your business to be best prepared against threats, it’s important to consider the following elements: People Ensure you invest in your people by providing relevant and timely security training for staff, contractors and third parties, which not only supports your organisation objectives but can be used in personal digital lives too. It’s essential to engage all your employees as active cybersecurity ambassadors by educating them on identification, prioritisation and understanding the changing security landscape including dangers of malware, phishing, unofficial USBs and social media oversharing so they can behave and act accordingly.

Network It’s vital to maintain a unidirectional gateway between IT and OT systems, as well as running continuous vulnerability assessments and installing anti-malware solutions for industrial end points, as well as your corporate and lab environments.

Partners Select vendors that will partner with you to protect critical data and understand your security, legal principles and privacy

policies. Determine where and how data will be collected, used and stored.

Ensure partners include security as a core component of their service offering as opposed to an optional extra. Ensure they take shared responsibility for good cyber hygiene and are transparent on what they can and cannot do to support your business.

Processes It’s important to build a culture of cross department buy-in across management, IT, security and business operational teams for cybersecurity processes. In addition, you should develop,your cybersecurity program to ensure continual improvement ensuring you build in findings from regular audits and vulnerability assessments to ensure systematic risk burn down and capability improvement.

Devices Ensure you change your IoT device passwords from the factory default; extend your security and password policies to mobile devices; and conduct regular intrusion testing and anomaly detection on all devices. Never assume your devices are safe and always validate and include them in your security assessment strategy.

Vendor checklist When considering your cybersecurity needs, choosing the right partner is crucial. Software vendors play a key part in your cyber defence strategy. When considering a cloud or IoT partner, here are some key questions to consider: Physical security Where are their cloud services physically deployed?

Where will my data actually reside?

Where and how will my data be captured, stored and used?

Data security How is your information protected – at rest and in motion?

Does your vendor support unidirectional data transfer?

How does your supplier deal with network outages?

Application security How do they handle authentication, authorisation and account management?

What is their approach to identity and access management (IAM)?

Are they using a recognised secure development framework?

What is their response to identification and remediation of known and unknown vulnerabilities?

Continuous monitoring and improvement Do they have proactive monitoring and active security policies in place?

Can they identify abnormal behavior and catch anomalous activity?

What procedures are there to detect and isolate suspicious activity online?

Do they use threat information derived from monitoring to continually improve security controls and techniques?

Security assessments Do they have a proactive program of internal and external security audits?

How do they deal with ongoing compliance with regulations, such as GDPR? Do they have a published security statement that you can read?

When you detect vulnerabilities how do they disclose them and how promptly do they remediate?

Staff How do you vet and train your staff?

Do your staff hold relevant security certifications and experience – and do they share this information with you?

Do your staff use third-parties as part of the service delivery and how do they ensure compliance with your security principles?

By including these basic cyber stages in your security strategy, you will take the first steps towards a complete protection strategy. In today’s world of ever more complex cyber threats, a comprehensive security strategy – covering all the basics – is no less than critical for protecting your digital and physical assets.

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COVER STORY

UNLEASHING

INNOVATION FOR ENERGY COMPANIES, DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IS A CRUCIAL INGREDIENT. PETROFAC’S GLOBAL CIO, GEORGE EAPEN AND GLOBAL HEAD OF CYBERSECURITY, SHAHAB SIDDIQUI TALK ABOUT HOW IT AND SECURITY TEAMS ARE WORKING IN TANDEM TO DRIVE TANGIBLE BUSINESS OUTCOMES WITH DIGITALISATION AND AUTOMATION.

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an you share with us your digital transformation roadmap and goals?

George: The world has changed since the outbreak of COVID-19. The mandate for all IT organisations now is to enable the workforce in improving productivity. Being an energy company, we have many systems that work only on our network. The challenge was to make it work for the remote workforce. So, we have transformed and moved some of these workloads to the cloud and made it securely accessible for our employees. In addition, we are focusing more on digital optimisation to reduce costs and improve the bottom line. We are doing two critical projects on this front – Material Lifecycle Management to reduce waste, and Knowledge Management to enhance the efficiency of our engineering workforce. What we are doing is the automation of wing-to-wing processes instead of automation of individual tasks. For this, we start with process mapping by working closely with business stakeholders and identifying multiple opportunities in a single process to automate to see the real benefits.

How did you overcome the business continuity challenges during the pandemic?

George: Petrofac started its digital transformation journey in early-2018, and we were ahead of the game. We are one of the

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early adopters of digital technologies in the region. We rolled out Microsoft Teams, and our cloud journey was also at an advanced stage even before the pandemic. However, we used this opportunity to accelerate our digital transformation roadmap; we have done many things in weeks, which would have usually taken six months. The way I look at it is that automation isn’t a new thing. As human beings, we are always looking to improve efficiencies, and COVID-19 acted as a catalyst for that change in all organisations. One outcome of long-term remote working is that it has made our emplyees more digital-savvy because every home now is an “office” or a “school” and everyone is more familiar with the technology.

What role does cybersecurity play in your digital transformation journey?

Shahab: Traditionally, cybersecurity teams get involved in digital initiatives just before the project goes live. One major change that we have implemented at Petrofac is that the cybersecurity team is part of the digital steering committee, and we are involved right from the project ideation phase.

Cybersecurity is embedded into all our digital projects, so it is not an after-thought. When it comes to remote working, we were already supporting it before the pandemic. However, COVID-19 allowed us to test our business

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COVER STORY

contractual agreement. However, when it comes to the partitioning and departitioning process related to data, no cloud provider is going to enforce that for you. That has to be done by the organisation.

continuity plans, and the transition to remote working was completely seamless during the lockdown.

Is the cloud a key focus area for you?

George: It’s always been a big focus area. For most people, the biggest driver for cloud is cost savings, but it is also about scale and agility. The way I see it is someone else is running your data centre when you are in the cloud. Since we started our cloud journey in 2018, we have reduced the number of our data centres from five to two. However, I don’t think everything will move to the cloud as some workloads will always run on your on-prem data centre. We are pushing to move 70 percent of our workloads to the cloud so that we can spin off new services quickly.

Who do you think is responsible for security in the cloud – the provider or the user?

George: It depends on what is the model of engagement with your cloud provider. When you talk about the cloud, you can either have infrastructure-asa-service, or platform-as-a-service, or software-as-a-service. If it is platformas-a-service, it’s pretty clear you are buying the platform, and you expect the security aspects to be taken care of by the cloud provider. But in the case of infrastructure-as-a-service, 16

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ESTABLISHING POLICIES AND PROCEDURES IS ESSENTIAL BUT REACHING OUT IS EQUALLY IMPORTANT. USUALLY, SECURITY POLICIES ARE PUBLISHED ON THE COMPANY PORTAL. BUT IT IS YOUR JOB AS A CISO TO TAKE IT TO THE USERS. it’s a different ball game, and the responsibility for specific aspects of security lies with the organisation.

However, there are many other highlevel security aspects, such as data retention and protecting it from ransomware attacks.

All these should be taken care of by the cloud provider as part of the

How did you go about creating a strong security culture at Petrofac?

George: I joined Petrofac as its first CISO before being promoted to the global CIO role. I was fortunate that I had the support of the top management in driving a cultural change. When you talk about a cultural shift, it has to touch every single employee, so I went in for a long-term strategy.

We did a lot of campaigns centred around cybersecurity, and the Petrofac communications team was incredibly supportive. It was not a one-off campaign but rather a series of communications designed to stick in employees’ minds.

We have also initiated campaigns among employees to report phishing emails. We also made significant investments in specific technologies for better cyber posture. I worked very closely with the rest of the IT functions such as the infrastructure team, the application team, and also third-party teams that work with us. The result was a better branding of cyber posture among our employees from technology and communication standpoints.

I’ve spent a lot of time with company leaders as well as people who can be influencers in a bigger group, educating them about what cyber is. We have also revamped our IT policies and procedures.

One example is data classification drive, which requires all employees to classify and label the data they have created. It’s an excellent example of cultural change because you are asking them to do something different, which they haven’t done before.

Establishing policies and procedures is essential but reaching out is equally important. Usually, security policies are published on the company portal.

But It is your job as a CISO to take it to the users.

INTERVIEW

AHEAD OF THE CYBERSECURITY GAME AHMED BAHER, REGIONAL SALES MANAGER AT INFOBLOX, ON HOW THE COMPANY IS HELPING ITS CUSTOMERS IN EGYPT OVERCOME CYBERSECURITY CHALLENGES.

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an you elaborate on the three biggest cyber threats enterprises face in the Egyptian market as they rapidly embrace the new business reality and move workloads to the cloud?

It has been stated in the press that customer data is more valuable in today’s economy than oil. If this is true, then protecting customer data must be a top priority for all businesses. This means all pathways to customer data must be secured, no matter where that data is stored. Let us look at some of the things that may be making your life more difficult. From a network perspective and from an environmental perspective, there are all these shifts happening today. In fact, a customer recently said, “Right now in IT, it is like the industrial revolution of years past. There’s that much change going on.” You have got more people on the Internet, more technologies moving to the Internet like software-defined networking, more devices from BYOD or Internet of Things. You have seen attacks driven by things as random as security cameras. Then moreover, you have got businesses really pushing on digital transformation for cost reasons, better service to customers, that frankly is, from an IT perspective making your world a lot more complex. What does that lead to?

That is leading to more hacks and everevolving threats.

What are the challenges customers have when attempting to address these growing threats?

Network landscapes are rapidly evolving, driven by trends in security, virtualisation, cloud, IPv6 adoption, the Internet of Things, and Bring Your Own Device. These 18

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modern demands require advanced solutions for managing critical network services in physical, virtual, and cloud environments. However, when many of the processes for provisioning network services are still managed manually, or across disparate sites and systems, these solutions can be a challenge to deliver and visibility into networks can be limited.

This rapid growth can also make it difficult for an organisation’s infrastructure to scale quickly enough to keep up, risking unplanned downtime and business disruptions. Security risks are increased as well, as items such as mobile devices from inside and outside an organisation’s network are continuously crossing mixed physical and cloud infrastructure whose security may not always be under that organisation’s control. As a result, networks are being constantly exposed to threats.

How can companies design effective strategies to ensure their digital businesses are secure?

From an infrastructure perspective, the first thing you need is to be able to

see what is out there, make sure that everything is within your policy, and then protect that infrastructure. Visibility becomes an important aspect because you cannot troubleshoot or protect what you cannot see.

Number two for protecting your infrastructure - you have got policies around infrastructure and whatnot as they get spun up on the network.

You would want to know that they are there and that they are within policy.

You would want to find non-compliant devices because they could be hiding vulnerabilities.

Third is making sure your critical network services is up and running even when your network is hit with an attack.

And doing it intelligently is the elegant approach that Infoblox offers.

Finally, you can also send information about what is happening on the network to other security solutions in your environment, like a Firewall, NAC, SIEM, Vulnerability management etc.

How has Infoblox armed customers with robust cloud-first security solutions to combat evolving threats?

Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense is a DNS-based security tool that covers security blind spots left behind by next-generation firewalls (NGFWs) and endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools, while protecting the enterprise network and those working remotely regardless of device or location.

BloxOne finds anomalies earlier in the threat life cycle and empowers organisations to detect and remediate with higher efficacy using automation and security orchestration and response while requiring fewer people resources.

INTERVIEW

WINNING IN THE CUSTOMER ERA ECOBANK, AN INDEPENDENT PAN-AFRICAN BANKING GROUP, HAS RECENTLY IMPLEMENTED A FULL-STACK OBSERVABILITY PLATFORM ACROSS 33 AFRICAN COUNTRIES FROM TOUCHFORCE TO DRIVE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE. WE SPOKE TO THE BANK’S REGIONAL CIO FOR ANGLOPHONE CENTRAL, EASTERN, AND SOUTHERN AFRICA, CHARLES ASAMOAH ASSAH AND SYED SHAHAN, FOUNDER OF TOUCHFORCE, TO GARNER INSIGHTS INTO THIS TRANSFORMATIVE JOURNEY.

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hat made TouchForce choose EcoBank over 100 plus banks in Africa to instrument digital

transformation?

Syed: A visionary may see, but a leader decides. The vision of Emmanuel Ikazoboh, Chairman of EcoBank, was very clear – the group needed to significantly improve customer experience and also be benchmarked against the best in class.

EcoBank is a beehive of visionaries and leaders who are futuristic in their mission.

Charles architected the use of an APM from a customer experience perspective.

Charles’s commitment to accelerate seamless customer experience is futuristic. TouchForce was fortunate to create a platform with these visionaries over a period of six months to bring proof of value. Once we were able to extract data and insights from the solution that empowered EcoBank, Charles visualised its impact on their 25 million customers instantly and made the decision.

What is the value an APM solution brings to EcoBank?

Syed: I read about the Group CEO Ade Ayeyemi’s mission, which stated: “In this new age of banking, our strategy was formulated to ensure that Ecobank becomes the pan-African bank of the future. To attain this goal, we

must focus intensely upon our digital banking transformation journey so that we could survive the onslaught of disruptive technology.”

Benchmarking a solution to match their vision was our goal. EcoBank has several applications across their architecture that interact at an incredible pace to provide a seamless banking experience to its customers. TouchForce’s mission was to bring a single pane end-to-end observability across their technology stack. We achieved this at a breakneck pace working with Charles and his team at EcoBank. We shifted the process to future state and adopted an OODA loop framework. As a result, EcoBank has transformed into a state of Zero Click observability in real-time.

Can you name some of the pain points addressed during this journey?

Syed: We stumbled upon challenges that were generic in the banking industry.

Charles looked at the challenges as ‘Tech Dystopia’ using a proactive approach.

Tracing an issue when multiple services are in progress in real-time was key. Also, reducing the target response time to less than three seconds from minutes, and the root cause analysis time from days to a couple of minutes was crucial to deliver a better customer experience. Another key objective was to provide value to DevOps, Infra and the executive team with

Syed Shahan

Charles Asamoah Assah

predictive AI-powered dashboards in line with the vision of the leaders of EcoBank.

Charles, can you describe the journey with TouchForce as the regional CIO of the Bank?

Charles: The journey with TouchForce was insightful and eye-opening. We were faced with several customer challenges, which made us play catchup with the customers. We needed to be ahead of the game and improve our user experience across all channels.

From the initial demonstration of the tool and the value addition that the user experience tool brings, we knew that we had chosen the right partner from the start. Their customer engagement and support teams were unprecedented and always available to assist throughout the deployment and post-deployment phases. We know we have made the right choice in improving our customer experience.

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FEATURE

TURNING THE HEAT DOWN

AS THE PANDEMIC TRANSFORMS THE WAY WE DO BUSINESSES, ENTERPRISES NEED TO INTEGRATE SUSTAINABILITY INTO THEIR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION BLUEPRINT TO ACHIEVE OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCIES.

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ver the past few years, the business case for green IT has faded as organisations grappled with challenging economic conditions, focusing on bottom line rather than being eco-friendly. However, the pandemic has brought green tech back on the radar as many enterprises now realise it is a vital ingredient to achieving operational efficiencies and productivity gains. The 20

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shift towards green IT is triggered by the growing concerns around climate change and some exciting new technology trends that help companies to make sustainability part of their core DNA to reduce environmental impact.

Recently, the historical Paris Agreement has charted a new course for countries to adopt green technologies, and spurred a range of technology use cases and applications in the path towards

environmental sustainability. Industry pundits say some of the most exciting green tech trends to watch in the near future are AI, cloud storage, and data science and analytics.

“As we reflect on the impact of the pandemic on many industries in the Middle East and beyond, we come to understand that the urgency of addressing climate change has driven key decision makers to prioritise sustainability and Environmental,

Social and Governance (ESG) practices at the heart of their business strategies,” says Elena Avesani, Director, Global Sustainability at Oracle.

She says organisations are implementing several emerging technologies to achieve their sustainability goals, and one of them is environmental sensors/IoT. “Businesses can enable always-on data feeds by instrumenting ecosystems with sensors, allowing them to accurately monitor environmental health, identify human impacts on natural resources, improve response times to fires and other emergencies, improve traffic efficiency and help create more sustainable cities, among other things.”

Fady Richmany, Sr. Director and General Manager – UAE, Dell Technologies, says one of the most prominent sustainable trends we will see is an increased shift to the cloud and green data centers. “As more enterprises are turning to green technology, they are investing in onpremise green data centres that bring them greater energy efficiency. Green

data centres can feature fully managed hybrid cloud solutions that combine the simplicity and agility of the public cloud with the security and control of on-premises infrastructure while also cutting costs by reducing energy and power consumption. This is becoming both a convenient system and a sustainable one for enterprises.”

He says we will also see 5G technology increase its role in sustainability with use cases that drive positive change across society, such as precision farming, remote healthcare, and education. It is estimated that 5G-enabled use cases will cut down 1.7 billion tonnes of global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, according to a report by STL partners.

“We will also see an increase in work management automation through data capture, storage, and utilisation as daily work processes get automated through low-carbon technology. As the UAE continues to adopt effective policies and strategies as part of its UAE Energy Strategy 2050, we will see more of these trends that will help foster a green economy,” Richmany says.

Advances in artificial intelligence are also helping companies to understand their ecosystems and optimise energy systems.

“In the global transition to renewable energy, AI could be the answer to making decentralised energy grids more effective. By applying AI, decentralised grids can balance electricity supply and demand needs in real-time as well as optimise energy consumption and storage that lower rates,” says Stephen Gill, Academic Head of the School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences, Heriot-Watt University Dubai.

Avesani from Oracle shares a similar opinion: “Organisations may use AI’s continuous learning skills and pattern recognition to better comprehend the scope of emissions and environmental damage, as well as model the best transformation scenarios to pursue.”

With customers more likely to purchase from companies with a CSR mandate, many global tech vendors are making sustainability a key market differentiator.

Last year, Oracle committed to the goal of having its cloud be 100% renewable

Elena Avesani

Fady Richmany

by 2025 and expanded its commitment to sustainability by pledging to power our global operations, including our facilities, with 100 percent renewable energy.

“Moreover, we are focused on building a circular cloud infrastructure — which taps into energy efficiency, resource efficiency, renewable energy and elasticity and is about everything from design to delivery to operations and servicing to equipment retirement. The cloud is also critical in this regard in enabling us to simplify our prior business practices of shipping hardware and parts to tens of thousands of customers. Today, we have a much smaller set of Oracle-run data centers that we’re maintaining, which enables significant opportunities to lower

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FEATURE

Dr Chris Cooper

Stephen Gill

the overall environmental footprint of the technological capabilities which we deliver,” says Avesani.

On its part, Dell looks for every opportunity to embed sustainable practices across its portfolio and a key part of its circular design approach is to engineer waste out of our product lifecycles and to recycle materials back in.

“We’ve created a new supply chain that recovers ocean-bound plastics, putting them back into our packaging instead of letting them wash out to sea. We work with suppliers to collect, process and mix plastics with other recycled material to create molded trays used for packaging select 22

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products. Our products also have an efficient design that requires fewer resources and maximise recycled and renewable materials, as we strive to take back as much as we produce. We also champion the people who build our products, insisting upon ethical practices, respect, and dignity for all workers,” says Richmany.

Why do CIOs need to care about sustainability and climate change?

Climate change is a global crisis; it needs global solutions, not fragmented responses from some quarters of industry or stakeholders. According to a recent report by IDC, organisations will yield greater value by merging digital transformation (DX) and sustainability initiatives.

“The decisions CIOs take regarding data infrastructure and technology investments can influence change and initiatives that cut across the organisation and accelerate sustainability targets. CIOs are well placed to spearhead DX and to create operating models that harness data for valuable insights. On the DX journey, an effective CIO can draw support from several leaders on strategy, enable enterprise-wide cultural change, and deploy emerging technologies that bring transformation to scale,” says Gill from Heriot-Watt.

Dr Chris Cooper, Director and General Manager, Lenovo Infrastructure Solutions Group ME, says, at a business level, energy bills for computing are increasing significantly. “The increasing need for power and cooling is going to be a problem for the entire IT industry, not just the supercomputer industry.

The wattage of processors, accelerators and other components used in servers is going up. Each and every data center will experience this issue.

What is also clear is that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a KPI for every C-level executive today too – addressing sustainability has a direct positive impact on CSR.” Avesani says taking a reactive approach to climate threats and risks is no longer an option. There are expectations for organisations to do their part in sustainability efforts and supply chains for

meeting sustainability goals -- this means, having these objectives in C-Suite agendas is imperative.

“As CIOs and CTOs are the drivers of the choices around technology investments within a business, it is crucial that they are conscious, well-informed and opportunistic when it comes to making the right decisions to ensure that the core business operations are led by responsible carbon management. They can play a leading role in their organisation’s energy management and sustainability initiatives by uncovering hidden opportunities to reduce consumption and associated costs,” she adds.

Richmany from Dell says many organisations have already started implementing carbon-neutral strategies and goals. “CIOs and CTOs need to ensure that it is a core part of their strategies to embed sustainability and ethical practices into what they do, as they have an important role to play in advocating for sustainable business models. There is a big opportunity to see how technology can be used to support research, mitigation efforts and climate-positive solutions. Not only that, but green IT can also help cut costs where smart technology is in use and recycled materials can help encourage a circular economy.”

What are the major barriers for the adoption of green technology?

Cooper from Lenovo says there really should be none, but the fundamentals are required to be addressed to drive the adoption of green technology. “This is generally about a change in mindset.

We have spent so many years building infrastructures without much thought for the environments and impact to the environment. The prime concern has been “how many servers or storage can I fit in the envelope of my power and cooling capabilities,” rather than looking at the ‘360 product lifecycle’.

“Education will play a major part in overcoming these barriers to adoption, but so too will financial budgets.... everyone is pressured to do more with less, so managing assets better through the product lifecycle will have a large positive impact.”

VIEWPOINT

UNLOCKING THE FUTURE THE FUTURE OF STORAGE RESIDES AT THE INTERSECTION OF THE EDGE AND CLOUD, SAYS OSSAMA SAMADONI, SR. SALES DIRECTOR – MERAT, DELL TECHNOLOGIES

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nformation is the lifeblood of companies and in this new data era, the combination of massive amounts of data and unparalleled technology innovation, has given businesses of all sizes the opportunity to become disruptive, digital powerhouses. Data has become more diverse than ever before – and is now being created, processed, and stored everywhere, from edge to cloud.

“Data is a precious thing” Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web said, “Data is a precious thing and will last longer than the systems themselves.” Today, data is increasingly generated and consumed

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across a geographically distributed and mobile infrastructure of people, processes, and tools. As every aspect of our lives and business goes online, organisations are rapidly transforming how, and where business happens. The edge increasingly is where data is being created with Gartner estimating that 75% of the data will be generated and processed at the edge.

Edge represents an incredible opportunity for organisations as they digitise business processes, and extract value from all the data they collect from their operations. It also represents new challenges as organisations must find a way to gain real-time insights

across a massively distributed set of devices, with large data volumes in a cost-effective manner. Attempting to manage this growth and data with traditional storage technology – where data is moved to and processed in centralised data centers comes with challenges such as: • Increasing latency: Sending data from edge devices to a data center and back significantly increases latency, which is unacceptable in use cases like self-driving cars where a milli-second delay in response can be dangerous.

• Reliability issues: Enterprises may not be able to count on mission-critical

current business needs, but also allowing scale to evolve IT infrastructure as business dynamics change.

Therefore, organisations must refresh their storage infrastructure on a regular basis and keep up with the increased data demands by eliminating aging infrastructure that is more susceptible to failures that cause outages/downtime.

Modern storage infrastructure also frequently includes advanced data protection features that help ensure the on-premises data remains safe and secure. Data encryption adds an additional layer of protection to this, improving data security and mitigating the potential for data loss.

or time-critical applications because of latency and bandwidth issues.

• Rising costs: Moving massive amounts of data at high speed can quickly increase expenses.

• Lack of bandwidth: There simply may not be enough bandwidth to handle the sheer volume of data generated by edge resources.

• Increasing risks: The growing amount of data sent between edge devices and data center locations increases the attack surface.

Workload autonomy Most organisations have found that no single infrastructure can address all their data requirements, so they utilise different architectures, creating siloes of IT resources that are managed and consumed independently. At the same time, IT is under increasing pressure to deliver greater levels of simplicity and agility on the business side.

In order to manage data generated by edge environments more efficiently, enterprise-grade, on-premise storage must now provide the same operational flexibility as cloud, becoming ever more adaptable, automated and easier to integrate with existing management frameworks. By landing storage and cloud capabilities out at the edge, organisations have more latitude to decide where a specific workload is best processed.

But this brings us to the real question.

What are some of the enterprise data storage practices that would help unlock the real value of data capital at the edge?

Edgier technology for tomorrow’s leaders Firstly, the digital leaders of the future can’t be built on the technology approaches of the past – IT needs to evolve to provide a technology foundation that accelerates digital innovation. Today’s storage infrastructure technology is designed to make hybrid cloud environments and data produced at the edge,

MODERN STORAGE INFRASTRUCTURE ALSO FREQUENTLY INCLUDES ADVANCED DATA PROTECTION FEATURES THAT HELP ENSURE THE ONPREMISES DATA REMAINS SAFE AND SECURE. DATA ENCRYPTION ADDS AN ADDITIONAL LAYER OF PROTECTION TO THIS, IMPROVING DATA SECURITY AND MITIGATING THE POTENTIAL FOR DATA LOSS. easier to deploy and manage. These purpose-built suites of solutions, have evolved to fill an essential role in the data centre, providing everexpanding levels of performance, capacity, and resiliency for missioncritical workloads. Modern storage architecture is helping businesses succeed, by not only supporting

Blurring storage and cloud roles Next, against the backdrop of post pandemic recovery and the volume of data being generated from the edge, one thing is clear. The lines between storage and cloud are blurring as organisations demand agility and simplicity for business-critical IT infrastructure to respond to changing market dynamics.

According to a recent report from Coherent Market Insights, the GCC and Levant’s data storage market is set to reach a record-high of $8.5 billion by 2027, nearly tripling from $2.9 billion in 2019. In order to manage and process high volumes of data, enterprises are transitioning from multi-cloud architecture to hybrid cloud storage that leverage the power of cloud for their edge environments. This is because hybrid cloud data storage technology provides the flexibility and resiliency that enterprises need for evolving workloads.

To conclude, the premise is simple.

The edge is a key element of the future of computing and data storage and cloud are intrinsically linked to that.

To effectively ride the data waves, organisations must modernise their data centres and embrace intelligent and adaptable, enterprise cloud storage infrastructure. The organisations that do, will be prepared to manage the deluge of data that’s already here.

INTERVIEW

DEALING WITH DATA GREGG PETERSEN, REGIONAL DIRECTOR FOR THE MEA REGION, COHESITY, ON WHY DATA MANAGEMENT IS KEY IN TODAY’S DIGITAL ECONOMY.

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an you tell us how this pandemic has changed backup and recovery strategies of enterprises in the region?

Even before the pandemic, data fragmentation had become an issue with between 4-10 copies of each piece of data in any ME organisation. It’s in part due to the way IT solutions have been purchased over the years here.

Data has exploded in volume and become scattered across multiple public clouds, data centres, remote offices, and the edge, with little global oversight. In each of these locations, data has become isolated in specialised infrastructure, often

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from multiple vendors, to manage basic functions such as backup, networking, storage, archiving, disaster recovery, dev/ test, and analytics. As a result, businesses are losing control of data and the copies they have in deep silos.

The pandemic created an additional layer of complexity to backing up and managing data instead of moving in the other direction towards a more simple, efficient, streamlined backup and data management environment. There were colocation providers having to ask customers to ‘check-in’ like a hotel to visit their hardware, and for some they simply weren’t allowed to visit datacentres to perform tasks. This has really put an

emphasis on managed services and cloud.

But even with these scenarios the issues of fragmented data can still exist and manifest quicker still.

Customers have seen these trends and have now very quickly realised that it’s time to look at modern next-gen data management vendors. This new breed of vendor can provide a single platform to backup their modern data and give them oversight in one platform to manage this data no matter where the workforce is.

Consolidating the data onto a single platform that can manage the backups, NAS, Object storage, dev and test, analytics all in one single interface is what customers are seeing and expecting from

not get re-injected into the production environment during restores - something not all our rivals can provide.

their vendors now. There should be no limitation of data, apps, databases and location when being able to backup this data. The days of the legacy-style ‘onetrick-ponies’ is over for businesses with an eye on the future.

CYBERCRIMINALS HAVE BEEN TARGETING BACKUP DATA FOR OVER TWO YEARS NOW, AND DURING THAT TIME WE’VE SEEN THE THREAT EVOLVE FROM BACKUPS STORED ON-PREMISES TO THOSE STORED IN THE CLOUD. THAT’S WHY BUSINESSES NEED TO LOOK AT NEXT-GEN BACKUP SYSTEMS WHICH ARE ARCHITECTED DIFFERENTLY THAN THOSE OF THE PAST.

How are you helping your customers to defend against ransomware attacks?

We have baked into the foundation of Cohesity technology something called SpanFSTM, an immutable file system.

Cohesity SpanFS stores all the backed-up data in internal Cohesity Views that are inaccessible from outside of a Cohesity cluster. This in itself provides protection, but given the backup snapshots are stored in a read-only state, which means that no external application or unauthorised user can modify the snapshot. This is hugely significant and is a gamechanger in the fight against an attacker.

Any attempts to write to an immutable backup snapshot, are marked read-only upon completion of each Protection job running. For additional security, Cohesity views include DataLock, Cohesity’s Write Once Read Many (WORM) feature. If DataLock is enabled, the backup snapshot cannot be deleted by anyone, including administrators, until the DataLock expires.

We also have two other features - a neat Cohesity Helios mobile phone app that provides visibility remotely and on the go, and can be used in conjunction with alerts to notify an IT team member of unusual behaviours or issues beginning to arise.

It’s not fail safe, but it is an early-warning feature that might just help you lockdown a system and stop an attacker in their tracks once they are in your system.

Finally Cohesity CyberScan is an app on our Marketplace. By scanning backup copies on Cohesity Helios instead of the risk of doing so on the live production copy, you can get more return on investment from your backups, and safely identify any vulnerabilities across an organisation’s IT environment, including the operating system, computer, network devices, and configurations. The application gives a global view of all vulnerabilities through an easy-to-read security dashboard along with actionable recommendations. These recommendations are supplemented with the highest CVE coverage, knowledge from Tenable’s extensive intelligence, and plugins on how to address exposures before hackers exploit them.

We are having a lot of conversations about ransomware recovery right now as a compliment to the front-end security offered by traditional cybersecurity vendors. CyberScan is particularly neat because it gives peace of mind and ensures that known vulnerabilities do

Cybercriminals are now targeting backup data. How can users mitigate these threats?

The fact is, most backup products were designed before ransomware became a popular way of stealing personal and business data. Their architecture of media servers, media agents, storage repositories, and resulting data sprawl make them vulnerable to today’s exploits.

Cybercriminals have been targeting backup data for over two years now, and during that time we’ve seen the threat evolve from backups stored on-premises to those stored in the cloud. That’s why businesses need to look at next-gen backup systems which are architected differently than those of the past. At Cohesity, our backup and recovery solution defends data against ransomware attacks better because of immutability built into our system. This provides backup copies that cannot be modified, encrypted, or deleted. With our modern, multicloud data management architecture featuring immutable, anti-ransomware technology, Cohesity customer’s backups are protected from cybercriminals as they attempt to strike and remove that last line of hope - the backup. And, that’s been a game changer for us - the more attacks happen, the more the message around immutability in the architecture becomes more widely understood.

Do you see demand for backup as a service in the region?

Absolutely. Our Backup as a Service offering is currently available on the Frankfurt and London AWS regions for EMEA organisations, but we’ve already closed our first deal in the Middle East.

We hope to expand our customer base for DataProtect delivered as a Service rapidly and we intend to release more offerings across our Data Management as a Service platform between now and the end of the year. With most hyperscalers having announced a local presence or already having a local presence, we see this demand growing exponentially.

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INTERVIEW

NAVIGATING CLOUD AHMED ADLY, ORACLE’S SENIOR DIRECTOR FOR CLOUD ENGINEERING, TALKS ABOUT HOW THE COMPANY IS TAILORING ITS APPROACH TO ENSURE THAT CUSTOMERS CAN BUILD THE CLOUD ENVIRONMENTS THEY WANT.

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an you give us an update about your strategy since the opening of Oracle’s public cloud region in Dubai last year?

It was a significant step for us as it enabled both large and small enterprises to make the long-awaited move to the cloud. Now, they can comply with local regulations and address the challenges of network latency and bandwidth with a regional cloud data centre. However, we did not stop there as we are now opening our second data centre in the UAE later this year. We believe it will be as important as the first cloud region because customers are looking to have their production environment and DR site to be in the same country, following the same regulations. We are also expanding in Saudi Arabia and South Africa, so MEA is a big focus for us.

The second area of our strategy is focused on providing flexible options to our customers to migrate to the cloud. We are bringing our cloud technology into specific customer environments because some large enterprises do not want to move to the public cloud because they want data behind their firewalls. Previously, some vendors have tried to provide customised versions of the cloud technology to their customers, but that didn’t work well. So what we are doing is bringing the exact copy of the architecture and blueprint of our public cloud region and making it available to customers to deploy it within their data centres. We recently signed up a mega project with the Oman government to build their 28

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G-cloud, using our dedicated region Cloud@Customer technology. This is in line with our strategy to provide our customers with tight control over data sovereignty and governance.

Are you bringing public cloud capabilities into private data centres with Cloud@Customer?

Exactly. We understand the challenges of some of our customers – they believe in the value proposition of the cloud in terms of cost benefits, flexibility, scale, etc. However, they are concerned about their data security; they don’t want their data to leave the country or outside their firewalls. And some of them are operating in highly regulated industries with stringent compliance requirements. We are not turning our back on them, so we have taken the same technology we are using in our cloud and packaged it to run in their data centres. We run it in the same way as we run our cloud, meaning we do the installation, configuration, patching, upgrade, and

everything you can think of to have a fully operational cloud environment in the customer data centre.

What’s more, we also offer it as a payas-you-go model to lower costs. If you look at the other major cloud players in the market, you have no choice but to go to their data centres. We are the only cloud provider that offers this flexible cloud option to customers.

This pandemic has accelerated cloud adoption globally. Do you see that reflecting in the Middle East?

Though the pandemic disrupted our lives and economy, it accelerated cloud adoption in the region. I can tell you what CIOs here have been doing over the last one and half years. Those who believed in the value of the cloud but were reluctant to move were pushed by the pandemic to migrate to the cloud.

Even those who didn’t have planned budgets for the cloud reallocated it from other projects to make the leap.

This was mainly because of a couple of reasons. First, during the lockdown, when their engineers could not reach data centres the cloud turned out to be the better option. Second, you must have heard about the global semiconductor shortage, and IT chiefs don’t have to worry about having access to hardware because cloud providers offer the capacity they need.

Third, enterprises need new ways to interact with IT infrastructure, and CIOs now understand they need to serve the business differently because the old ways are not working. The cloud is the best medium that can help accelerate their digital transformation plans. I’d spoken to a CIO recently, and before the pandemic, he was thinking of adopting IaaS and lift-andshift some workloads to the cloud.

But, he was pushed by the pressure of the pandemic to move to the cloud and realized he could access 60 plus services on his cloud platform, which can be used to work on so many projects in ways he’d never imagined before. That is the kind of positive impact that this pandemic had on cloud transformation.

https://cxoinsightme.com/ictleadershipawards/2021/

Conrad Hotel, Dubai 17 OCTOBER 2021 The Middle East is a bubbling cauldron of tech innovation. The pace of digital transformation in the region is accelerating in the wake of the pandemic with the rapid adoption of digital technologies. ICT Leadership Awards 2021, taking place on 17th October 2021, will recognise companies and individuals in the Middle East whose ICT practice has led to innovation and business resiliency during this pandemic.

Chosen by CXO Insight Middle East editors, we will spotlight organisations that are making smart business decisions with emerging technologies and the whole ecosystem that is fueling the growth of the ICT sector in the region. Be part of this awards programme that celebrates technology leaders from a broad range of organisations for their exemplary leadership and innovative approaches and tools and platforms these visionaries are tapping into to solve their business problems.

For the first time, we will also be recognising the achievements of B2B technology marketing managers who have made significant contributions to the success of their businesses and helped their brands to rise above the noise in a fast-paced market.

FEATURE

PLUGGING THE GAPS MANY ORGANISATIONS ARE LEVERAGING MANAGED SECURITY SERVICES TO BRIDGE SKILL GAPS AND IMPROVE SECURITY POSTURE. HERE IS HOW IT WORKS.

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rganisations in the Middle East need to get security right when embracing rapid digital transformation. As the number and variety of cyber-attacks rise, companies undergoing digital transformation are more prone to security risks than ever before. Faced with the pressure of rapidly increasing cybercrimes, skill shortages, and the need to safeguard critical data, many security chiefs are prompted to turn to managed security services providers to help with proactive steps to contain threats.

According to a recent report from MarketsandMarkets, the global managed security services market is projected to grow from $31.6 billion in 2020 to $46.4 billion by 2025, driven by the rising instances of security breaches and an increasing number of attacks that pose a threat to large and small organisations.

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“There is a significant shift in the security spend across the Middle East, Turkey and Africa (META) region as most of the organisations started operating on digital and online platforms which also exposes them to security vulnerabilities. There is a drastic increase in end-user based targeted attacks such as phishing, email compromise, spamming etc. Ransomware, advanced persistent threats (APTs) and cloud related attacks are also on the rise post pandemic time, and these factors have influenced the security professionals to fortify their organisation,” says Manish Ranjan, Senior Program Manager for Software & Cloud at IDC Middle East, Turkey and Africa.

In a recent IDC Security survey, almost 67% of the respondents mostly CIOs/ CISOs/IT heads across the META region stated that they expect their organisation’s spending on IT security to increase in 2021

over 2020, while another 20% said it would remain unchanged.

Dr. Ahmed AlKetbi, CISO, Moro Hub, says the pandemic has obliged businesses to reconsider and reprioritise their security strategies given the increase in consumption of digital services. The change in the consumption pattern using cloud services and personal devices has raised new security concerns, especially in the monitoring and response area.

Safeguarding digital assets became a higher priority and therefore we noticed clients’ budgets have shifted more towards securing their cloud environments and leveraging cloud-based security services.

“Security strategies shall be aligned and focused on covering this new risk as a part of new digital workplace and workforce.

Accordingly, we encourage governments and enterprise clients to adopt a more balanced approach towards spending.

Managed security services are a cost-

Dr. Ahmed AlKetbi

effective and viable option to instantly scale-up with advanced monitoring solutions that can immediately cover these new risk domains of digital workplace and workforce,” he says.

Managed network, managed security information and event management (SIEM) services, and DDoS mitigation services are the top three areas where organisations are leveraging expertise from managed security service providers.

AlKetbi says the key role of MSSPs is to provide real-time cybersecurity services round the clock to ensure protection, detection, and response readiness. Most enterprises leverage MSSPs to be able to respond to cyber incidents any time of the day, as security attacks are unpredictable.

Also, several clients do not have the required resources with the right level of skillset maturity, this is where MSSPs step in to help them augment the capabilities of their in-house security resources. Such skilled shared resources can further help in optimising the budgetary challenges.

Ranjan says managed network security service is becoming extremely crucial for organisations to safeguard all components like hardware components, software applications and cloud services. According to IDC Security Survey across META region, almost 50% of organisations stated that their spend on managed network services would be more in 2021 than the last year, which is the topmost managed security service area.

Enterprises are increasingly leveraging

Manish Ranjan

Simon Willgoss

MSSPs for access to the skilled expertise they offer. Globally, and in the Middle East region too, it is difficult to find and retain skilled cyber professionals. “Managed Security Service Providers like Help AG have spent a lot of time finding, onboarding and retaining skilled cybersecurity specialists, including exposing them to different security contexts that would not normally exist within a single organisation.

Thus, any cybersecurity analyst or engineer will be able to develop their capabilities far quicker and more broadly in a managed services environment than in any single organisation,” says Simon Willgoss, Head of Managed Security Services, Help AG. Additionally, enterprises are leveraging MSSPs for 24x7 security operations. Doing this internally is very costly and requires a lot of management, including managing shifts, shift allowances, physical facilities, leave and sick leave, and retaining staff.

Many enterprises have opted to use a managed service provider because MSSPs are used to managing all these aspects day in and day out; it is their bread and butter, and they have the pool of resources to draw from, he adds.

What should be key evaluation criteria when selecting an MSSP? One of the primary reasons why organisations partner with MSSPs is due to their depth and breadth of security expertise. And this becomes a very critical criterion that every enterprise should evaluate before selecting an MSSP. “Enterprises must do due diligence to

see if the MSSP has required number of security experts and what certifications do they have, and are they specialised in only a few security threat areas only or look for wholistic security threat landscape. They should also evaluate if they have the right capabilities and capacities to manage real-time security crisis, do they possess expertise within a specific vertical, and how does the service level agreements (SLA) compares with others,” says Ranjan.

Many service providers will take your data out of the country, highlighting one of the most important evaluation criteria when choosing an MSSP, according to Willgoss.

Organisations must consider whether there are any restrictions on data movement in or out of the jurisdiction where they operate.

Government, semi-government, critical infrastructure, and financial organisations often face such restrictions, so selecting an MSSP that operates locally is key.

AlKetbi agrees: “While every organisation would have their own set of criteria, it is essential to consider regulatory and integration challenges. MSSPs need access to confidential data like key system logs and traffic feeds. Given the increasing data residency and sovereignty requirements it is advisable to consider in-country MSSPs. In addition, especially for a cloud-delivered service it is very important to work with MSSPs, which are certified by local and international standards. Finally, the target MSSP shall have industries leading SIEM/ SOAR technologies to ease integration and support automation and orchestration.”

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EVENT

THE DEMOCRATISATION OF INNOVATION CXO INSIGHT ME AND KISSFLOW ORGANISED A THOUGHTPROVOKING CIO ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION ON HOW TO ACCELERATE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND BRIDGE THE SKILLS GAP BY DEMOCRATISING IT.

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he Covid-19 crisis has prompted businesses of all sizes to adopt new strategies and practices and accelerate digital transformation initiatives.

CXO Insight Middle East, in association with Kissflow, brought together a limited group of IT chiefs for peer-to-peer learning and knowledge-sharing on fostering innovation and driving digital transformation.

The tone for this virtual roundtable discussion was set by Rahul Bhageeradhan, global director of digital architects at Kissflow, who remarked digital transformation is the force to take the business forward.

He went on to explain the business value proposition of low-code, no-code platforms: “Building new applications requires heavy IT skills and high investments. Low code is a software development approach that needs minimal or no coding. It speeds up app development and delivery time and has all the important building blocks as security and volume management built-in.”

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With 500 million new apps projected to be built in the next five years, Bhageeradhan said low-code would help businesses embrace new technologies much quicker.

An interactive discussion followed Bhageeradhan’s presentation among key technologists in the region, who shared key lessons learned from their digital transformation journeys.

Javeria Aijaz, senior director of technology and innovations at Farnek Services, a Kissflow customer in the region, said her company is heavily focused on the operational side of the business: “We believe in digitalising every aspect of the business to make service delivery more efficient. When you grow as a company, you rely more and more on data, and information visibility and efficient processes become key.”

Shumon Zaman, chief information and digital officer of Ali and Sons, said that everyone is on the same boat when it comes to digital transformation.

“We have 15 different business units across six different verticals. We have to transform the organisation and be more agile. We are putting in place

foundational platforms, and for us, it is not just about automation and digitalisation, but also about creating new value from data we already have to build new products and services.”

Venkatesh Mahadevan, CIO of Dubai Investments, shared his perspective on the impact of the pandemic on his business. “There are a lot of innovation centres that have come up within business units to reduce the time to market. We have completed our DX blueprint and remodeled the IT strategy.

We no longer continue to run IT the way it was before and moved to a federated model; we provide strategy, advisory, and governance. We are also moving away from in-house development to offthe-shelf solutions.”

Wael El Khatib, director of digital, IT and call center at Enova, noted there is a lot of pressure on IT to provide the same quality of service at lower costs.

“We developed our digital strategy a long time ago, and we revise our strategy every six months. We moved to the cloud and optimised processes even before the pandemic, which helped us adapt to the new operating models quickly. For us, the focus is on accelerating digital operations and process efficiencies.”

MN Chaturvedi, IT director of Al Shirawi Group, echoed a similar opinion as Bhageeradhan on the value of low-code platforms. “We have to develop certain applications in-house and it requires resources that we don’t have. We have removed that barrier by developing some new mobile applications without coding.

Low-code is clearly the future of app development and will help us overcome the developer shortage.”

The other attendees at the roundtable included: Sebastian Samuel, CIO of AW Rostamani; Jayakumar Mohanachandran, group CIO of Easa Saleh Al Gurg; Mubarik Hussain, IT director of Bloom Holding; Ronald D’sa, OSN’s IT Director; Mohammad Raffi, senior IT consultant at Jotun; Fayaz Ahamed Badubhai, group IT director of Al Yousuf; and Aditya Kaushik, head of IT at Adyard.

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CASE STUDY

CASHING IN ON CLOUD SPEAKING EXCLUSIVELY TO CXO INSIGHT MIDDLE EAST, MOHAMMED AL-ENAZI, CIO, ALHOKAIR FASHION RETAIL, EXPLAINS HOW THE REGIONAL RETAILER RAMPED UP INVESTMENTS TO ACCELERATE CLOUD STRATEGIES TO DELIVER ENHANCED CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE AND BETTER COLLABORATION FOR EMPLOYEES WITH GOOGLE WORKSPACE

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ustomer and employee experiences are two fundamental aspects of any business, especially in the retail sector. Retailers have had to rethink their strategies in both these elements in the new normal by embracing cloud and digitalfirst technologies to meet evolving expectations.

Saudi Arabia-based Alhokair Fashion Retail was swift to identify the changes in the market and embarked on its cloud-led omnichannel strategy for both customers and employees early last year.

Mohammed Al-Enazi, Chief Information Officer at Alhokair Fashion 34

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Retail says, “The biggest pillars for success in any organisation are its employees and customers. It is essential to understand their expectations and serve their needs well.

“At Alhokair, we know the value of customer and employee experiences.

We make sure to create satisfying and engaging experiences by investing in advanced technologies. We have designed a digital-focused omnichannel strategy for our customers. We do continuous research and use deep analytics to understand their requirements better and deliver on their expectations with speed and quality.”

The retailer has also deployed a

cloud-based customer experience platform to enhance customer satisfaction and deliver greater value.

Besides a user-friendly website that houses a wide range of product portfolios, Alhokair has established multiple robust channels for quick and easy customer engagement, such as calls, emails, chatbots, and social media platforms. The company is currently in the process of deploying an advanced CRM solution as part of its digital transformation strategy.

He adds, “As a fashion retailer, we have unreservedly adopted a cloud-first strategy and are moving successfully towards realising

our digital transformation goals.

As part of these efforts, we have decommissioned our data centre and are in the process of shifting to the cloud. We are also leveraging the benefits of Google Workspace solutions to promote enhanced collaborations and better experiences for our employees.”

Alhokair migrated its old email server to the whole suite of Google Workspace with the help of its implementation partner, iSolutions, an information technology company that specialises in providing high-end, innovative technology solutions.

According to Al-Enazi, the retailer could move workloads without losing any data and with minimum customisations. “Our partner iSolutions played a key role in supporting us with the move to Google Workspace. They helped us increase bandwidth and assign multiple systems to speed up the whole process. We have a detailed evaluation process for selecting partners and iSolutions emerged as the ideal partner for Alhokair.”

Alhokair was able to capitalise on the many advantages of Google Workspace, especially during the peak of the pandemic restrictions.

He says, “Our employees now benefit from accelerated data processing between departments. They can efficiently carry out their day-to-day work by leveraging the agility and flexibility of cloud rather than onpremise servers. Our finance teams are now using online sheets, speeding up the process and achieving greater productivity. Google Workspace is adding immense value to our company, especially for second-level users.”

Al-Enazi emphasises that the biggest driver behind their shift to Google Workspace was the productivity and collaboration benefits it brings. “We assessed several other products in the market, but no other solution came close to Google Workspace in terms of its productivity and collaboration features.”

One of the challenges when introducing a new system or software is getting the workforce to accept and get acquainted with it. However, Alhokair included change management as a part of its project plan when moving to Google Workspace.

Al-Enazi and his team did their due diligence and convinced the management of the immediate need to change its legacy systems for business growth and continuity.

“We engaged with the senior teams and demonstrated the advantages we would have with a cloud-based suite. We distributed handbooks, conducted detailed sessions for each department, and educated all our users to prepare them for the transition,” he explains. “The trainings were conducted professionally under the supervision of our partner iSolutions.

Our employees showed a positive response and high receptiveness as they discovered Google Workspace’s

unlimited benefits, especially its collaboration and high availability of employee data tools.”

Google Workspace allowed Alhokair employees the freedom and flexibility to efficiently execute their daily tasks without being physically restricted to their desks in the office. They no longer had to print any documents to submit to managers and could easily share large files without dealing with the limitations of email attachments.

The next step in Alhokair’s digital transformation is to complete the transition of its entire infrastructure and applications to the cloud.

“We will be a 100% cloud retailer over the next three to four months. Digital transformation is the top priority for our organisation. We have defined our IT roadmap based on this priority, and it includes incorporating more advanced technologies such as enhancing our IT service management (ITSM) and implementing analytics, AI, and RPA solutions,” Al-Enazi concludes.

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VIEWPOINT

THE LOW-CODE REVOLUTION MARK ACKERMAN, AREA VICE PRESIDENT, MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA, AT SERVICENOW, EXPLAINS THE FOUR BENEFITS OF LOW-CODE APPLICATIONS DEVELOPMENT FOR REGIONAL INNOVATORS.

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ode makes the world go round. Today, so many facets of our lives — from healthcare to education and from entertainment to security — are governed by it. An expansion of the device ecosystem from rigid VAX terminals and desktops to pocketable smartphones and sleek tablets has brought with it an app explosion that has cried out for more coders. And some forwardthinking governments are responding.

In July this year, the UAE government announced its plan to train 100,000 coders and build a talent pool from which 1,000 successful digital businesses will emerge.

The ambition shown here is backed by tech giants such as Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, and is designed to boost annual investment in tech start-ups from around US$ 400 million to more than US$ 1 billion.

Why low code?

Governments know that more coders are required to satiate a burgeoning appetite for apps. And enterprises know that the release cycle must shrink to accommodate this demand. These two realisations have led very quickly to the increase in popularity of low-code ecosystems.

The UAE’s move to attract and train coders reveals the extent of the skills gap in the country — one that is felt keenly across the region. IT teams cannot fulfil the demand for digital change foisted upon them by corporate visions and circumstances. Low code not only helps these professionals, who may not specialise in software development, but it helps non-technical employees with otherwise strong digital ambitions to add value to the enterprise.

If you still aren’t sold on if your organisation should be investing in low-code, here are four benefits of the technology that should make the decision an easy one.

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1

Create faster The concept of a citizen developer has evolved to encompass coding as an implied part of every knowledge-employee’s job description, like emailing customers or filing paperwork.

The ability of low-code tools to capture and model business processes granularly is appealing to strategic-minded business leaders who want to be able to extend their fiefdom’s digital capabilities without weeks of requirements gathering and development.

Being first to a commercial market with an innovative customer experience can bring many revenue opportunities. Being first with an enhanced employee experience can help an organisation attract and retain talent in a region replete with skills gaps.

And operational efficiencies can be gleaned by automating tasks.

Also, once citizen coders churn out one successful prototype it can be reused by other business units. This means organisations can learn with every low-code project and become more agile.

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Experience first Code reuse is also a bridge to exceptional customer experience.

Without low-code, siloed digital transformations can lead to inconsistency at the brand interface.

Digital-savvy consumers will notice these inconsistencies, and retention rates will plummet.

If organisations build their digital presences with a platform model in mind — unified cloud, unified data, unified workflows, and a unified interface — they

can present a digital ecosystem that is more conducive to recurring usage.

Consistency in look and feel across engagement channels and business units is vital to enticing digital natives.

A smooth workflow must be supplemented by individualised experiences that automatically recognise returning users and integrate that recognition seamlessly. And advanced, customisable analytics must allow a rich view of the user and employee journeys to allow for continual improvements.

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Scale, don’t sprawl Hybrid cloud environments have a habit of introducing complexity that encumbers rather than empowers. The platform-of-platforms approach that will deliver consistency and brand loyalty must be built on a low-code environment that abstracts this complexity for citizen developers and end-users, covering every issue from security to latency.

Innovative enterprises need to make sure their low-code toolset will let them scale across their entire ecosystem. They will also need to be mindful of disparate transformation programs creating more technology silos — another source of complexity.

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Noticeable value CIOs and other IT leaders are under pressure to draw a line from their decisions to revenue surges and cost reductions.

Once low code is established as the go-to approach for digital extensibility, C-level executives will quickly see how, for example, a major digital development took place without the need for expensive and timeconsuming recruitment drives.

Everything enterprises do, from the back office to the public domain, will be touched by the ability to innovate independently and deploy those innovations securely and efficiently. Automation and analytics, IoT and robotics — nothing is impossible, and imagination will often be the only limitation on business growth. When you throw in cost-efficiency, robust uptime, and increased brand engagement, it is easy to see how low code could become the region’s chosen engine of change in the years ahead. Convinced yet?

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ADAPTING TO THE NEW NORM REMOTE WORKERS ARE FOLLOWING RISKY BEHAVIOR AT HOME AND COUPLED WITH INCREASED PHISHING THREATS, CONTINUOUS AWARENESS PROGRAMS ORGANISED BY A QUALIFIED PARTNER ARE ESSENTIAL, EXPLAINS RANJITH KAIPPADA, MANAGING DIRECTOR AT CLOUD BOX TECHNOLOGIES.

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lobal and regional threat actors continue to exploit human engineering in order to penetrate an organisation’s cyber defense. Real life impersonation through frequent emails, HTML emailers, embedded links, can trick users into believing that the communication is real and authentic.

Well written messages leverage spontaneous human actions getting users into clicking through calls for action. The tendency of users to follow through calls for action, even if they are on bordering on the edge of plausibility, have got further accentuated in these post pandemic months.

Work at home has isolated remote working teams, with insufficient peers around to seek advice. With teams fragmented, threat actors have further chosen to attack individual workers, through impersonation and other click baits, allowing threat actors to penetrate enterprise defenses.

With increasing vaccination rates, organisations are keen to bring back remote workers and integrate them as hybrid workers or regular office workers. But there are concerns on both sides, that is from security administrators and returning employees.

Recent research by security vendor Tessian indicates that security heads are aware of challenges related to the impact on business once employees come back to the office.

56% of IT leadership believe employees have adopted incorrect cybersecurity behavior while working from home. 54% are worried remote workers will bring infected devices and malware into the office. 1 in 3

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employees think they can get away with riskier security behavior when working remotely and 40% employees plan to bring their personal device into the office.

While the device issue is easy to fix, changing remote employee behavior from risky to less risky, requires continuous education and awareness campaigns.

When we use the term insider threat, the usual connotation is a malicious employee working against the organisation. But lack of security awareness coupled with accidental errors by employees on a day-to-day basis, are a much higher occurrence, adding to inside threats. According to research by Egress, 84% of breaches were caused by human error and 74% were caused by employees breaking security protocols.

Email remains the most concerning conduit for 64% of IT leaders. Nearly one-third of IT leaders cite lack of security awareness training as the likely cause of a data breach. Having

employees receive continuous updates on the latest phishing scams, social engineering tactics, helps to keep them in a state of vigilance that protects the organisation from email-based threats.

Research from Trend Micro and Osterman Research indicate where organisations are strongest and weakest at stopping phishing attacks resulting in ransomware. One part of the problem is how well organisations can stop attacks that leverage employee communications.

Amongst the most effective ways for organisations to protect against phishing threats is training end users on detecting and addressing phishing and social engineering.

Research has shown that at any point of time, approximately 38% of employees within an organisation, will generally fail a phishing test and, therefore, the real thing.

Some organisations approach security and phishing awareness training as a routine once a month or once a quarter.

But the right approach is continual education of users, keeping them constantly updated on latest social engineering tactics, and the importance of their role in the organisation’s security.

On-going events like the Tokyo Olympics are a classic example of how and when phishing attacks will increase, leveraging employee at work interest.

This is also the time to increase employee awareness campaigns to a daily basis, showcasing examples of phishing attacks leveraging the theme of Tokyo Olympics.

Another phishing approach followed by threat actors is to leverage the recall of familiar brands, luring users into believing a communication is genuine. According to the latest data from security vendor CheckPoint, Microsoft is the predominant brand used in phishing attacks. DHL, Amazon, Best Buy, Google, are other brands that are most frequently used in impersonation and phishing emails.

An employee facing campaign that circulates samples of these impersonating templates will help to increase the awareness of how threat actors are targeting employees in their day-to-day work. Using a specialised security training partner to identify where and how to begin with employees can help to reduce the lead time and build robust security awareness and security work practices.

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Be it public, private or hybrid, cloud computing is finding increasing acceptance in the Middle East.

The local presence of all major public service providers has further accelerated the pace of adoption, especially during the pandemic. The important role cloud plays in digital transformation initiatives is expected increase in the coming years, and for businesses grappling with unpredictable environments, cloud offers many compelling characteristics such as flexibility and scalability.

CXO Insight ME’s Cloud Connect Conference will discuss the key trends in cloud computing, and bring together thought leaders to provide technology advice, deep learning and practical solutions. If you are involved in the cloud, you can’t miss this event that will define the future of cloud computing.

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VIEWPOINT

THE THREE PILLARS TO A SUCCESSFUL CLOUD STRATEGY PATRICK SMITH, CTO EMEA, PURE STORAGE, SAYS MOBILITY, CONSISTENCY AND COST CONTROL ARE KEY FACTORS FOR SUCCESSFUL CLOUD TRANSFORMATION.

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t’s no secret that cloud now plays a pivotal role in the success of modern organisations. For those looking to thrive, it should be a given. When implemented correctly, cloud should enable smooth business agility, with its scalability and flexible capacity ultimately providing technology services on tap.

Of course, the label ‘cloud’ has now come to mean a whole variety of things, making the term itself rather nebulous. Indeed, clouds now come in many forms, and with a mind-boggling variety of providers and services, it can make the prospect of implementing a 40

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cloud strategy, and getting it right, both daunting and confusing.

Most organisations already have a cloud strategy which is likely to range from simply running productivity tools in the cloud through having a single public cloud provider, combining public and onpremises cloud and potentially consuming services from multiple cloud providers.

Are these environments interoperable?

How should an organisation plan on scaling and incorporating different workloads? Do they provide the capabilities to meet business objectives?

These are significant issues to take into consideration when developing

and iterating a cloud strategy and the management of data is worth special consideration. Given the importance of an organisation’s data in an increasingly competitive datadriven business climate it’s critical that data is accessible, protected and mobile whatever its mass; managing data easily, consistently and cost effectively in the cloud, as on-premises, is essential.

Mobility: don’t let your data get tied down Increasingly, organisations that are adopting modern applications are more

reliant on the individual clouds that house their workloads and data. Using multiple providers in this way can cause issues in relocating data, or subsets of data, from one environment to another. Adopting cloud should facilitate application movement whereby the underlying data simply moves with the application; across Clouds, from Cloud to Co-Lo(cation) or Cloud to on-premises.

Fortunately, mobility is not a myth, and organisations can ensure that they don’t end up with siloed data by opting for providers that have multiple integrations and partnerships. In particular, organisations should ensure they opt for services that integrate seamlessly with the large public cloud providers, such as Microsoft Azure, AWS and Google Cloud.

Adopting Kubernetes allows for enhanced data flexibility by being application centric, allowing an organisation to move the whole app or workload as many times as needed.

Making sure that the environment is built for this portability from day-one provides futureproofing. Organisations therefore need to make sure that they have a platform in place that has a dataplane fully integrated into Kubernetes.

Consistency, through hybrid Organisations will also want to ensure that they achieve a consistent, simple experience. So, you should therefore opt for a single cloud provider, right?

Not necessarily. A single provider may have the ability to offer hundreds of different services, but that doesn’t mean all of them are right for every organisation. Going down this route may mean you find yourself ‘locked in’ without the flexibility you are used to and with your data constrained rather than truly enabling your business.

Organisations shouldn’t assume that the public cloud is always the best option for every workload. Ultimately, a ‘cloud best’ rather than a ‘cloud first’ strategy should be adopted — pick and choose the use cases where cloud makes the most sense, but where

INCREASINGLY CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CLOUD ARE AVAILABLE IN A HYBRID OR ON-PREMISES ENVIRONMENT SUCH AS ELASTIC CAPACITY AND AS-A-SERVICE CONSUMPTIONBASED COMMERCIAL MODELS. this isn’t the case, consider keeping applications under your own control, through a hybrid set up. Yet, by having a portion of their infrastructure on prem, organisations don’t need to worry about losing the flexibility that they’ve learnt to love with cloud. Increasingly characteristics of the cloud are available in a hybrid or on-premises environment such as elastic capacity and as-aservice consumption-based commercial models.

Maintain cost control, and avoid technical debt Cloud, and its inherent scalability is fantastic for business agility and offers the potential for significant savings for the right workloads. However, this scalability can be a double-edged sword.

Whilst capacity is available instantly with the “swipe of a credit card”, it can be easy to get carried away, leading to rising monthly bills that are increasingly hard to track. Factor in a multitude of consumers and services across multiple cloud providers, and it’s easy to see how cloud spending can get out of control.

This again is where having a ‘cloud best’ strategy comes into play, and where choosing a hybrid cloud model can allow for the best cost efficiencies.

Flexible consumption models should be considered as they allow organisations to pay for use, rather than engaging in the tricky practice of predicting capacity requirements in 18 months’ time. This will position organisations to address changing business demands whilst avoiding excess capacity or unnecessary commitments on spend.

Cloud as a vehicle for growth in an unpredictable world Ultimately, for organisations to get the most out of the cloud, they need to be proactive rather than reactive in how they use it. This means having a fully developed strategy, making sure you are equipped for multi-cloud up front and not locking yourself out of any potential infrastructure upgrades once a cloud architecture is established. With flexibility built into the architecture, ensuring both optionality and portability, organisations can ensure they are geared for growth and ready for the unpredictability that businesses globally have had to accept.

Wherever it is used or stored, an organisation’s data holds immense value. With the right cloud strategy in place, and having portability as the lynchpin, each organisation can squeeze every last drop of value from its data and use it to gain a competitive edge.

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VIEWPOINT

LOOK BEFORE YOU MAKE THE LEAP THINKING CLOUD? THINK AGAIN, WRITES JOE BAGULEY, VP & CTO EMEA, VMWARE

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t might have been around as a concept for more than a decade but, for many organisations, cloud computing is now becoming core to the way they can actually deliver their ‘business’. Others, however, are joining the ‘cloud club’ – often, it seems, without really knowing why. They just want cloud. The problem is, they are finding it is not as simple as they thought. It’s not just the next place to ‘run your stuff’, but a whole new world of opportunities.

Cloud should not be about making the same mistakes you already made but cheaper somewhere else, it should be about learning from the past, righting those wrongs and doing things differently.

Simply wanting to join the cloud club is not the starting point. Without knowledge of what it can do for your business, cloud will never live up to its ideal, but simply be a place to repeat mistakes in a slightly different way.

So, if you are thinking about ‘going to the cloud’, think again.

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From cloud-centric to app-centric Today, businesses must recognise the problems they are likely to encounter tomorrow. They need to understand what the digital and application landscape is going to look like in three to five years and make decisions accordingly. Data is going to be everywhere, with the volume created, captured, copied, and consumed annually worldwide set to more than double in the next 3 years. And increasingly, it is going to be residing anywhere but the traditional datacenter.

This is going to have a major influence on how companies engage with customers, and in turn how they use apps to facilitate these interactions. That’s why rushing into cloud now could well hamper how effectively business-critical apps that need to use distributed data in the future can operate. An app that does great things now, for example, is going to need to adapt over time, and the environment

it is hosted in will need to do the same.

An app that’s been deployed somewhere just because it’s ‘in the cloud’ could well struggle to meet those requirements. So ‘app-first’ rather than ‘cloud-first’ is your first strategic guiding light.

Then there’s the challenge that, even as they rush to the cloud, many organisations are still unpicking their legacy infrastructure, technology they’ve probably held on to for longer than they should because, frankly, it was so resourceintensive implementing it they didn’t feel they could cut their losses earlier and didn’t have an exit plan. From spiraling costs to deploying environments without first considering how apps are going to use them, there is a real risk of experiencing the same problems that legacy IT created, just somewhere else this time - in the cloud.

Ultimately, however, the biggest issue is that there isn’t one silver bullet. When we talk about cloud, we’re actually talking about a whole variety, from companies running apps on-prem in their data center, through software-as-a-service (SaaS) apps like Salesforce and Workday, even app components as a service like communications, to the public clouds of the likes of Google and Amazon, all the way to highly distributed ‘edge clouds’. There are even sector-specific clouds, such as the financial sector developing a FinTech cloud, with all the compliance and security controls required for a highly regulated sector. CIOs expect the number of clouds – private, public and edge environments – they use to build, manage and run their apps to increase 53% in the next three years. This proliferation brings with it complexity – a VMware study noted that 63% of organisations state inconsistencies between clouds as one of the top multicloud challenges.

To business-centric, for any app, over any cloud This is why it’s so important to understand what cloud will do for the business as a whole, and specifically how the business can use cloud services to develop, modernise and deploy apps as fast and securely as possible. Just imagine what a business could achieve if it didn’t matter what cloud their apps were in because they could use the same tools to manage everything?

What you should be doing now is “Application Portfolio Planning”. That’s looking at every application and working out the roadmap for it – does it stay? Do you rewrite it locally or in the cloud? Do you migrate it to run on a cloud? Do you just bin it and move to SaaS? Don’t plan based on where something is or what it runs on – that’s bottom up. Plan based on what it does now and what you want it to do in the future.

Why? Because it is the app that is the gold in the digital economy. Just think, the number of applications has increased six-fold in recent years, and by 2024 more than three-quarters of a billion applications will be developed.

The cloud is thus the developer platform, the security blanket, and the enabler.

The foundation both for modernising existing apps and developing tomorrow’s next-gen applications. That’s what cloud should be about. Providing the environment and the options CIOs need to drive the full-scale modernisation of their business, deliver the operational capabilities demanded of digital businesses, and build and host applications in a way that is future-proofed. That means delivering modern apps at the speed the business demands; operating them across any cloud, with the flexibility to run apps in the data centre, at the edge or in any cloud; and driving rapid transformation while delivering resiliency and security, in what is an unpredictable world.

This is all made possible through a single platform optimised for all applications: virtualised and containerised, artificial intelligence and machine learning, traditional and modern. A platform that can be used across all clouds, from private to hyperscaler, with consistent infrastructure and operations, thus reducing complexity, risk and total cost of ownership.

But businesses need a fast and simple path to the cloud, and the flexibility to choose any cloud. Organisations can match the needs of each app to the optimal cloud, with the freedom to use the most powerful cloud services and app modernisation. And to be able to deliver cloud migration without the cost, complexity or risk of refactoring.

The right environments for the right apps But what does that look like in practice?

traditional peak season you manage the increased demand by moving the front end services onto a public cloud, ensuring you have the speed, scale and resources to stop the app from toppling over. Once the demand drops off, you scale the app back into a private cloud where you can maybe better control the operating costs, while still keeping the service available to customers. Maybe you then consider moving it all to the cloud in future, or maybe it’s already all in one cloud, but that cloud provider is now suddenly a competitor and you want to relocate it to a different cloud.

Here’s a handful of scenarios: • You’re a public health provider, with a variety of systems, services and applications that serve patients and employees. Some services, such as appointment booking apps, the front ends of digital workspace platforms and entertainment networks for in-patients, might quite happily sit in a public cloud; but patient data, the interface that controls and secures your connected generators and other utilities, may need to be on-premises, some in edge devices, with much higher levels of security.

• You’re a multinational bank, one of the new challenger brands. Your whole selling point is that you are customer-first, with an intuitive app that acts as a window to consumers’ financial services. Again, to manage scale and agility, the front-end of that app will happily sit in a public cloud, but the data it collects may need to be securely stored in either a private cloud or on-premises. It may need to be the latter to comply with financial regulatory and compliance legislation, along with legislation surrounding data sovereignty.

• You’re a retailer gathering lots of customer data. You’re gaining insights from it in the cloud with large scale ML, and using that to then train artificial intelligence models that run in-store to interact with shoppers’ mobile phones in near real-time, providing help, advice and guidance (such as price comparison) to customers.

• You’re a logistics provider with a new ecommerce service that allows customers to book online. During the

These are all examples of how businesses are using the array of environments at their disposal to operate more effectively.

While there’s always going to be variation between different businesses, having a cloud foundation that provides the freedom to enjoy a true multi cloud strategy, running apps on more than one cloud is the goal. And it is the hybrid cloud, providing consistent infrastructure, management and operations between the private and public clouds and where apps can easily be moved with no modifications, that will deliver that vision.

A hybrid cloud future This hybrid cloud future is unavoidable. Yet those businesses that are blinded by the lure of the cloud could end up recreating many of the issues they were attempting to get away from. Your business goals should always be your starting point for any project. Then you should assess how a digital strategy will deliver it, underpinned by the right environments, including cloud. A mix of clouds that are transparent, secure and potentially interchangeable, to meet the needs of apps, and more importantly users, both now and in the future, is essential.

The cloud should be about liberating and elevating your applications and their architecture, not just building them again in a different silo somewhere else.

The businesses that take this approach to the cloud that will be the ones that build the environments their apps need, deliver the experiences users are demanding, and ultimately take advantage of the datadriven economy.

Thinking cloud? It’s time to think again.

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PRODUCTS

Kodak Alaris INfuse Kodak Alaris has announced the release of its INfuse Expansion Modules, including six new software add-ons and support for a third-party card reader accessory that allows users to scan documents more securely and efficiently than before.

Partners such as ISVs and Systems Integrators can now customise their core INfuse offering by adding one or more of these modules to their solutions.

“Adding accessories to enhance the functionality of systems is a widely popular concept across most business and consumer devices,” said Jim Forger, Product Line Manager at Kodak Alaris. “We see it in smart phones, computers, and also in the Kodak S2000 Series Scanners with our passport and flatbed accessories. We’re now bringing this capability to our INfuse Smart Connected Scanning Solution.”

The INfuse Solution integrates into other applications allowing users to complete tasks more accurately and faster than ever before. Tasks previously completed in days are now measured in minutes or hours.

INfuse includes three key components: the partner’s software application, INfuse Management Software, and the INfuse AX Scanner. Partners create

Logitech Zone True Wireless earbuds Logitech is helping professionals stay clear, confident and connected in the next phase of hybrid work with the launches of its Zone True Wireless and Zone Wired Earbuds, the first targeted to be certified by all three major cloud video conferencing platforms—Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and Zoom Video Communications.

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efficient, networked document solutions such as invoice processing, medical records management, or customer account management by integrating the INfuse solution into their line of business applications through the use of APIs and plug-in modules.

Logitech Zone True Wireless earbuds upgrade video calls with the shape and fit users love, combined with the powerful audio that professionals need. Equipped with a premium noise-canceling mic and Active Noise Cancellation, Zone True Wireless gives crystal clear audio on every call, regardless of distracting surroundings. This, along with a minimalist, modern design, enables a stylish look and a high-quality sound on video that helps users stay in the zone.

Bluetooth plus the USB receiver provides a reliable connection between Zone True Wireless and both your smartphone and your computer, allowing users to effortlessly join video meetings and phone calls, moving easily between their two devices – all with double the battery life of leading consumer devices.

These features give users confidence that their wireless earbuds are ready for every video meeting.

Additionally, the certification with major video conferencing platforms sets a higher bar for audio than leading consumer offerings, and for IT managers, it provides reliable performance across multiple devices within their entire IT ecosystem.

R&M Single Pair Ethernet system R&M has launched the industry’s first complete Single Pair Ethernet (SPE) system in the Middle East.

Comprised of connectors and connection modules, installation cables and patch cords, this new system provides an effective way to link digital terminal devices and sensors to data networks, paving the way for comprehensive building automation.

The company expects the solution to be applied in key facilities in the region including hospitals, hotels, malls, industrial parks, and office centres.

R&M’s Single Pair Ethernet solution extends the concept of local data networks (LAN) and structured cabling systems while offering cables that are thinner and connectors that are smaller. This allows a large number of devices and sensors – such as smart LED lights, remote-controlled monitors and scoreboards, temperature, light and climate sensors, controllers for heating and ventilation, electronic cash registers and selfservice terminals – to be connected without traditional constraints. In addition to data and signals, SPE cabling can also transport electricity and thus supply terminal

equipment with power. In many cases, this eliminates the need for separate wiring for the power supply.

R&M offers two connector systems: LC-Cu in compliance with IEC 63171-1 for structured cabling and building automation, and MSP in compliance with IEC 63171-2 for the industrial environment. The new products can be combined with existing R&M outlets and 19” panels.

INTEL NUC 11 EXTREME KIT Intel has announced the Intel NUC 11 Extreme Kit (code-named “Beast Canyon”), a highly modular desktop PC engineered to provide a phenomenal experience for gaming, streaming and recording. With the latest 11th Gen Intel Core processors, support for full-size discrete graphics cards and a full range of I/O ports, the Intel NUC 11 Extreme Kit delivers high performance gameplay and smooth, immersive visuals.

The highest-performing Intel NUC yet delivers a premium and size-optimized PC package for creating innovative desktops suited to gamers’ unique performance needs. Packing the latest hardware components into a tiny 8-liter case, the Intel NUC 11 Extreme Kit is loaded with features typically found in much larger gaming rigs and offers customizable design options.

The sky’s the limit with up to an 11th Gen Intel Core i9 processor featuring eight cores, 16 threads, and up to 5.0 GHz frequency. Kits are also available with an unlocked Intel 11th Gen Intel Core i7 processor.

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BLOG

WELCOME TO THE NEXT SILICON VALLEY SUNIL PAUL, MD OF FINESSE, ON WHY THE UAE HAS THE POTENTIAL TO BECOME THE SILICON VALLEY OF THE MIDDLE EAST.

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ulf countries have been ramping up investment plans in a bid to consciously diversify from being oil-reliant economies, over the past few years. This includes doubling up efforts in other areas such as real-estate, tourism, private sectors as well as paving the path for a hightech knowledge economy.

According to a report by data platform MAGNiTT, the wider MENA region attracted a significant $1.03 billion investments in 2020. In the first quarter of 2020, MENA start-ups experienced a 2% increase in investment compared to the same period in 2019.

The Middle East, especially UAE and Saudi Arabia, have been betting big on technology and promoting start-up cultures in recent years.

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The MAGNiTT report revealed that in 2020, Saudi Arabia start-ups secured $152 million in venture capital funding, compared to just $7 million five years ago. Investors closed 88 funding deals in the Kingdom for tech start-ups, a 35 percent increase from 2019 to 2020.

Meanwhile, the UAE represented the lion’s share with 56 percent of start-up funding, equaling $579m, and 26 percent of the region’s total deals, totaling 129.

These figures indicate how serious regional governments are in making a mark on the global technology stage.

With a huge focus on technological advancement and business growth, the UAE is often dubbed as the next ‘Silicon Valley’.

This is also evident with the government changing its policies to make it easier for companies to set up

shop here. Long before the COVID-19 crisis, in 2018-2019, the UAE government had already evolved its long-term visas to offer the Gold Card status. This included a five-year visa for outstanding students and entrepreneurs and a 10year residency visa for investors and specialists. The UAE also announced that foreign entrepreneurs could now be 100% shareholders in a locally established business, which was previously only possible in the country’s free zones. This meant easier access and more opportunities for start-ups.

The government has made provisions over the recent years to lay the foundation to emerge as a tech hub.

In 2019, the Abu Dhabi government introduced Hub 71 with Microsoft – a billion-dirham initiative backed by investor Mubadala – to draw in and develop technology start-ups. By offering attractive incentives and bringing together investors, business enablers and partners, it aims to create a base for its tech ecosystem to flourish.

The capital city also drives Ghadan 21, its 50-billion-dirham three-year accelerator programme, which is designed to facilitate business setups, foster talent and champion innovation.

The Dubai Future Accelerators (DFA) is another collaboration between startups, private firms and government, positioning the city as an attractive headquarter for tech start-ups.

All of this coupled with the UAE’s latest initiative that offers 100,000 golden visas to coders who are based locally as well as outside the country, as a part of the National Program for Coders, is a definite statement to the world. The announcement is aligned with the country’s goal to establish 1000 major digital companies in the UAE over the next five years.

Over the coming years, we will continue to see the country making great strides in driving in niche skillsets and fostering tech entrepreneurship from all over the globe. Housing all the right ingredients, from strong public-private partnerships, quick regulatory processes, favourable living and working environments, the UAE has set the stage to be the next ‘Silicon Valley’, and it is certainly well on its path to make that ambitious title a reality.

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HDDs

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Questions?

Reach out to your account team.

Bibin George Sales Representative MENA (Enterprise and Systems), Seagate Technology bibin.jacob@seagate.com +971-50-6818529

Arnab Majumder Product Line Sales Manager, – Enterprise Storage, ASBIS Middle East FZE arnab.majumder@asbisme.ae +971-58-5611076