20 minute read
NEWS
Radware has launched a new cloud security center in the United Arab Emirates. Located in Dubai, the facility will reduce latency for in-region traffic and offer customers faster mitigation response times against denial-ofservice attacks, web application attacks, malicious bot traffic, and attacks on APIs. It will also mitigate compliance processes involved in offshore routing.
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The Dubai addition complements
Radware’s existing cloud security network. Today, the network includes over 10Tbps of mitigation capacity across more than 50 security centers located around the globe.
“As part of our strategic cloud services initiative, we continue to accelerate cloud innovation to provide increasing complexity and sheer volume of cyberattacks with as little disruption as possible.”
According to Radware’s First Half 2022 Global Threat Analysis Report, the first six months of 2022 saw a dramatic increase in cyberattacks across the globe. The number of DDoS attacks climbed 203% and malicious web application transactions grew by 38% compared to the same period last year.
“The new site in Dubai fills a growing demand for a local security presence that can deliver rapid response times with accuracy for organizations in the public and private sector,” said Nikhil Karan Taneja, Radware’s vice president and managing director for India, the Middle East, and South Asia. “The launch of the center underscores our ongoing commitment to delivering state-of-the-art cyber protection and scaling our capacity in a way that will benefit the whole region.”
our customers with the highest level of cyber security services,” said Haim Zelikovsky, vice president of cloud security services for Radware. “This includes increasing the fighting capacity of our cloud infrastructure to help our customers manage the
CLOUDFLARE LAUNCHES TURNSTILE
Cloudflare announced Turnstile, a simple, private way to replace CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) and help validate humanity across the Internet. Now any site owner can replace CAPTCHAs through a simple API, whether they’re a Cloudflare customer or not.
CAPTCHA has long been regarded as a terrible user experience that sacrifices privacy by harvesting user data. They typically come in the form of a challenge that is meant to be difficult for a computer to pass but simple for a human, such as identifying stretched letters or numbers, or things like crosswalks or stop signs. It is estimated that collectively, humans waste 500 years a day trying to solve CAPTCHAs. In addition to being the speed bump of the Internet, the tests have been critiqued for their lack of accessibility, assuming all Internet users have the physical and cognitive capabilities to solve them. Privacy is also at risk; for example, Google’s reCAPTCHA, which dominates the market, may ask for users to log in to their Google account as a form of verification. No one should have to give up private information when simply trying to prove they are not a robot. Cloudflare’s solution is a drop-in replacement for reCAPTCHA that preserves the user’s privacy.
“Cloudflare is taking one of the most hated pieces of Internet technology, and making it easier, more secure, and more private for everyone to use,” said Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare. “Similar to our 1.1.1.1 app that makes every user and the Internet safer, we’re excited to share Turnstile with developers of any size and anywhere, for an improved and more private end user experience.”
Turnstile is a smarter, invisible CAPTCHA alternative. The solution automatically chooses from a rotating suite of browser challenges that work behind the scenes, looking for signals there is a human user. Turnstile can fine-tune the difficulty of the challenge, presenting harder challenges to visitors that exhibit non-human behaviours. Additionally, Turnstile recognises Private Access Tokens from users on the latest versions of macOS or iOS, allowing Turnstile to validate a device with the help of the device vendor, and without collecting, touching or storing user device data.
Turnstile now has the same stable solve rate as previously used CAPTCHAs. With this technology, Cloudflare reduced their own use of CAPTCHA by 91% and reduced the visitor time spent in a challenge from an average of 32 seconds to an average of just one second to run the non-interactive challenges.
Turnstile is now available for any developer to use on their site, regardless of if they are a Cloudflare customer.
VENOM FOUNDATION TO BUILD AN INFINITELY SCALABLE BLOCKCHAIN PLATFORM
Venom Foundation has been registered as the first crypto foundation in the ADGM, with a license to operate a blockchain and issue utility tokens. ADGM is well known as a fintech oasis for investors and financial services firms in the region and from around the globe. The next essential step of Venom Blockchain - its launch - will be announced soon.
Venom blockchain is an asynchronous blockchain technology of dynamical sharding, that has made an unprecedented leap in blockchain technology development globally, bringing to the market boundless scalability, and higher security guarantees with decentralisation. Venom Foundation is a leader within three core directions, such as Essential Infrastructure, Support of Inbound Projects, and Developer-friendly Platform, each to offer novel solutions for solving earlier existing issues in the crypto market. Though, the most valuable feature for the MENA region market is the technology that enables major corporations and companies to conduct an easy and secure transition into Web3 globalisation, managing the gross data transaction flows without faltering by increasing fees and transaction times.
Venom Foundation’s main priority is to develop and support a self-sufficient blockchain ecosystem and it has already yielded significant results: non-custodial Wallet (VenomWallet mobile application and Desktop Browser Extension) with a Multisig accounts option and Ledger support, VenomScan (to keep everything transparent with access to transactions history), VenomBridge (allowing the interchain transactions to be made fast, while low price), VenomPools (to stake on Validator nodes), VenomGet (an easy gateway to Venom tokens), Web3.World (native decentralised exchange) has been built. Individual developers, companies, and government authorities will be able to engage Venom Foundation to establish new products such as NFT marketplace, Derivative Exchange, fiat-backed stablecoin, and many others to come with the potential to become a bridge toward wide adoption of CBDC in the UAE, other MENA countries and Globally. Subject to the relevant regulatory approvals, Venom Foundation will work with ecosystem participants to ensure that such products are offered in a compliant manner within the trusted and wellregulated environment of ADGM.
The Venom blockchain is an exciting project for pioneers and early-adopters and has been developed and supported by great market specialists and industry leaders who have been involved in its development and potential launch. Mustafa Kheriba, Dr. Kai-Uwe Steck are Foundation members and have given the project’s team full support and their unique and unparalleled expertise guidance.
TRELLIX EXPANDS XDR PLATFORM TO TRANSFORM SECURITY OPERATIONS
Trellix has announced the expansion of its XDR platform. Trellix XDR enables the company’s 40,000+ customers to build greater cyber resiliency, maximise the value of their existing security tools, and reduce mean time to detection and response.
“We have the most comprehensive XDR platform in the industry,” said Bryan Palma, CEO, Trellix. “Legacy security information and event management (SIEM) technology has failed to modernise security operations. We are confident Trellix XDR fills this critical gap.”
Arriving in the fourth quarter of 2022, the upgraded XDR engine provides security operations teams with enhanced playbooks for guided investigations, upgraded threat intelligence through the integration of McAfee and FireEye assets, and the launch of Trellix Event Fabric. Trellix Event Fabric bridges disparate security data from any cloud provider allowing security analysts to access and correlate data from anywhere. This combination of machine learning and automation allows security operations teams to reduce mean time detection and improve mean time to response.
XConsole simplifies the user experience across Trellix XDR providing a single interface for security operations teams. Delivering a common operating picture allows customers to maximise their investments in native Trellix technologies and third-party security tools. By leveraging a single user interface, analysts and responders can quickly baseline their overall threat posture through added visibility across network, endpoint, data, email, and cloud attack surfaces. Available early in 2023, XConsole becomes the control center for Trellix XDR.
“Trellix XDR, now incorporating a unified security operations console, brings it all together by ingesting data from all technologies in an organisation,” said Dr. Ali Baghdadi, Senior Vice President & Chief Country Executive, Ingram Micro. “This easy-to-use platform is very attractive to our customers.”
HELP AG LAUNCHES CYBERSECURITY OPERATIONS CENTRE IN RIYADH
Help AG has launched a stateof-the-art Cybersecurity Operations Centre (CSOC) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to provide 24/7 security monitoring and events management, along with a complete suite of locally delivered
Managed Security Services (MSS), fully compliant with the local data regulations.
The CSOC in Riyadh builds on Help
AG’s expertise of more than 25 years in providing world-class cyber defence to organisations in the region. The launch comes at a critical time as
Saudi Arabia is accelerating its digital transformation and focusing on creating a collaborative ecosystem with the ultimate goal of becoming a global investment powerhouse – a key pillar in the Kingdom’s 2030 Vision.
As a result of this push toward digitalisation, it is now vital to build cyber resilience into every project and system from day zero and beyond.
Indeed, according to an IDC survey, 54% of Saudi CIOs have embedded cybersecurity into the planning, initiation, and assessment phases of all new business initiatives. The survey also found that the top cybersecurity strategy goals in Saudi Arabia are related to Managed Security Services, with key focus areas in 2022 being managed Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), Managed Detection and Response (MDR), and threat intelligence.
Commenting on the launch, Stephan Berner, Chief Executive Officer at Help AG, said: “With increased digital adoption across Saudi Arabia, embedding cybersecurity in every project and process has quickly emerged as a top-ofmind moving target for organisations in the kingdom. The launch of our stateof-the-art CSOC reflects Help AG’s deep commitment to supporting Saudi Arabia’s vision of digital transformation. Featuring our next-generation security operations framework for enterprises and governmental entities, as well as offering flexible deployment through cloud, onpremise or a hybrid model, the CSOC in Riyadh will enable our Saudi clients to take timely action on the basis of threat intelligence feeds and through our security orchestration and automation platforms.”
Safwan Akram, MSS Director at Help AG, who leads the MSS team at the Riyadh CSOC, said on the occasion: “Our new CSOC in Saudi Arabia brings enhanced visibility and early detection of cybersecurity incidents for our clients in the country. With a reduced attacker dwell time and streamlined integrated products, this also translates into increased efficiency and optimised performance, as well as reduced cost of operations for stakeholders. Featuring managed controls, 24/7 cyber defence, and a hybrid design to ensure customer data doesn’t leave the country or the organisational premises, our Saudi clients now also have full access to Help AG’s patented solutions in Managed Security Services.”
In addition, Fahad Al-Suhaimi, Country Director for Saudi Arabia, Help AG, said: “The launch of the Riyadh CSOC is a key milestone in Help AG’s journey in Saudi Arabia which began in 2017, and reflects our dedication to providing our customers in this market with comprehensive cybersecurity services while emphasising our continued support for Saudisation efforts in the IT sector with a team of talented nationals.
“The launch comes as more organisations recognise the vital importance of Managed Security Services for establishing cyber resilience in the modern threat landscape. In fact, we forecast that 90% of all cybersecurity requirements will be fulfilled by a service model in three years, reflecting an industrywide shift which we are spearheading in the region through delivering global and advanced security services while moulding them to address regional market threats and requirements.”
The CSOC houses security analysts who monitor complex IT security infrastructures as well as analyse and interpret critical security events or abnormal behaviour. In addition to Managed Detection and Response (MDR), Help AG offers a wide range of services, including Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR), threat hunting, Managed Security Controls, network and user behaviour anomaly detection, vulnerability assessment, and red teaming, while leveraging in-house curated advanced threat intelligence. The CSOC also integrates Help AG’s other distinguished services such as its Security Service Edge (SSE) offering – Cyber Edge X, and Managed Digital Risk Protection (DRP).
NVIDIA LAUNCHES NVIDIA STUDIO AT TWOFOUR54 YAS CREATIVE HUB CAMPUS
NVIDIA announced the launch of an NVIDIA Studio at twofour54’s Community Hub in
Yas Island, Abu Dhabi, to support aspiring artists and industry professionals who are thriving in the content-focused Yas Creative Hub campus.
The NVIDIA Studio comprises 10 state-of-the-art Studio computers equipped with the latest GeForce
RTX Studio GPUs, alongside NVIDIA
RTX accelerated applications. This means regional content creators will benefit from smoother, faster, and more efficient workflows and see their ambitious projects come to life.
NVIDIA is also inviting regional content creators to participate in its global NVDIA Studio program and submit their content; the best of which will be officially recognised and highlighted on NVIDIA’s website, blogs, and social media channels. All they need to do is reach out to NVIDIA Middle East and submit their content to NVIDIA’s @ NVIDIAGeforceME twitter channel.
Commenting on the new NVIDIA Studio at Yas Creative Hub, Chantelle Tavid, Head of Marketing at NVIDIA, said: “We are thrilled to launch our new NVIDIA Studio at twofour54’s a new Yas Community Hub. The campus is the ideal location for Abu Dhabi’s creative professionals to collaborate and develop rich content. As enablers of next generation digital content, we are keen to be part of this vibrant ecosystem.”
“NVIDIA Studio desktops and laptops are the ultimate platform for content creators wishing to express uninhibited creativity. With their AI-enabled GeForce RTX graphics cards, these laptops and PCs are designed specifically to accelerate creative applications and offer superior performance even when multiple applications or resourceintensive files are being worked on. Thanks to AI technology, NVIDIA Studio laptops and PCs have proven to be over five times faster than standard desktops and laptops when working on 3D, motion graphics, photo, and video editing workflow. This makes them the best possible choice for creators.”
The NVIDA Studio at Yas Creative Hub will be equipped with four NVIDIA Studio Laptops powered by GeForce RTX 3080 Ti GPUs (Razer), and three NVIDIA Studio Laptops powered by GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GPUs (ASUS ProArt), in addition to three NVIDIA Studio desktop PCs boasting GeForce RTX 3090 Ti GPUs. The industry leading GeForce RTX GPUs also feature dedicated hardware to accelerate key operations like Ray Tracing, Simulations, and AI.
GITEX GLOBAL 2022 TO TRANSFORM DUBAI INTO WORLD’S DIGITAL EPICENTRE
Dubai will transform into the ultimate digital epicentre of the world next month, as the UAE hosts the world’s largest tech show, converging the most advanced companies and best minds to deep dive into the making of the Web 3.0 economy.
From 10-14 October 2022 at the Dubai
World Trade Centre, GITEX GLOBAL returns, its largest ever edition featuring 5,000 companies spanning 26 halls and two million sq. ft of exhibition space, at an extraordinary 25 percent year-onyear increase, pushing its capacity limit at the venue.
The GITEX 3.0 edition, in its 42nd year presents the most empowering curation ever with seven multi-tech themes experimenting in the metaverse, a decentralised future of the internet, and a sustainable global digital economy.
The five-day event’s record size and continued expansion mirrors the ambitions of the UAE and region’s digital transformation movement, as government initiatives such as the
National Program for Coders, the Dubai
Metaverse Strategy, and Next GenFDI propels the UAE to the forefront of the global digital economy.
This is amplified by new GITEX GLOBAL 2022 launches of X-VERSE sponsored by TMRW Foundation in collaboration with Decentraland, one of the world’s most immersive metaverse journeys featuring 28 experiential brands and Global DevSlam, the Middle East’s largest ever coder and developer meetup, both of which sold-out to a global audience within two months.
UAE companies also held the lion’s share of a record-breaking US$2.6 billion in start-up funding across the Middle East and North Africa in 2021, figures that underscore an additional hall and 30 percent increase to 1,000 exhibitors at GITEX GLOBAL’s start-up event, North Star.
His Excellency Omar Al Olama, Minister of State for AI, Digital Economy & Remote Work Applications, who delivered the welcome note at the official GITEX GLOBAL 2022 press conference today, said: “GITEX this year is bigger than ever. It spans two million sq. ft. with over 5,000 exhibitors from more than 90 countries, which makes this truly the biggest tech show in the world. This year, my office has partnered with GITEX to ensure that we’re not just showcasing technology, but actually inventing and developing technology.”
In his speech H.E. also highlighted that the Global DevSlam event is poised to be one of the biggest developer events in the world. He concluded by thanking each and every single person that has believed in the UAE’s mission and who has supported the UAE.
Trixie LohMirmand, Executive Vice President of Events Management at Dubai World Trade Centre, GITEX GLOBAL’s organiser, added: “GITEX is not just a big gathering of people. It’s the super-connector humanising the virtual and digital economies.
“GITEX serves a profound purpose of enabling and accelerating the digital economies of UAE and many of its alliance partners through connecting earnest stakeholders with outstanding minds from the world and materialising these connections into actionable partnerships.”
LEADING THE FIGHT AGAINST CARBON EMISSIONS
PETER HARDING, FOUNDER AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF KELVIN, DISCUSSES HOW THE INDUSTRIAL AUTOMATION SOFTWARE COMPANY IS HELPING BUSINESSES IN THE MIDDLE EAST ACHIEVE THEIR NETZERO GOALS AND FAST-TRACK DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION.
What kind of opportunities do you see for Kelvin in the Middle East market?
We see significant opportunities in the energy sector, primarily in production enhancement, sustainability initiatives for the upstream and midstream areas of oil and gas. We are also helping industrial organisations looking for ways to improve the efficiency of their operations. Kelvin can empower their engineers and experts to achieve sustainability and profitability goals.
We are focused on the energy sector today. There are many opportunities with customers amongst National Oil Companies and large multinationals with a presence in the Middle East. We have previously worked with customers in the Middle East and believe there are opportunities to continue Kelvin’s expansion in this market.
What can businesses in the Middle East do to become more sustainable and reduce carbon emissions?
It starts with maximising efficiency of existing operations. We work with your existing infrastructure to improve it to its absolute best, and then take that knowledge and extend it as you move into new areas of development.
We look for situations where there may be leaks, breakages, and other challenges with the physical infrastructure that can be addressed. We believe that if you find those problems quickly, you can fix them rapidly, and that’s where the journey begins.
We have developed our software to seamlessly find inefficiencies, diagnose them, and then act on them. We’ve been able to show a very real connection between the inefficiencies that may exist in an individual part, a component of an asset, or a system and what that means in terms of additional energy costs and carbon impact. When you go and fix that problem, you get the benefit both from a cost savings point of view and, more importantly, the opportunity to address net-zero objectives. Kelvin is helping to achieve sustainability goals and increase the speed to realising this value.
How new is this technology and this concept, globally and in the Middle East region?
The approach that we’ve taken with our software is new. Historically, there have been a series of manual processes by people doing basic analysis to find inefficiencies. We take a different approach. Kelvin’s Collaborative Control software company delivers industrial intelligence through a combination of human understanding and artificial intelligence. We’re focused on bringing knowledge and transferring it into the software so that smart decisions scale easily across the organisation. We’ve been actively working in the US and Australia for the last five years. We’re beginning to open up opportunities in the Middle East for this technology to be utilised.
Could you tell me a bit about the technology behind Kelvin? Are you leveraging AI and IoT analytics?
We’ve developed a software layer that connects to the existing physical infrastructure at the customers’ fields and operations. We’re building a bridge between those current capabilities and the future by codifying human knowledge into software. We use Artificial Intelligence in the context of pattern matching. When you have someone in engineering working on a particular problem, they’re looking for aberrations, anomalies, and changes in patterns in those systems. What’s terrific about new software tools is that they can also look for those patterns across other data types once they are identified. It is all about blending human understanding and AI, which allows you to create something unique and powerful across the whole operation.
And does that also incorporate Machine Learning?
Yes. There is a learning aspect of this, where once you’ve seen a pattern, Kelvin can look for it across other OUR FOCUS RIGHT NOW IS SOLVING REAL-WORLD PROBLEMS. THERE’S MUCH MOMENTUM IN THE MARKET AROUND WHAT’S POSSIBLE FROM A SUSTAINABILITY POINT OF VIEW. IT IS INCUMBENT UPON US TO DELIVER ON THE PROMISE AND SHOW REAL IMPACT BY REDUCING CARBON EMISSIONS.
datasets and take action. Automated systems have been told what to do and are trained to do something a certain way. As you move to autonomous systems, where you have systems that are beginning to learn, there’s an element of discovery and exploration that can exist. This is the real future that we are rapidly approaching. We have customers on that journey today, who are already moving into this autonomous phase. They can start by explaining what they want Kelvin to do and have it follow those rules to create a base-level understanding and infrastructure for the system. Once that is established, then Kelvin can explore new areas of optimisation in the future.
Could you tell me what you think a CIO’s role is in a company’s ESG strategy?
I believe the CIO is there to help enable the necessary infrastructure, which can help achieve the ESG goals of the organisation. In that context, the first step is gathering the information and discovering how a physical system performs. I see that as organising the data coming in from sensors, images, or otherwise and unifying that with existing data streams coming out of control centers. You have to ensure that that data is consistent, available, contextualised, and in an actionable format. That’s the next piece. The CIO is helping to enable three phases - unifying the data into information, analyzing this information, and empowering the actions.
How can digital twins help organisations to reduce their emissions?
A digital twin should be a virtual representation of a physical system, coming from two dimensions – understanding an asset and its process. For example, in the energy sector, everything will probably have an asset as part of a broader process. So it is incumbent upon the digital twin to be as accurate as possible in representing that asset and the process. When you do that successfully, you’re in a position to run things securely and seamlessly like different types of alert mechanisms, simulations, and other items in the future.
What direction will your commitment to sustainability take next?
Our focus right now is solving realworld problems. There’s much momentum in the market around what’s possible from a sustainability point of view. It is incumbent upon us to deliver on the promise and show real impact by reducing carbon emissions. We are looking for customers and partners committed to making these changes and measuring those results. Kelvin helps demonstrate how operational improvements impact sustainability goals.
