TRANSFORMING NETWORKS

ISSUE 57 \ OCTOBER 2023

Allied Telesis pioneers customer experience through network automation

CONTENTS

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56 PRODUCTS

ALLIED TELESIS PIONEERS CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE THROUGH NETWORK AUTOMATION

TRANSFORMING NETWORKS VIEWPOINTS

FEATURES

THE 16 UNLOCKING POWER OF GENAI

PROMISE OF 18 THE GENERATIVE AI

THE 22 GUARDING DIGITAL REALM

CRITICAL 24 FORTIFYING INFRASTRUCTURE

THE 28 UNLOCKING POWER OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION LESS 36 WHY IS MORE STORAGE 48 DATA RESHAPED

52 NAVIGATING UNCHARTED WATERS PUBLISHED BY INSIGHT MEDIA & PUBLISHING LLC

INTERVIEWS THE 46 UNLEASHING POWER OF IoT

PREVIEW

38 GITEX GLOBAL 2023

6 NEWS HUAWEI UNVEILS $430 MILLION INVESTMENT TO BOOST DIGITAL AFRICA BEYONDTRUST INTRODUCES WORKFORCE PASSWORDS SOLUTION COREWEAVE AND VAST DATA COLLABORATE ON NEXT-GEN PUBLIC CLOUD WITH NVIDIA AI DATA FOUNDATION CLOUDFLARE COLLABORATES WITH MICROSOFT TO ENABLE AI MODELS TO RUN ANYWHERE

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A Visionary Leader, A Futuristic Team Leading The Way in Addressing Emerging Business Challenges with Adaptive Technologies; AI & Application, Automation and Everything for Your Evolving Business.

Delivering Innovative Technology Solutions to the MENA Region www.sysllc.com

EDITORIAL

UNVEILING THE AGE OF INNOVATION

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e live in an era defined by constantly evolving technological innovations that continue to transform our world and lives. For those skeptics who argue that technology trade shows are losing its relevance, GITEX GLOBAL is a poignant reminder of why they remain an integral component of our technological landscape. As someone who has been covering this event for the past 18 years, I can attest firsthand why this gathering serves as a crucial platform for exploring groundbreaking advancements, nurturing partnerships, and staying abreast of the latest industry developments.

Now, if you are someone involved in IT, let me list the reasons why you can’t afford to miss GITEX this year, just like in the past. It provides a platform for companies, regardless of size, to showcase their latest products, services, and technological advancements. Attendees can witness cutting-edge technology in action, gaining insights into its potential use cases and benefits.

Furthermore, in this age of Zoom and MS Teams, face-to-face interactions still hold immense value. Technology trade shows

bring together professionals, entrepreneurs, investors, and enthusiasts from diverse backgrounds. These events facilitate networking, creating opportunities for collaborations, partnerships, and business growth. Conversations in the corridors or at exhibition booths can lead to groundbreaking projects and ventures.

What’s more, GITEX goes beyond just product showcases- it allows attendees to delve deeply into emerging technologies, trends, and best practices through its keynote sessions and workshops by industry experts.

In this edition, we’ve highlighted what some top-tier vendors will showcase at the show, simplifying the process for our readers to discover what is on offer. As always, we have a significant presence at GITEX and will provide you daily updates through our website. On the second day of GITEX, we will also host our ICT Leadership Awards, celebrating the most transformative technology projects in the region. The theme of these awards aligns perfectly with GITEX’s core values of technology leadership and innovation.

Stay tuned for more updates.

Published by

Managing Editor Jeevan Thankappan jeevant@insightmediame.com +97156 - 4156425

Sales Director Merle Carrasco merlec@insightmediame.com +97155 - 1181730

Operations Director Rajeesh Nair rajeeshm@insightmediame.com +97155 - 9383094

Publication licensed by Sharjah Media City @Copyright 2022 Insight Media and Publishing

Production Head James Tharian jamest@insightmediame.com +97156 - 4945966

Administration Manager Fahida Afaf Bangod fahidaa@insightmediame.com +97156 - 5741456

Designer Anup Sathyan

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

HUAWEI UNVEILS $430 MILLION INVESTMENT TO BOOST DIGITAL AFRICA the attractiveness of the business and commercial environment; • Accelerate intelligence to heighten operational efficiency and productivity across the economy, particularly in Africa’s key industries.

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he eighth edition of Huawei Connect has opened its doors in Shanghai from September 20 to 22, marking its first event since the global health crisis. This year’s spotlight is on artificial intelligence (AI), reflecting Huawei’s key focus for the African continent. During the Huawei Northern Africa Night event on September 20, Terry HE, President of Huawei Northern Africa (North, West & Central Africa), revealed the company’s renewed strategy to guide Africa towards a “smart and connected future.”

This strategy, entitled “Accelerate Intelligence for New Africa”, is not just a mere roadmap, but a comprehensive blueprint for Africa’s digital and technological future. Given the continent’s young population, with 60% aged 25 or younger, digitalisation is emerging as a major catalyst for growth in African nations. Additionally, the continent’s considerable potential in green energy offers an unparalleled competitive advantage in the AI era. Recognising these strengths, Huawei’s new strategy is built around the integration of smart technologies, particularly AI, into vital sectors that shape and influence the daily lives of Africans, including health, education, transportation, finance, agriculture, and mining.

The strategy is structured around three core action areas: • Accelerate intelligence to enhance inclusion, thereby improving people’s lives by expanding the coverage and quality of essential services; • Accelerate intelligence to enhance governmental management and bolster 6

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To support this strategy, during the event, Terry HE unveiled a significant investment plan named “Intelligent Future” for the Northern Africa region, encompassing the 28 countries located to the north of the equator within the African continent.

This grand five-year investment initiative, totaling $430 million, is allocated as follows: $200 million to establish the region’s first public cloud centre, offering over 200 cloud services, and an additional $200 million to support 200 local software partners and empower 1,300 channel partners. In term of talent development, Huawei will invest $30 million to train 10,000 local developers and educate 100,000 digital professionals, creating a skilled workforce to drive intelligent transformation in the region.

The challenges are huge, and the stakes are high. “Every technological evolution is characterised by perseverance, exploration, and investment”, stated Terry HE, President of Huawei Northern Africa (North, West & Central Africa). He added, “To expedite intelligent transformation in Northern Africa, Huawei will intensify its investments in technologies, ecosystems, and talent.” He stressed the critical importance of close collaboration among governments, businesses, educational institutions, and communities to realise these ambitions.

In conclusion, he called for united action, stating, “Let’s join forces to usher in a smarter world in Africa and fulfill the aspirations of its people.”

For Huawei, Africa represents a pivotal element of the company’s growth ambitions, underscoring its unwavering commitment to the continent’s digital transformation.

BEYONDTRUST INTRODUCES WORKFORCE PASSWORDS SOLUTION

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eyondTrust has announced announced Workforce Passwords, a new capability built into , designed to securely store and manage business application passwords. Available with the Password Safe 23.2 release, Workforce Passwords delivers enterprise-level workforce password management by giving customers the ability to manage business application passwords with the same scrutiny and security previously reserved for privileged acBeyondTrust Password Safecounts. With this release, organisations can reduce spend and consolidate tools while gaining the visibility and audit support needed in an enterprise-class solution.

Managing access to employee business accounts has never been more important. Today’s workforce uses an increasing number of tools to accomplish daily tasks. These tools can include design, project management, and collaboration solutions that are not visible or controlled by IT because they don’t offer or aren’t enabled with the

organisation’s single sign-on security— even though they may contain confidential or proprietary information.

Without a solution in place to help manage business application passwords, users’ risk falling back on risky password practices, including password reuse, insecure storage, password sharing, and non-compliance with corporate password policies. The new Workforce Passwords add-on helps organisations bring employee business passwords under management and control access to the underlying applications.

Workforce Passwords leverages the power of Password Safe’s enterpriselevel solution to extend convenience and security to business user applications.

Benefits of BeyondTrust Workforce Passwords include: • An easy-to-use browser plugin that enhances the convenience of retrieval and auto-fills passwords using a modern browser extension • The convenience of consumer password managers, secured and scaled for the enterprise • The use of personal folders to safely store and secure individual credentials • Easy adoption with rapid value for users who download the browser extension from the Chrome Web Store or Microsoft Edge Add-on Store • Comprehensive audit capabilities that enhance visibility and security • Enforcement of password policy compliance across all applications “Workforce Passwords redefines how organisations manage all passwords across the organisation, providing a comprehensive solution that secures privileged and non-privileged accounts within a single tool,” said Sam Elliott, SVP of Products at BeyondTrust. “By enabling organisations to efficiently and securely manage their digital identities, we are paving the way for advancements in cybersecurity that protect vital assets in today’s rapidly evolving threat landscape.”

For more information about BeyondTrust Workforce Passwords and how it integrates with Password Safe, visit https://www. beyondtrust.com/solutions/workforcepasswords.

COREWEAVE AND VAST DATA COLLABORATE ON NEXT-GEN PUBLIC CLOUD WITH NVIDIA AI DATA FOUNDATION

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AST Data, the AI data platform company and CoreWeave, a specialised cloud provider powering many of the world’s leading generative AI efforts, announced a strategic partnership that will further CoreWeave’s mission to deliver highly scalable and performant cloud infrastructure for AI and accelerated compute workloads. CoreWeave has selected the VAST Data Platform, the world’s first data platform designed for the AI era, to build a global, NVIDIA-powered accelerated computing cloud for deploying, managing and securing hundreds of petabytes of data for generative AI, high performance computing (HPC) and visual effects (VFX) workloads.

CoreWeave did extensive research and testing before selecting VAST Data to power all of its data centres. The VAST Data Platform has the necessary scale, performance, and multi-tenant enterprise AI cloud capabilities required to power the massive AI and LLM training and inference applications that are now transforming everything from business, to science, to society itself.

“CoreWeave’s customers demand the most secure and scalable solutions on top of the industry’s fastest and most flexible infrastructure to keep their data safe,” said Michael Intrator, CEO and co-founder of CoreWeave. “We’re delighted to partner with VAST Data to deliver a multi-tenant and zero-trust environment purpose-built for accelerated compute use cases like machine learning, VFX and rendering, Pixel Streaming and batch processing that’s up to 35 times faster and 80 percent less expensive than legacy cloud providers. This partnership is rooted in a deep technical collaboration that will push the boundaries of data-driven accelerated computing to deliver the world’s most optimised AI cloud platform.”

Through their joint partnership CoreWeave and VAST Data are leveraging NVIDIA technology to engineer a new data platform architecture for largescale, end-to-end data pipelines and deliver next-generation data services for AI workloads. To support this, the VAST Data Platform boasts an enterprise network attached data store that is certified for use with NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD and eliminates tiers and infrastructure silos to make large scale AI simpler, faster and easier to manage at virtually limitless levels of scale and performance.

“Since our earliest days, VAST Data has had a single vision of building an architecture that could power the needs of the most demanding cloud-scale AI applications,” said Renen Hallak, Founder and CEO of VAST Data. “We could not imagine a better cloud platform to realise this vision than what we’re creating with CoreWeave. We are humbled and honoured to partner with the CoreWeave team to push the boundaries of modern AI computing and to build the infrastructure that will serve as the foundation of tomorrow’s AI-powered discoveries.”

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CLOUDFLARE COLLABORATES WITH MICROSOFT TO ENABLE AI MODELS TO RUN ANYWHERE

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loudflare announced that it is collaborating with Microsoft to make it easier for companies to run AI in the location most suitable for their needs.

As inference tasks become more and more distributed, this collaboration will enable businesses to seamlessly deploy AI models across a computing continuum that spans device, network edge, and cloud environments – maximising the benefits of both centralised and distributed computing models. By leveraging ONNX Runtime across these three tiers, Cloudflare and Microsoft can ensure that AI models can be run wherever processing makes the most sense across this three-tier architecture – from the hyperscale cloud to the hyper-distributed network edge to devices themselves – that best addresses the bandwidth, latency, connectivity, processing, battery/ energy, and data sovereignty and localisation demands of a given application or service.

AI model training requires significant computational and storage resources in close proximity to one another, making centralised cloud platforms the best environment for the intensive calculations needed in model training.

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centralised, inference tasks will be increasingly performed in more distributed locations, specifically on devices themselves and on edge networks. For example, some inference tasks (e.g., an autonomous vehicle braking at the sight of a pedestrian) will run on the physical device for the lowest possible latency. However, to navigate device limitations such as compute, storage, and battery power, more and more tasks will need to run on edge networks. Edge networks – close geographical proximity to end users and devices – will provide an optimal balance of computational resources, speed, and data privacy.

Some applications may require moving through three tiers of this computing continuum, with device, edge network, and cloud environments working together to bring the best experience to the end user.

“Together, Cloudflare and Microsoft will build the railroad tracks that AI traffic and tasks will move on, to tailor AI inference to the exact needs and demands of every organisation,” said Matthew Prince, CEO and co-founder, Cloudflare. “Whether you’re looking for speed or accuracy, dealing with energy or connectivity bandwidth challenges, or complying with regional localisation requirements, Cloudflare and Microsoft can help you find the best location for your AI tasks.”

“As companies explore the best way to harness the power of generative AI in unique ways to meet their needs, the ability to run AI models anywhere is paramount,” said Rashmi Misra, GM of Data, AI, & Emerging Technologies at Microsoft. “With Cloudflare’s global network, combined with Microsoft’s experience in training and deploying the world’s most advanced AI workloads through our Azure cloud, businesses will gain access to a new level of flexibility and performance for AI inference.”

Together, Cloudflare and Microsoft will collaborate to make it easy for companies to run AI in the place most suitable for the workload. There are two pieces to making this happen: 1. Microsoft’s ONNX Runtime creates a standardised solution that allows the same models to be deployed regardless of environment, whether on device (Windows, mobile, or in-browser), on the distributed network edge (Cloudflare), or in Azure’s centralised cloud platform.

2. Cloudflare can provide the infrastructure for routing traffic across the different environments, depending on connectivity, latency, compliance, or other requirements.

Businesses want to be able to move inference tasks across this continuum of device, edge network, and cloud, depending on the performance, cost, and regulatory requirements they face. Microsoft’s AI capabilities and hyperscale cloud infrastructure combined with Cloudflare’s hyper-distributed edge network will empower businesses to drive innovation and efficiency across the entire AI lifecycle. As a result, businesses will be able to: • Find the best location for AI tasks: Choose to deploy AI inference wherever processing makes the most sense to achieve the desired outcomes, maximising the benefits of both centralised and distributed computing models. For example, a security camera system could utilise edge networks to run object detection. This overcomes the resource constraints of the device itself, without the latency of sending data to a central server for processing.

• Navigate changing needs: Run models in all three locations and adjust or fall back based on availability, use case, and latency requirements.

• Deploy on Cloudflare in a few clicks: Access easy deployable models and ML tooling capabilities on Workers AI through Microsoft Azure Machine Learning.

LEADING TURKISH CRYPTO EXCHANGE BITAY MARKS AN EXPANSION INTO UAE

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itay.com, Turkiye’s cryptocurrency exchange established in 2018, has begun offering its services to crypto investors in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The exchange empowers crypto investors to trade over 850 pairs and over 350 cryptocurrencies, using more than 20 local currencies, extending its reach to over 200 countries, including the UAE. The UAE is recognised as one of the top three countries in the Crypto Adoption Index by Henley & Partners, evidencing high crypto adoption levels. Enhanced by progressive regulations introduced last year, the region confidently evolves into a global cryptocurrency hub.

Investing in the growing UAE Crypto Ecosystem “The technology and infrastructure investments phase is largely complete, and we have the range of products in place that our crypto investors demand

of us,” stated Niyanteri Yılmaz, General Manager at Bitay.

Bitay.com is much more than a crypto exchange. Bitay Portfolio Tokens containing multiple crypto assets prepared by Bitay’s expert analysts for those who want to diversify their crypto investments. Bitay+ loyalty programme allows you to invest in crypto with 0% commission and simultaneously provides passive income with stake earnings up to 10%. Bitay Wallet which provides high-level personal privacy with non-KYC membership, extra transparency in OTC transactions and offers high security asset storage service and SWAP and BRIDGE opportunity for more than 350 crypto assets. And more…

Bitay is extending the opportunity to UAE crypto investors to trade with Bitay Coin, which has surged over 230% amid challenging market conditions.

Exclusive campaigns for UAE investors Highlighting the commendable

WAHAJ SELECTS IFS CLOUD TO EXPEDITE DIGITALISATION AND AUTOMATION

IFS announced that Wahaj, Saudi Arabia’s fastest-growing precision engineering & manufacturing company in the Aerospace & Defense and Oil & Gas sectors and a fully owned affiliate of Sahara International Petrochemical Company (Sipchem), has selected IFS Cloud ERP and defense manufacturing solutions.

The implementation of IFS Cloud will enable Wahaj to deploy a single

integrated solution to automate its internal manufacturing processes, expand into new territories and accelerate its digital transformation journey.

Wahaj is certified AS9100 components, one of a very exclusive list of companies in the Kingdom and specializes in the manufacture of high-precision components and assemblies for the Aerospace & Defense industries. The IFS Cloud solution will help enhance its operational capabilities enabling end-to-end control, efficiency and deliveries.

In addition, the solution will provide Wahaj real-time visibility into its supply chain, driving continuous insight-driven improvements.

Eng. Hesham Al Rabah, CEO, Saudi Advanced Technologies Company (Wahaj), said, “Saudi Arabia has an ambitious

performance of Bitay Coin compared to fiat currencies, tokens of worldrenowned companies, and numerous stock exchanges since the year’s inception, Bitay Marketing Director Bünyamin Turgut expressed, “In keeping with our community-oriented approach, we’re awarding 50 Bitay Coins to all UAE investors who join Bitay.”

He also added, “To commemorate the first anniversary of Bitay Coin, and to mark our entry into the UAE market, we have launched a limited time ‘Advantageous Second Sales’ campaign. Investors in the region can acquire Bitay Coin at up to 25 per cent discount off the market rate and enjoy a locked-in return of up to 30 per cent on their USDT investment.”

Vision 2030, and it is imperative for us to contribute to this transformative vision.

We understand the need to enhance our processes to enable us to be more efficient and compliant in our deliveries. As IFS Cloud is based on an integrated platform, it also gives us the flexibility to expand our business to new realms.

Mehmood Khan, Managing Director Middle East Region at IFS, said, “Using our leading IFS Cloud ERP and Defense manufacturing solutions, Wahaj will be able to enhance their existing processes and streamline their complex day-to-day operations. This will not only improve efficiency and productivity on their manufacturing floor, but also provide them with valuable insights that will inform future growth. We are confident that through implementing IFS Cloud, we will support Wahaj’s vision to become a leading industrial entity and a dominant private sector company.”

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HELP AG JOINS FORCES WITH ALGOSEC

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elp AG, the cybersecurity arm of e& enterprise and the Middle East’s trusted security advisor, has partnered with AlgoSec. The partnership will enable Help AG customers to benefit from AlgoSec’s fast, secure application delivery and security policy management across public and private clouds, containers, and on-premises networks.

The demands of digital transformation necessitate rapid application development, while concurrently facing increasingly sophisticated threats, highlighting the crucial importance of robust cybersecurity. Consequently, security teams are now confronted with a significant challenge – finding the optimal balance between speed and security.

By providing complete visibility of hybrid networks and zero-touch automation, the AlgoSec platform will enable Help AG clients to accelerate time-to-market without compromising security. Additionally, AlgoSec helps organisations reduce cybersecurity threats and reputational risk through 10

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understanding their security posture, while aligning their DevOps, SecOps, and business teams, ensuring they all speak the same application-centric language. Help AG clients will also be able to get the whole picture by discovering, identifying, and mapping business applications and security policies, including connectivity flows.

The AlgoSec platform will additionally enable Help AG clients to make changes securely, avoiding misconfigurations by automating application connectivity and security policy changes – from planning through risk analysis, implementation, and validation.

Moreover, with AlgoSec, customers can rest assured that they will always be compliant with regulations and enjoy the ability to automatically generate audit-ready reports and reduce audit preparation efforts.

Commenting on the partnership, Stephan Berner, Chief Executive Officer at Help AG, said: “From the beginning, Help AG has prioritised application security, with a special focus on ensuring that security is built in from the development and

operations stage. We are pleased to partner with AlgoSec, further bolstering our leadership in the field of DevSecOps by giving our customers access to AlgoSec’s suite of services and solutions enabling secure connectivity across the entire application fabric.”

He added: “The strategic partnership with AlgoSec supports Help AG’s overarching strategy in a number of ways. The agreement falls in line with our service-centric transition, enabling our clients to access AlgoSec’s suite of Professional Services. Additionally, adding AlgoSec to our portfolio helps us to deliver an efficient multi-vendor Managed Security Controls offering, while complementing our Network Security offering and extensive portfolio of Firewall Vendors.”

About this strategic partnership, Mike Landwehr, Vice President – APAC at AlgoSec said “AlgoSec’s success has always been a combination of our market leading product and the strength of our partnerships. I am happy and proud to count Help AG, a cybersecurity partner in a league of its own, as one of our partners, and we look forward to working jointly to serve our customers in the region.”

He commented, “By automating application connectivity and security policy across the hybrid network estate, AlgoSec enables organisations to move fast while staying secure. As the only app-centric and complete hybrid network solution, we build security across the entire application development lifecycle, while offering full integration with the existing tech stack and unified visibility across cloud, Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and on-premise enterprise networks.”

AlgoSec’s solutions can be implemented across a range of use cases including change management, auditing & compliance, micro segmentation, DevOps, application connectivity, risk management, infrastructure modernisation, network security policy management, and hybrid-cloud.

CROWDSTRIKE LAUNCHES STARTUP ACCELERATOR WITH AWS

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rowdStrike announced the launch of an equity free Amazon Web Services (AWS) & CrowdStrike Cybersecurity Startup Accelerator for EMEA-based startups. Created to foster and fuel cybersecurity’s next market-defining disruptors, the new AWS & CrowdStrike Cybersecurity Startup Accelerator cohort, will offer customised mentorship, technical expertise and partnership opportunities, as part of AWS Startup Loft Accelerator (SLA) programme. High-potential early-stage cybersecurity companies could also get funding from CrowdStrike’s strategic investment vehicle, the CrowdStrike Falcon Fund.

Applications for the AWS & CrowdStrike Cybersecurity Accelerator is open from September 18 to October 31, 2023. To apply, visit this website [vestbee.com]. Selected startups will be enrolled in a free 10week no cost programme that includes office hours with AWS Cybersecurity experts and CrowdStrike executives, access to top-tier cybersecurity global investors, enablement sessions, up to $25,000 in AWS Activate [aws. amazon.com [aws.amazon.com]] credits, among other exclusive benefits.

At the end of the programme, participants can present their innovations at an in-person Demo Day at the AWS Startup Loft in San Francisco which will take place during the RSA Conference in May 2024.

Winning presentations could receive funding from the CrowdStrike Falcon Fund, a portfolio that includes AWS Partners like Abnormal (Behavioral AI Security), Cribl (Observability), Dig Security (Data Security), Vanta (Compliance) and Talon Security (Secure Browser).

“This is a game-changer for cyber founders. Navigating foundational startup initiatives is difficult while accelerating your product vision and execution at the same time,” said Josh Jones, Head of Corporate Development at Vanta. “Having the support of both AWS and CrowdStrike will help the programme participants in ways not available to most emerging ISVs. It is a win-win-win for all parties involved.”

Startups are encouraged to review the terms and conditions and submit applications here [vestbee.com].

“CrowdStrike’s category creating journey from startup to market leader was built on AWS and together we have created an enhanced AWS go-to-market – bringing cybersecurity to the cloud

era,” said Daniel Bernard, chief business officer at CrowdStrike. “Now, with the creation of the AWS& CrowdStrike Cybersecurity Startup Accelerator, we are combining the tech expertise of two of the most reputable names in the industry to share best practices and business-critical resources for the next-generation of cybersecurity innovators building on AWS and the Falcon platform.”

“Security has been a top priority for AWS since day one and we are delighted to work with CrowdStrike to support the next generation of startups set to disrupt the global cybersecurity ecosystem. With the combination of our extensive expertise at AWS and Crowdstrike, the new cybersecurity accelerator will equip founders with the most innovative tools available to drive transformation in protecting people, businesses and societies.” said Chris Grusz, Managing Director of Technology Partnerships at AWS. The CrowdStrike Falcon Fund is a cross-stage investment fund and the largest corporate venture arm in the cybersecurity industry. The programme is designed to build an ecosystem of next-generation security leaders that share a common mission through a unique combination of investment and deep technical integrations with the CrowdStrike Falcon platform, giving CrowdStrike customers access to cutting-edge third-party capabilities.

The AWS Startup Loft Accelerator programme is a 10-week virtual acceleration programme for earlystage cloud-based startups. The programme enables startups to maximise the value of AWS by providing them with AWS tech resources, to validate their business by industry leaders, to access investors and to accelerate their time to market.

The programme structure is based on four pillars crucial to a startup’s success in its early days: Technology, Product, Go-to-market and Funding.

The programme puts the entrepreneur at the centre allowing startups to build their own personalised programme out of the AWS Startup Loft Accelerator session and content offering.

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TRANSFORMING NETWORKS SHAHNAWAZ SIDDIQUI, REGIONAL SALES MANAGER AT ALLIED TELESIS, EXPLAINS THE ROLE OF NETWORK AUTOMATION IN AVERTING BUSINESS DISRUPTIONS AND ENHANCING THE USER EXPERIENCE.

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hat is the driving force behind the adoption of network automation in organisations?

Managing modern networks is timeintensive and costly, and while cloud computing and converged infrastructures deliver a great deal of business value, they also add complexity. Traditional network management often requires significant allocation of skilled resources, especially at the network edge, where repetitive and time-consuming tasks are commonplace. As networks expand in size and complexity, the demands on network administrators increase. They must ensure their network’s security, reliability, and agility, adapting to the ever-changing business landscape.

Stakeholders expect a rapid response to change requests, so network administrators have less time to make more changes, which increases the risk of mistakes.

Remarkably, even back in 2014, Gartner pointed out that human error was the leading cause of network outages. More recent studies confirm that a staggering 70% of data center outages can be attributed to human mistakes.

As our world becomes more interconnected, the expanding scale of networks elevates the risk of misconfigurations and their detrimental impact. Therefore, the adoption of automation in network

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management becomes paramount.

By automating network tasks, we replace manual efforts with predictable and repeatable changes, powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning. This automation significantly boosts productivity, enabling network engineers to shift their focus from repetitive work to strategic opportunities.

In what ways does your network automation solution aid organisations in streamlining their management processes?

Our AMF Plus (Allied Telesis Management Framework) is a comprehensive solution that optimises network performance and enhances security. It is an automation tool that provides immediate and tangible benefits to businesses, addressing one of their most critical needs.

This framework streamlines centralised management, allowing administrators to oversee multiple devices through a single interface efficiently. It automates configuration and provisioning tasks, reducing manual efforts and the potential for configuration errors. One notable feature is “zero-touch provisioning,” which seamlessly provisions and configures new devices as they are phased into the existing network.

Moreover, the self-healing and selfoptimising capabilities of network devices, enhanced by machine learning and predictive analytics,

collaborate to detect and respond to network issues proactively. These features contribute to the overall network’s stability and reliability.

Furthermore, the security aspects of AMF Plus are robust. It encompasses role-based access control, device authentication, and various security measures designed to enforce security policies effectively. This comprehensive approach ensures that both network performance and security are optimised simultaneously.

How does it work in wireless environments?

When it comes wireless connectivity, our primary framework is AMF Plus.

Additionally, we incorporate a feature known as Autonomous Wave Control to enhance the efficiency of wireless devices, particularly access points, by automatically configuring them based on their positioning and adapting to users’ dynamic bandwidth demands.

Wireless technology has two predominant architectures: singlechannel and multi-channel. While many companies opt for multichannel architectures, some still prefer single-channel setups. Both single-channel and multi-channel architectures have its pros and cons. What we did was to merge the strengths of both by creating a hybrid wireless solution. This approach maximises the use of technology, effectively creating a comprehensive wireless environment.

In practical terms, this hybrid approach is valuable for strategically placing wireless access points and coordinating them with your wireless controller, which is connected to AMF Plus. Proper positioning is essential to minimise interference and optimise wireless performance. This approach streamlines wireless deployment within your network.

Can you tell us about the zero-touch recovery feature of AMF Plus?

In a broad open network environment where you may have deployed anywhere from 10 to 1000 devices,

a common scenario arises when one of your switches malfunctions.

Typically, replacing it involves sending the faulty unit back, receiving a new one, and then configuring it with the help of an engineer or other personnel. This process can be timeconsuming and may require sending resources to the site.

However, with zero-touch recovery, the process becomes much more efficient. All configurations are automatically backed up in a centralised management and storage device. When a switch needs replacement, there’s no need to dispatch a network manager or engineer. Instead, you simply send the new unit, instruct someone to place it on the rack, plug it in, and leave it.

The new switch communicates with the main controller, often referred to as the AMF Master or “core switch,” informing it that it’s the replacement for the previous switch. Since it carries the necessary backup, it automatically restores the same configuration. This is what we mean by “zero-touch recovery,” as it doesn’t require the presence of highly skilled network personnel.

Can you provide examples of industries or sectors where network automation has significantly impacted efficiency and productivity?

Network automation is a transformative force across various industries, reshaping the landscape of network management and operations.

Here are examples of some industries significantly influenced by network automation: Telecommunications: Telecommunications providers are heavily reliant on network automation to efficiently oversee their extensive and intricate networks. This technology streamlines service provisioning, optimises network resources, and ensures the reliability of their networks.

Financial Services: Financial institutions rely on highly secure and consistently available networks for daily operations. Network automation

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plays a pivotal role in the management of these networks, ensuring regulatory compliance and safeguarding sensitive financial information.

Healthcare: In the healthcare sector, network automation is instrumental in enhancing patient care. It guarantees the accessibility and security of medical data and communication systems, all while ensuring strict compliance with healthcare regulations.

Retail: Retailers harness network automation for the management of crucial components such as pointof-sale systems, inventory control, and customer engagement solutions. This automation streamlines the shopping experience, both online and in physical stores.

Manufacturing: Automation in the manufacturing sector is used to control and monitor production processes, supply chain logistics, and industrial IoT devices.

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In essence, network automation is a cross-cutting technology that enhances efficiency, security, and agility across a wide range of industries. Its impact continues to grow as organisations recognise the value of automating network tasks to meet the demands of a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

What are the potential cost savings associated with network automation, and how quickly can organisations expect to see a return on their investment?

We’ve conducted some calculations, and while the exact savings can vary, it’s primarily based on reducing labor costs. By reallocating skilled labor to other tasks and leveraging automation to streamline processes, we estimate that your savings could range from 70% to 80%. Keep in mind that the specific percentage may differ depending on the size of your network, with smaller networks experiencing slightly lower savings and larger networks potentially reaching the 14

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upper end of the range, around 80%.

These figures provide a general sense of the potential value you can achieve through automation.

The time it takes for organisations to realise a return on their investment (ROI) in network automation varies widely depending on factors like the complexity of the network, the extent of automation deployed, and the specific goals of the automation initiative. Some organisations may see immediate cost savings, while others may take several months or even years to achieve a positive ROI. What are the key challenges and obstacles that organisations face when implementing network automation solutions?

Network automation tools may have different features, functions, interfaces, and protocols, necessitating seamless integration and coordination. When these tools are incompatible with existing network devices, systems, or standards, it can lead to conflicts, errors, or failures, potentially affecting network performance and security. To address this challenge, network engineers should meticulously select, test, and validate automation tools, ensuring they align with the network’s architecture, design, and policies.

Furthermore, network automation calls for specialised expertise in programming, scripting, and network protocols. Finding or training personnel with these skills can be a challenge.

The complexity of legacy infrastructure represents another hurdle. Many organisations operate with legacy network infrastructure that wasn’t originally designed for automation. Incorporating automation into such environments can be intricate and may require substantial modifications.

It’s essential to note automating network tasks can also introduce new security risks if not properly implemented. It’s crucial to ensure that

automation processes are secure and not vulnerable to exploits.

How does network automation affect the role and responsibilities of IT professionals and network administrators?

The influence of network automation on IT professionals and network administrators is profound, resulting in a significant transformation of their roles and skill sets. This transformation is characterised by several key aspects: First and foremost, there is a notable shift from manual to strategic work. Network automation significantly reduces the demand for routine manual tasks, such as configuration changes and device provisioning. As a result, IT professionals find themselves with more available time to focus on strategic initiatives such as network architecture design, scalability planning, and performance optimisation.

Secondly, network administrators are increasingly expected to possess scripting and programming skills.

These skills are essential for crafting and maintaining automation scripts and workflows. Proficiency in programming languages like Python, YAML, or JSON becomes invaluable when developing automation solutions.

Third, automation fosters collaboration across diverse IT teams, including those specialising in network management, security, and software development. Effective communication and teamwork are of paramount importance as network administrators work closely with colleagues from various domains to create integrated solutions.

Lastly, automation technologies and tools are subject to rapid evolution. To stay abreast of the latest automation tools, best practices, and industry trends, IT professionals and network administrators must commit to continuous learning and professional development.

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VIEWPOINT

UNLOCKING THE POWER OF GENAI CHANTAL CHALOUHI, PARTNER, BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP (BCG), WRITES ABOUT BUILDING HYPERPERSONALIZED SOLUTIONS FOR THE FUTURE.

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s the world embraces the potential of generative AI (GenAI), organisations are exploring ways to leverage its power in transforming customer support, search, personalisation, and knowledge synthesis. Giants like OpenAI and Google’s have already introduced Large Language Models (LLMs) and conversational AI solutions, such as ChatGPT and Bard, amassing millions of users. However, to truly unlock the value of GenAI, it is crucial to design and build user-centric solutions that cater to individual needs and preferences.

The future of optimising AI and unlocking the true potential of commercial AI lies in building user-centric and hyperpersonalised solutions through GenAI. Organisations that aspire to lead in this future must embrace this approach today. While GenAI has the potential to bring about significant advancements, it is only when these solutions work efficiently and intuitively for users that their true value can be realised.

Therefore, building user-centric genAI solutions becomes a paramount goal for organisations looking to leverage this technology to their advantage.

Traditional approaches to solution design need to evolve from linear to open design principles when working with GenAI solutions. Unlike conventional digital products, GenAI solutions bring more natural and interactive dialogue to feel human-like. This challenges the traditional approach of linear interactions.

To navigate these challenges, organisations should consider the following key recommendations based on our experience in developing GenAIbased solutions:

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1. Demonstrate Value: To capture user interest, it is essential for businesses to effectively demonstrate the value of GenAI technologies beyond the user’s initial request can demonstrate the value of the GenAI solution. Users may not be aware of the full capabilities of a GenAI solution. It is important to communicate these capabilities through various formats, such as landing pages, disclaimers, or by highlighting features during the conversation..

2. Time to Value: In the fast-paced digital era, businesses must prioritise delivering value early in the interactions. Traditional solutions rely on gathering detailed information through user inputs, but GenAI allows for more natural dialogue.

Offering hooks or value-adding features upfront can deepen user engagement and encourage them to return to the solution.

3. Relationship and Retention: By cultivating meaningful relationships with users, businesses can enhance customer loyalty and create long-term value. GenAI has the potential to transform the way users interact with businesses. Each chat session can be seen as a building

block in a relationship, deepening the understanding of a user’s needs. It is important to analyze user requests, understand the context, and provide appropriate responses.

4. AI-led Interaction: GenAI can revolutionise user interactions by fostering proactive and personalised experiences. GenAI has the power to shift interaction dynamics from simple question-and-response to a more proactive and AI-driven approach.

Conversational AI models can ask followup questions based on predicted behavior patterns or conversation context. This opens possibilities for deeper customer relationships and engagement.

Implementing GenAI must be done responsibly and with a commitment to user privacy, fairness, and continuous improvement. It is essential for organisations to address the following aspects when setting up these guardrails: • Protecting User Data Privacy: Safeguarding user data is a fundamental responsibility that organisations must prioritise. GenAI solutions often require access to sensitive user data. Organisations must prioritise protecting user data privacy by implementing robust data protection measures and adhering to industry standards and regulations.

• Promoting Transparency and Fairness: Building trust through transparent and fair AI solutions is crucial for long-term success. Ethical guidelines should govern the usage of GenAI solutions to prevent bias and potential harm. These guidelines should ensure responsible and accountable deployment of GenAI, respecting principles of fairness, equity, and non-discrimination.

GenAI holds immense potential for revolutionising various industries, but its adoption must be coupled with a focus on user-centricity. By reimagining traditional development principles, setting ambitious strategy, and fostering responsible AI implementation, businesses can unlock the full power of GenAI. Through a humancentered design philosophy, GenAI can truly enhance the lives of users while driving business success in the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence.

FEATURE

THE PROMISE OF GENERATIVE AI ENTERPRISE GENERATIVE AI UNLOCKS BOUNDLESS OPPORTUNITIES BY RESHAPING WORKFLOWS AND ENHANCING CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES.

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n today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, integrating generative artificial intelligence (AI) into enterprise operations is becoming more than just a trend – it’s a transformative force. This technology, capable of understanding, creating, and innovating content, is ushering in a new era of efficiency, productivity, and innovation for businesses across various industries.

According to Gartner, generative AI offers a range of benefits, including accelerated product development, elevated customer experiences, and increased employee productivity.

However, the actual advantages can vary significantly depending on the specific

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application. Users are advised to maintain realistic expectations regarding the value they can derive, especially when deploying pre-built services that come with notable limitations.

Generative AI has the potential to generate artifacts that may be inaccurate or biased, underscoring the critical need for human validation, which can potentially offset the time saved by workers. Gartner’s recommendation is to align the use cases with key performance indicators (KPIs) to ensure that every project either enhances operational efficiency, generates fresh revenue streams, or improves overall experiences.

In a recent Gartner webinar poll involving over 2,500 executives, 38%

identified customer experience and retention as the primary focus of their generative AI investments. This was followed by an emphasis on revenue growth (26%), cost optimisation (17%), and business continuity (7%).

Sid Bhatia, Regional VP & General Manager, Middle East, Africa & Turkey, Dataiku, says the technology has a wide range of applications in the business world across all industries and some of the use cases include product design and advertising. “It can also Improve the efficiency of business processes such as supply chain management and logistics, and help companies extract deep insights from data, such as user behaviour, demand, and sales trends. For example,

a company could use generative AI tools to analyze historical purchase data to identify trends and patterns. This could then be used to make informed business decisions and strategies.”

Dr Neamat El Gayar, Programme Director of the MSc in Artificial Intelligence at Heriot-Watt University Dubai, says generative AI is gaining significant importance as it uniquely helps to transform enterprise settings by offering many innovative applications to its users. For example, natural language processing, where generative AI models such as GPT-3 and its successors are used to automate content development and generation. This includes chatbots that provide customer support,

automated report writing, and crafting marketing materials.

“Additionally, in creative sectors such as advertising and design, generative AI supports generating art, music, and advertising copy. In data analysis, these models generate synthetic datasets for training machine learning algorithms while preserving data privacy. Overall, the adaptability of generative AI is reshaping enterprise landscapes by automating tasks, boosting creativity, and enabling data-driven decision-making,” she says.

Ramprakash Ramamoorthy, Director of AI Research at ManageEngine, highlights that generative AI has been phenomenal in automating various tasks and providing utility in areas such as paraphrasing, writing summaries, and developing the ability to have meaningful, interactive conversations.

“While AI has seen a growth curve in recent times, it still has a long way to go before it concretely helps out enterprises in the process of automation. It should also be noted that the current capabilities of AI cater to the needs of consumerspecific tasks rather than enterprises.

However, AI is expected to align consumer demand with enterprise needs strategically, which could lead to a shift in the business landscape,” he adds.

Generative AI can significantly enhance operational efficiency and streamline enterprise workflows by automating repetitive tasks in several ways.

Generative AI’s ability to handle these

tasks not only reduces the time and effort required for routine activities but also minimises errors, enhances accuracy, and allows employees to focus on more strategic, creative, or complex aspects of their roles, ultimately improving overall operational efficiency.

“Tasks such as addressing customer inquiries, managing appointment schedules, tracking orders, and troubleshooting routine issues can be effectively delegated to AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants. The challenging process of extracting data from various sources and inputting it into databases or spreadsheets can be managed by generative AI,” says Walid Gomaa, CEO of Omnix International.

In document management, summarising extensive documents, extracting crucial information, and getting insights from voluminous text can be expedited and enhanced with generative AI. It can also perform advanced HR functions, including resume screening, interview scheduling, and initial candidate interviews.

Gomaa adds that it can also generate compliance reports, pinpoint potential violations, and promptly bring them to the attention of responsible personnel, ensuring adherence to regulatory standards.

How can enterprises seamlessly integrate generative AI solutions with their existing systems and processes?

Bhatia says there are two main ways to

Dr Neamat El Gayar

Ramprakash Ramamoorthy

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Sid Bhatia

accomplish this. The first would be APIs (application programming interfaces, which allow bespoke code to make calls to an external library at runtime) exposed by cloud-native services. The second would be self-managed open-source models.

Providers like OpenAI, AWS, and GCP already provide public model-asa-service APIs. They have low entry barriers and junior developers can get up to speed with their code frameworks within minutes. API models tend to be the largest and most sophisticated versions of LLM, allowing more sophisticated and accurate responses on a wider range of topics. However, the hosted nature of the API may mean that data residency and privacy problems arise — a significant issue for privately owned GCC companies when it comes to regulatory compliance.

There are also cost premiums to an API, as well as the risk of a smaller provider going out of business and the API, therefore, no longer being operable.

“If we look at open source models, there is a wide range of such models, each of which can be run on premises or in the cloud. Enterprise stakeholders have full control over the availability of the system.

But while costs may be lower for the LLM itself, setting up and maintaining one necessitates onboarding expensive talent, such as data scientists and engineers,” says Bhatia.

Simon Morris, VP of Solution Consulting at ServiceNow, says adopting Generative AI solutions should follow the same methodology as more traditional 20

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Simon Morris

Walid Gomaa

technology implementations. That starts with defining clear objectives for the transformation and an understanding of the potential value the organisation might realise — Will your generative AI solution automate content creation, enhance data analysis, improve customer service experiences, or something completely different?

A critical next stage should be to evaluate the state of the current infrastructure. Organisations that have previously invested in data strategy that defines ownership, security classification and controls will be at a huge advantage.

“Understanding the different available AI models is a critical choice depending on the outcome the organisation is trying to achieve. Depending on the objectives, you might choose a pre-trained model, a fine-tuned model or a completely custom model,” says Morris.

What are the challenges and ethical considerations associated with using generative AI in the enterprise, such as biases in generated content or data privacy concerns?

“As with any new technologies and changes, integrating generative AI into enterprise workflows also brings challenges and ethical considerations.

One prominent concern revolves around biases in the content generated by AI models, which can use discriminatory or prejudiced narratives,” says El Gayar.

Furthermore, collecting and utilising sensitive data for AI training raises serious privacy concerns, requiring rigorous

safeguards to protect individuals’ personal information. Striking a balance between automation and potential job displacement is another challenge, as generative AI can make certain roles redundant.

Additionally, ensuring transparency in AI decision-making processes and adhering to evolving AI ethics and data protection regulations poses complex compliance challenges for enterprises. Addressing these issues is crucial to harnessing the benefits of generative AI while upholding ethical standards and responsible practices in the corporate landscape.

Ramamoorthy sums up: “Getting generative AI into the enterprise presents unique challenges. Central to this technology are large language models (LLMs). While smaller language models lack the sophisticated emergent capabilities of their larger counterparts, LLMs come with their own set of complications. One of the major concerns surrounding LLMs is the privacy of their training data. The delineation between what data is permissible for training LLMs and what should remain confidential, especially business secrets, is a nebulous area. This ambiguity extends to inference privacy; ensuring that during an LLM’s operation it doesn’t inadvertently disclose sensitive details of individuals to unauthorised parties. Additionally, the fiscal implications cannot be ignored. The substantial costs associated with training and operating an LLM, sometimes called the GPU tax, might be overkill for every enterprise application.”

VIEWPOINT

GUARDING THE

DIGITAL REALM MOHAMMAD ISMAIL, VP MIDDLE EAST, AFRICA & TURKIYE, DELINEA, WRITES BETTER CYBERSECURITY MEANS BETTER CYBER INSURANCE.

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s the number and sophistication of cyberattacks has increased, organisations in the Middle East have steadily ramped up their cyber defences. But as successful attacks against some of the region’s largest organisations have demonstrated, even deep pockets don’t guarantee protection. Unsurprisingly,

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organisations are increasingly opting for a final fallback line and today, the majority (63%) of MEA companies admit to having purchased some form of cyber insurance.

This figure isn’t far behind that in the US, where a 2022 Delinea survey found that 70% of respondents worked for organisations that had applied for cyber insurance, and of these, 93%

were approved. More than half of the insured organisations that went on to make a claim ended up using the same policy again more than once.

This is consistent with many regional cybersecurity surveys that, for example, show ransomware victims being hit multiple times. Cyber insurers are getting wise to this oversized risk and Delinea’s research showed only around

30% of organisations being covered for ransomware-related events.

Here in the United Arab Emirates, where the cyber insurance market is forecast to expand at a CAGR of more than 25% between now and 2028, we find similar anxiety. CIOs and CISOs are rightly concerned about the impact of an errant click here or a missed vulnerability there. Even as technology teams work diligently to protect what matters most, they know that it is misguided to assume they can cover every eventuality. And strict regulations here stipulate that businesses that experience a breach must report it to the relevant authorities. It is little wonder that there is a ballooning demand for cyber insurance across the Middle East, particularly in the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

Going shopping The journey to find the most comprehensive and reassuring policy is fraught with challenges. Businesses are accustomed to having buying power.

They are accustomed to dictating terms when dealing with suppliers.

Rarely do they find themselves in the position of having to negotiate with a seller for the privilege of buying. But that is exactly the experience that awaits most enterprises that goes shopping for cyber insurance. The rise of ransomware has given way to a perception that, in the event of an attack, there is a risk that payouts will exceed revenues. Insurers have become understandably more judicious about taking on a customer at all, never mind quoting them a reasonable price. And even if insurers are prepared to issue a policy, they will often infuse it with a lengthy list of caveats.

This leaves today’s digital businesses in the somewhat bizarre position of having to prepare and pitch to insurance companies. In truth, this has some benefits, because it encourages the candidate to get in better cybersecurity shape. And it dissuades them from using cyber insurance as a replacement for robust cybersecurity. Shoring up threat posture should come first in

order to get a more affordable safety net. Look at strategy, staffing, policy, and technology before researching insurance providers. Look to common security controls such as identity management, privilege management, asset discovery, employee behaviour monitoring, network segmentation, malware defence, and endpoint detection. Revisit the incident playbook, the training of IT and security teams, and the awareness levels of end users.

While this may seem like a departure from the search for cyber insurance, it is critical groundwork for making the enterprise a viable subject in the eyes of underwriters. Its goal is to prove to risk assessors that the organisation is as safe a prospect as possible. To do that, it must demonstrate its implementation of best practices that prove to insurers that it, the insurance seeker, takes security seriously. With the right threat posture, businesses may even be able to lower premiums.

First steps One area that frequently comes up as a high priority is Privileged Access Management (PAM). First, automate password management as much as possible. Enact the principle of least privilege that grants employees rolebased access. Implement just-in-time credentials and ensure security checks include multi-factor authentication. And regardless of role or seniority, educate every employee about cyber risks.

Assuming you can present an attractive prospect to an insurer, you will get a quote.

Next, revisit each of the concerns that brought the company to the insurance company in the first place.

Tally best practices with the quote and the small print and start negotiating.

By this stage you should be able to make the argument that your business is a low-risk entity and deserves reconsideration. Also, be on the lookout for the limits of coverage. Cyber insurance, like many other products, may only insure up to a certain amount.

Also familiarise yourself with the conditions of reimbursement, and the process to correctly file a claim. What must be proven before the payout can be authorised and what does the insurer stipulate as satisfactory evidence? How easy will it be to access and present this evidence in the event of a breach?

Remember that just because a cyber insurer does not mandate a particular control, does not mean that its implementation should be ignored.

It may strengthen the case for a lower premium because the business went beyond the controls mandated by the insurance provider. But even if it does not, the control may act as a hedge against a gap in coverage.

More to follow…

The core point is an obvious one – better cybersecurity means better insurance. And cyber insurance has emerged as a critical fallback for every enterprise. Best practice security solutions such as PAM platforms will form the backbone of a posture that not only puts the enterprise in a better bargaining position but serves the primary purpose of mitigating the risk of cyber-attacks in the first place.

Security professionals know better than to rest on their laurels. With these critical first steps done, they must partner with other business leaders to carefully navigate the fine print, exclusions, and the challenges around renewals. Delinea is here to help, so look forward to our expert insight on this very soon.

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FEATURE

FORTIFYING CRITICAL

INFRASTRUCTURE SECURING CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE IS COMPLEX BUT CRUCIAL, REQUIRING A DYNAMIC SET OF SOLUTIONS AND A SHIFT FROM A REACTIVE TO A PROACTIVE SECURITY STANCE.

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n an increasingly interconnected and technologically driven world, the protection of critical infrastructure has emerged as a paramount concern. From power grids and transportation networks to financial institutions and healthcare systems, these essential elements form the backbone of modern society. Ensuring their security and resilience in the face of evolving threats has become a top priority for governments, organisations, and cybersecurity experts worldwide.

One of the most widely reported incidents, a ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline disrupted the fuel supply on the U.S. East Coast. Colonial Pipeline, a major fuel pipeline operator,

temporarily shut down its operations in response to the attack.

Kalle Bjorn, Senior Director, Systems Engineering, Fortinet, says threats to critical infrastructure are increasing due to the convergence of information, application interface, and OT, leading to a proliferation of devices and systems that must be protected. Organisations that lack a zero-trust strategy are more susceptible to phishing attacks, which can lead to ransomware attacks in the hybrid working environment and have a devastating impact on both public and private services. And because of existing political conflict in different regions, state-sponsored attacks on key infrastructure are also on the rise.

According to Meriam El Ouazzani, Regional Director, META, SentinelOne, the interconnected nature of many critical systems makes them susceptible to cascading failures if one component is compromised. Additionally, the prevalence of aging technology and legacy systems within these sectors increases vulnerability to cybersecurity breaches. “Limited financial resources often result in insufficient investments in robust cybersecurity measures and skilled personnel. Given the critical role these infrastructures play in society and the economy, they become appealing targets for malicious actors.

Human error and insider threats further compound these risks,” she says.

Kalle Björn

Maher Jadallah

Ram Vaidyanathan

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Sertan Selcuk, VP of Sales, Middle East, Turkey, Africa, and Pakistan, at OPSWAT, says outdated legacy systems are often used in critical infrastructure and can present various vulnerabilities.

Upgrading these systems can be expensive and challenging, leaving them more susceptible to attacks. Another reason why critical infrastructure can be vulnerable to attacks is because of human error and the lack of professional cybersecurity training between IT and Operational Technology (OT) teams.

Additionally, critical infrastructure relies on a complex network of suppliers and vendors. If any of these components are compromised, it can impact the overall security of the infrastructure.

“Given the importance to a country’s economy and society, we are seeing more and more National Critical Infrastructures becoming prime targets for nation state actors, as part of broader geopolitical conflicts,” says Vibin Shaju, VP Solutions Engineering EMEA at Trellix.

As the critical information infrastructure of most western nations is largely owned and operated by the private sector, we need a dynamic set of solutions, reflecting the fact that emerging threats, and the technology needed to deter them, often change faster than the regulatory process can keep up. The rapid and continuing changes inherent on the internet, combined with its global reach, demand flexible solutions that can be quickly adapted to new and evolving circumstances, he adds.

Securing critical infrastructure poses a set of unique and complex challenges due to the essential nature of these systems and their interdependence with various sectors of society.

Ram Vaidyanathan, IT Security Evangelist at ManageEngine, says these systems may not have been designed with security in mind. Furthermore, critical infrastructure can have dependencies on multiple systems and applications. Unless all the dependent systems are secured, securing the infrastructure can lead to an operational challenge. System downtime could

Sertan Selcuk

Vibin Shaju

cause the entire infrastructure to come to a standstill. It is difficult to secure an infrastructure that depends on several endpoints to function smoothly.

“Apart from this, critical infrastructure is also prone to physical risks, like a fire or a similar calamity. Physical security and safety need to be ensured as well, “ he says.

Maher Jadallah, Senior Director Middle East & North Africa, Tenable, highlights that While there has been dramatic improvements to IT security, unfortunately this hasn’t crossed the divide to the OT side of the house.

“A factory can still be running the same programmable logic controllers (PLCs), distributed control systems (DCSs) and human machine interfaces (HMIs) that were installed 20 years ago and have never been updated. While initially this could have been due to the focus on ‘uptime’, meaning the cost to take a process offline to update it was deemed too expensive, the passage of time means it might not even be possible to upgrade the device. The result is significant vulnerabilities in the OT infrastructure within our factories and plants,” he says.

Bjorn from Fortinet underscores that organisations have faced various challenges in securing evolving infrastructure due to constrained budgets, lack of training, and different security point solutions deployed in different departments.

Organisations often contribute to funding critical infrastructure that others own and operate. Still, governments often lack deep insight into potential vulnerabilities and dependencies for these systems when they do not operate them. It is a challenge to create unified visibility into these systems and blend what government may see about pending threats with the “so what” factor that can be better provided by the critical infrastructure operator.

He adds growing threat complexity also poses a challenge. For example, while ransomware remains a serious problem for critical infrastructure organisations, in the past few years, it has morphed from a threat that largely encrypts a victim’s data to one that frequently steals or deletes data. Organisations must remain attuned to the evolving nature of threats because cybersecurity and preventive controls cannot be “one size fits all.”

What are the common cybersecurity threats facing critical infrastructure today?

Shaju from Trellix says the threats to OT are very similar to the ones on the IT side.

Higher dependency of third-party fixed function devices in this network, managed normally by the vendor, creates a supply chain risk. Cyber incidents in such areas will be well planned and targeted with increasingly complex “living off the land” binaries and scripts, making detection and protection more challenging.

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FEATURE

Selcuk from OPSWAT adds that entities with critical infrastructure in the Middle East are increasing more and more in headcount capacity, bringing in third-party contractors, employees, and individuals with more privileged access to systems. Insider threats pose a significant risk to these organisations, which may range from malicious intent and negligence to victims of social engineering tactics.

“If we look back at “Shamoon” (2012) and “Stuxnet” (2010), both are big examples of insider threats posing a risk to critical infrastructure. One was deployed using a social engineering tactic on an internal employee, while the other relied on a removable media USB to deliver the attack,” he says..

Another threat could result from a supply chain attack. Oftentimes, when a company purchases a new solution, minimal effort is made to ensure that this solution has not been modified or tampered with, on its way from the supplier. Moreover, no one is taking the consideration that the supplier itself might have been breached in this matter.

The notable example of the SolarWinds attack has demonstrated the impact of this blinded trust.

For too long, security teams have focused on addressing the symptoms of cybercrime rather than tackling the root cause. The prevailing approach is reactive, heavily reliant on post-event data to trace the source of an attack and mitigate the damage. This approach is akin to fighting a losing battle against asymmetric cybercriminal activities, where defenders must be consistently right, while threat actors only need to succeed once.

Jadallah from Tenable encapsulates: “Instead of waiting to be attacked and then responding, it’s vital that security teams take a preventive approach to cyber defense. The need to understand your attack surface and proactively manage risk to the business has never been more urgent. The only way to stay ahead of the curve is to find the weak spots in defenses proactively, before attackers can, and prioritise remediations based on organisational risk.”

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THE EXPERTS SPEAK

MANY VITAL INFRASTRUCTURE SYSTEMS ARE ACCESSIBLE REMOTELY, INCREASING THEIR VULNERABILITY TO ASSAULTS. ORGANIZATIONS WITH CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE MAY HAVE LIMITED RESOURCES TO INVEST IN SECURITY. CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE COMPANIES AND PEOPLE ARE FREQUENTLY UNAWARE OF CYBERSECURITY DANGERS. A MULTITUDE OF RESTRICTIONS APPLY TO CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE FIRMS, MAKING IT DIFFICULT TO DEPLOY SECURITY MEASURES. MANY VITAL INFRASTRUCTURE SYSTEMS ARE OLD AND INEFFICIENT, MAKING THEM VULNERABLE TO CYBERATTACKS. CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE SYSTEMS ARE FREQUENTLY COMPLICATED AND CHALLENGING TO SAFEGUARD. Biju Unni, Vice President, Cloud Box Technologies

WITHIN THE MIDDLE EAST, A DISTINCT INCIDENT HIGHLIGHTS THE VULNERABILITIES OF CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE. IN JANUARY 2020, SAUDI ARABIAN AUTHORITIES REPORTED A CYBERATTACK INVOLVING DATAWIPING MALWARE KNOWN AS “DUSTMAN” TARGETING BAPCO, BAHRAIN’S NATIONAL OIL COMPANY. THIS MALWARE WAS REMINISCENT OF PREVIOUS DATA-WIPING ATTACKS LINKED TO IRAN-BASED NATION-STATE ACTORS. FORTUNATELY, IN THIS CASE, THE MALICIOUS ACTORS ONLY MANAGED TO AFFECT A FRACTION OF BAPCO’S COMPUTER SYSTEMS. DESPITE THE MALWARE’S DETONATION, THE COMPANY COULD CONTINUE ITS OPERATIONS. THIS INCIDENT ILLUSTRATES THE PERSISTENT THREAT TO CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE IN THE MIDDLE EAST, WHERE NATION-STATE-LINKED CYBERATTACKS CAN POSE SERIOUS RISKS, ALBEIT WITH VARYING DEGREES OF IMPACT. Paul Baird, CTSO, Qualys

AS A PRIMARY THREAT TO CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE, CONSIDER LOGIC BOMBS. A LOGIC BOMB IS A PIECE OF MALWARE THAT DISRUPTS INDUSTRIAL CONTROL SYSTEMS BY PLACING FALSE LOGIC INTO THE WORKFLOW TO CONFUSE SYSTEMS AND CAUSE DISRUPTION. LOGIC BOMBS HAVE BEEN SUSPECTED IN SEVERAL CYBERESPIONAGE ATTACKS. THE HACK INTO THE U.S. ELECTRICAL GRID IN 2018 AND THE BUGAT TROJAN THAT HIT FINANCIAL WIRE TRANSFER SERVICES ALL HAD CHARACTERISTICS SIMILAR TO LOGIC BOMBS. IN THESE INCIDENTS, THE INTENT WASN’T TO CAUSE IMMEDIATE DAMAGE LIKE RANSOMWARE – ALTHOUGH THE POWER GRID HACK MAY HAVE LEFT BEHIND MALICIOUS PAYLOADS THAT COULD CAUSE FUTURE PHYSICAL DAMAGE. INSTEAD, THESE ATTACKS WERE DESIGNED TO STEAL EITHER MONEY, INFORMATION, OR PROVIDE RECONNAISSANCE FOR A FUTURE CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE ATTACK. Morey Haber, Chief Security Officer, BeyondTrust

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VIEWPOINT

HARNESSING THE POWER OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION ALI NIMER, CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER AT INJAZAT, SAYS CUSTOMER CENTRICITY IS THE NORTH STAR OF SUCCESSFUL DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN TODAY’S BUSINESS LANDSCAPE

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t a time when digital transformation has become synonymous with progress and success, businesses across industries are finding themselves in a whirlwind of new technologies. In a hope to stay relevant against this storm of change, and in a rush to adopt the latest innovations, one crucial element is quite frequently neglected—the customer, and the imperative to tailor services and products to their unique needs. Technology adoption, automation of processes, and harnessing big data is undoubtedly crucial for businesses to succeed, but they can become futile if they lose sight of their ultimate purpose: serving the customer. Amidst these fast-paced shifts, organisations worldwide are now realising that technology alone is not the magic elixir. Therefore, the customer experience and journey should be a vital element in any digital transformation agenda, where technology is enabling more for the customer in terms of ease, quality of experience, and benefits.

Let’s consider how crowded the digital landscape is today. Isn’t the key to survival in such a scene going to be differentiation?

If our innovations and transformation efforts does not address genuine issues, fulfil unmet requirements, and strike a chord with our customers, how are we going to be distinctive? A customercentric approach to digital transformation where customers feel heard, understood, and valued, can not only make you stand out but also boost loyalty and create a steady stream of revenue. This focus, bolsters operational efficiency, drives datainformed decisions, and enables sustained growth. The ripple effects are profound, resulting in happier customers, inspired employees, and a resilient foundation for future market shifts.

Yet most businesses and organisations

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are grappling with challenges when it comes to adapting to the digital tide.

This is because innovation and digital transformation is carried out in isolation.

And that is not a gamble we can afford.

Transformation is fluid and collaborative and needs a shared perspective. Very often as we embarked on a collaborative journey with our customers, have we realise that in different silos across organisations rich data is hidden. Taking advantage of this data and integrating it for insights and contextual action is what has put the customer experience at the forefront, making every touch point an important one.

Only with a customer-centric strategy do you get the opportunity to co-create the solutions with your customer. This enables early validation of your ideas and therefore lowers the risk of investing in subpar solutions for digital adoption.

Every initiative, from AI implementations to data analytics projects, should be evaluated based on how it benefits the customer directly or indirectly. At Injazat, co-creation is fundamental to all offerings which combines a deep understanding of our customer, their needs, and how best to tailor the solution to achieve them. Our collaboration with EasyLease for instance was not an off-the-shelf solution. We understood their colossal task of managing and optimising a fleet of over 25,000 motorbikes and developed an automated solution centred on a 360-degree real-time view of vehicle maintenance, fostering safer road experiences in the UAE, and refining fleet quality and efficiency. Customers are the ultimate reason of our existence; and in today’s digital age customer centricity should go beyond mere personalisation and become a transformative cultural shift, ensuring that digital transitions are not only effective but also resonant.

Having been part of several large-scale

digital transformation initiatives in my career, I have witnessed firsthand how basic errors can obstruct even the most ambitious projects from the start and continue to be major obstacles to the development of a digital enterprise. And now that digital transformation is more advanced, firms ought to be taking note of a few elementary lessons.

The hype around some technologies and the prevalence of the digital transformation agenda can occasionally cause panicky purchases of solutions, but no matter the capabilities that a device claims to have, no technology will deliver in an isolated state.

Each digital transformation involves more than just a change in technology spending.

In the end, relevance is the most important qualification for transformation, and this depends on understanding how the digital consumer is evolving, having the vision to see how markets are changing, and having the leadership to grab these chances to drive a change that is centred on the needs of the customer.

Make no mistake; the new standard for gaining a competitive edge is customercentricity. Not investment or novel products running the risk of the wrong solution being applied that doesn’t achieve its full potential.

EXPERT ADVICE

CLOUD CONNECT 2023

HONOURING CLOUD INNOVATION THE THIRD EDITION OF THE CLOUD CONNECT CONFERENCE AND AWARDS SHONE A SPOTLIGHT ON PIONEERING FIGURES IN THE REALM OF CLOUD TECHNOLOGY WITHIN THE REGION.

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loud computing has emerged as the linchpin for fostering technological innovation across various sectors. Consequently, Middle Eastern enterprises are swiftly embracing a cloud-first approach to propel business transformation, leading to increased investments in cloud technologies compared to traditional on-premise solutions.

The presence of prominent cloud service providers in the region has accelerated this transition. The pivotal role of the cloud in advancing digital transformation initiatives is poised for continued expansion in the years ahead.

At the Cloud Connect Conference and Awards 2023, CXO Insight ME acknowledged and honored exceptional cloud projects, service providers, and vendors in the region.

The event started on a high note with a keynote address

by Sebastian Samuel, CIO of AWRostamani, shedding light on why simply migrating to the cloud is not enough. “It’s crucial to adopt a comprehensive approach that focuses on both cost management and business value optimization,” he said.

Samuel also emphasized the critical necessity of Cloud FinOps in today’s technology landscape by saying establishing a dedicated FinOps team can help manage cloud finances effectively. “Beyond cost savings, organizations should leverage the cloud as a core platform for digital transformation, business applications, and sustainability efforts. The cloud enables innovation, scalability, and environmental responsibility,” he added.

The audience also gained valuable insights into how Oracle is supporting organisations on their journey toward cloud transformation from Ahmed Adly, Vice President of Technology Cloud Engineering for the Middle East and Africa region at Oracle. His key advice to the audience emphasized

the importance of adopting a multi-cloud approach, highlighting that a single cloud provider may not fulfill all consumer requirements. He condensed the cloud migration journey into three steps: migrate, modernise, and innovate, with Oracle OCI providing support across all stages.

Subsequently, a panel discussion delved into the key trends, challenges, and prospects within the realm of cloud technology migration, featuring: • Aditya Kaushik, Head of IT, Zakher Marine International • Annamalai A R, Business Head-UAE and SAARC, Netgear • Rex Antony Peter, Global Head of Presales, Site24x7 Zoho Corp • Terence Sathyanarayan, Managing Editor of Pulse IS • Vibin Shaju, VP of Solution Engineering, Trellix” The panelists unanimously agreed that by treating cloud services as strategic investments and aligning them with broader business objectives, organizations can harness the full potential of the cloud for innovation and growth.

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CLOUD CONNECT 2023

END-USER AWARDS

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AUS ALZUBAIDI, MBC GROUP

UTTAM YADAV, INNOVENTURES EDUCATION

CHAMINDA ABEYRATNE, AL MASAR GROUP

RONALD DSA, OSN

FAYAS BADUBHAI, AL YOUSUF

LENISH KANNAN, WESTERN INTERNATIONAL

YOONUS CHANGOTH, GEEPAS

MOHANNAD HENNAWI, NAFFCO

GIGI MATHEW THOMAS, ITTIHAD INTERNATIONAL INVESTMENT

CXO INSIGHT ME

OCTOBER 2023

MEET US AT

HALL - 1 BOOTH - D1

16-20 • OCT • 2023

DUBAI WORLD TRADE CENTRE

CLOUD CONNECT 2023

ADIL AL ZAROONI, DUBAI TAXI CORPORATION

ANOOP RAJ, AL HABTOOR GROUP

RUSHDY MUBARAK, RADISSON BLU HOTEL

MOHAMMED NOUFEL, ROYAL CONTINENTAL HOTEL AND SUITES

ABDUL BAQAR MOHAMMED, EMIRATES FLOAT GLASS

GAURVA MANAKTALA, RAK HOSPITAL

ROBERT ARARIEGO, HUTCHISON PORTS

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MASOOD AHMED HASHMI, CASHTRANS

VENDOR AWARDS

ORACLE AI INNOVATOR OF THE YEAR

NUTANIX MULTI-CLOUD SOLUTIONS PROVIDER OF THE YEAR

JUNIPER NETWORKS CLOUD INNOVATOR OF THE YEAR

NETAPP CLOUD MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS PROVIDER OF THE YEAR

KISSFLOW DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION PROVIDER OF THE YEAR

CONFLUENT CLOUD NATIVE SOLUTIONS PROVIDER OF THE YEAR

D-LINK CLOUD MANAGED NETWORKING SOLUTIONS PROVIDER OF THE YEAR

HELP AG CLOUD SECURITY SERVICES PROVIDER OF THE YEAR

OCTOBER 2023

CXO INSIGHT ME

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VIEWPOINT

WHY LESS IS MORE VENKAT REDDY, FOUNDER OF KLIPIT, AIMS TO UNDERSCORE THE ADVANTAGES OF EMBRACING A PAPERLESS STRATEGY.

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n our rapidly advancing society, where technological marvels touch every corner of our lives, it’s becoming increasingly clear that sometimes, less is indeed more. The tangible comfort of holding a paper receipt might seem innocent enough, but the cumulative environmental, economic, and even psychological impacts of our paper addiction are profound. The value of going paperless is no longer just a buzzword but an impending reality, with businesses and consumers globally recognising the immense potential of this transformation.

In this opinion piece, we aim to underscore the advantages of going paperless and shed some light on the central role this shift can play in affecting positive sustainable change, reducing unnecessary clutter, and saving time and cost through maximised efficiency.

A recent survey we undertook in the GCC region offers a glimpse into the future, showing that Gulf countries are primed and ready to embrace this change – for instance, 49% of GCC residents are in ‘extreme favor’ of digital receipts. This isn’t just a fleeting tech trend. It spans all age groups, with an especially interesting tilt among the older and more affluent populations who view this shift as long overdue. However, this transformation requires more than a one-size-fits-all approach; it demands a holistic strategy that considers nuanced preferences across genders, age groups, professions, and more.

This trend isn’t confined to the GCC. A report by Statista shows that the global digital payment market’s transaction value is predicted to grow at an annual rate of 12%, signaling a massive shift towards digital transactions. This report underscores our own Gulf findings, indicating that paperless transactions through digitisation will soon become the 36

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pan-industry norm, leaving those who resist this development at a considerable disadvantage.

The psychological benefits of ‘decluttering’ have long been the subject of behavioral studies, with the concepts now entering mainstream consciousness through public and private sector advocacy, social media distribution, and even reality television shows such as ‘Tidying Up With Marie Kondo’, ‘The Minimalists: Less is Now’, ‘Hoarders’, and ‘Hot Mess House’. These shows have become part of a considerable dialogue.

This convergence of messaging from diverse touchpoints has brought the once-veiled burden of ‘organisation’ to the forefront of community conscience.

According to the Princeton University Neuroscience Institute, clutter can make it more challenging for individuals to focus on tasks. Digitised receipts, which eliminate the unnecessary organisational burden, can significantly reduce both the loss in productivity and the associated stresses that paper clutter, like receipts requiring time-sensitive management and accessibility, cause. This reality affects both industry and consumers alike.

The report aligns with our own survey which showed that 77% of respondents had misplaced or permanently lost paper receipts. This not only has potential financial and tax implications but can also put considerable strain on a population’s well-being due to the resultant anxiety.

Paired with the increasing regional appetite for digital solutions (with 76% in favor), this signals a glaring market need and a transformational opportunity on the fast-approaching horizon.

Paper production ranks high in water consumption and is the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases. According to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), producing a single A4 sheet of paper consumes an

average of 10 liters of water. In contrast, the Environmental Paper Network’s calculator indicates that one ton of office paper emits approximately 5.6 metric tons of CO2. By transitioning to digital receipts and curtailing the vast paper demand they entail, we can dramatically mitigate these impacts.

Post-Paris Climate Agreement, consumer consciousness regarding environmental issues has seen a marked uptick. With international cooperative bodies and government entities driving the quest for a shared net-zero future, change is occurring both from the top down and at the grassroots level.

Beyond the clear environmental advantages, transitioning to a paperless environment promotes efficiency. A study

by McKinsey suggests that businesses can boost their overall productivity by 20-25% by adopting digital solutions. This isn’t just about conservation; it’s a pragmatic approach to modern business—melding responsibility with innovation—to ensure enterprises remain competitive in an increasingly digital era.

Dubai’s commitment to a paperless strategy, aiming to digitise all transactions and documentation by 2021, is a testament to the region’s dedication to sustainable futures.

The global trajectory is unmistakable: the push for a paperless world aligns with a rising consumer consciousness focused on sustainability, efficiency, and digital integration. We stand at the threshold of a revolution where tangible practices make way for digital, not just for convenience but as a deliberate choice for a better tomorrow.

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PREVIEW

GITEX GLOBAL 2023

PREVIEW

THE 43RD EDITION OF GITEX GLOBAL WILL TAKE PLACE FROM OCTOBER 16TH TO OCTOBER 20TH, 2023. THIS BLOCKBUSTER TECH SHOWPIECE WILL ONCE AGAIN REACH FULL CAPACITY AT THE DUBAI WORLD TRADE CENTRE AS IT PREPARES TO HOST MORE THAN 6,000 EXHIBITORS. HERE IS A SNEAK PREVIEW OF WHAT SOME OF THE KEY TECH VENDORS WILL BE SHOWCASING AT THE EVENT.

INFOR At this year’s GITEX event, Infor, the industry cloud company, is set to demonstrate the power of its cloudbased solutions including enterprise resource planning (ERP) software to enable organisations in sectors including manufacturing and logistics to digitally transform their operations to drive efficiency and innovation.

Infor, which is exhibiting on Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) booth in Hall 26, will highlight its industry expertise and the ability of its smart, preconfigured cloud solutions – which feature built-in industry functionality – to enable customers to simplify complexity, automate business processes, accelerate time to value, and 38

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enhance the experience of end users.

Infor’s solutions, which work with the leading capabilities of the AWS Cloud, give organisations the agility, insights, scalability and security they need to succeed amid current challenges including fierce competition, supply chain issues, and changing regulations, helping them to tap the growth opportunities prevalent in the region.

Infor executives including Kerry Koutsikos, vice president and GM for Middle East & Africa; Phil Lewis, senior vice president, solution consulting international; Khaled AlShami, vice president, solution consulting; and Salem Machaka, vice president of professional services, will be available to provide demonstrations and explain the latest updates to Infor’s solutions.

AlShami said: “We’re excited to participate at GITEX with our partner AWS and to demonstrate the immense power of our industry-specific solutions, which open up a new world of efficiency and innovation. We will voice a strong message around the public cloud at GITEX, as we are keen to highlight the importance for organisations to move to a multi-tenant cloud to survive and thrive, tackle challenges and seize the amazing opportunities for growth in the GCC and the wider region.”

Infor’s Phil Lewis will join other international experts for a panel discussion on “Data-driven Transformation in Industry: Scaling AI for Enterprise Impact,” on 18 October at the AI Stage in Hall 9.

HUAWEI Huawei will participate in GITEX GLOBAL 2023 as a Gold Sponsor, where it will reaffirm its commitment to help all industries make the most of intelligence, digitalisation and the strategic opportunities presented

by AI, supported by cloud, advanced networks capabilities and digital power technologies. The company will also focus on how to accelerate intelligence through business, industry, and ecosystem

development. Additionally, as the lead sponsor for the event’s cybersecurity programme, Cyber Valley, Huawei will share its leading-edge cybersecurity capabilities and solutions.

With many latest breakthroughs in foundation models, a vast range of new AI models and applications are emerging. Under the theme of ‘Accelerate Intelligence’, Huawei will explore how AI is being deeply integrated into industries, serving a diverse range of industry scenarios and how organisations can innovate and grow at unprecedented speed. It will also showcase its green technology, demonstrating its dedication to fostering a more sustainable future across the entire industry.

Steven Yi, President of Huawei Middle East and Central Asia, said, “A new chapter of intelligent transformation is unfolding. We now stand at the threshold of a new and intelligent world with vast opportunities and challenges ahead of us. At GITEX GLOBAL, we are keen to explore further collaboration bridges with our regional partners and customers to help all industries maximise new strategic opportunities through AI, cloud, advanced networks and digital power, safeguarded with leading cybersecurity capabilities and solutions. We will not only share our innovations and cutting-edge technologies but also explore how the new intelligent forces are transforming our world and how we can unleash the full capabilities of intelligent solutions to reshape industries.”

At GITEX GLOBAL, visitors can experience Huawei’s latest intelligent ICT innovations. This year’s event brings together prominent figures including thought leaders, business leaders, technical experts, partners, and a wide range of industry stakeholders. Huawei experts will participate in keynotes and panel discussions throughout GITEX GLOBAL, covering cybersecurity, intelligent connectivity, and new sustainability roadmaps such as “Net Zero Campus”.

DELINEA Delinea announced its participation at GITEX Global 2023 under the theme

‘Empowering Businesses for Secure Digital Future’. Aligning with its mission of enabling organisations to meet an increasingly complex cybersecurity landscape and stringent requirements from cyber insurance providers, the company will use its GITEX participation to showcase its complete product portfolio and recent innovations, including enhancements to Secret Server, its award-winning vault solution. and to DevOps Secrets Vault.

As the volume and sophistication of cyberattacks continues to soar, organisations are increasingly looking for a safety net and in the Middle East, 63% of companies have purchased some form of cyber insurance. However, due to a growing number of claims, insurance providers are becoming more risk averse, introducing more stringent requirements to qualify for cyber insurance while reducing the policy coverage. A recent Delinea survey report found that 47% of US respondents needed to purchase an MFA enforcement solution to meet cyber insurance requirements.

“Companies in the Middle East are faced with a double-edge sword,” said Mohammad Ismail, VP Middle East, Africa & Türkiye at Delinea. “They need to protect their digital assets from increasingly sophisticated attacks and demonstrate the maturity and effectiveness of their cybersecurity strategy and infrastructure to insurance providers. At GITEX we will show attendees how the right PAM solutions can help increase their defences against

bad actors and negotiate better insurance premiums and coverage.”

Among others, Delinea will present the recently announced enhancements to Secret Server which introduced a new layer of security for highly sensitive accounts with MFA on credentials.

Separate from the one at login, this second MFA is extremely flexible in its enforcement and organisations can continue to use their existing authenticator solutions such as the Delinea Mobile App, Yubikey, and other devices using FIDO2 protocols. It will also present the newly updated policy editor to its DevOps Secret Vault which improves the ability for administrators to set more granular access controls for secrets used in code, greatly reducing the time and complexity of setting up secrets management across multiple DevOps teams and ensuring secrets only have the permissions needed for their intended use.

Delinea will also demonstrate how it is extending PAM access across the entire enterprise hybrid infrastructure according to zero-trust and least-privilege best practices with the Delinea Platform.

Delinea will be present at stand B55 in Hall23.

SENTINELONE During the premier technology event, SentinelOne will highlight its solutions and demonstrate their effectiveness in combating the increasing number of malware attacks in cloud environments that organisations around the world face.

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PREVIEW

At GITEX 2023, SentinelOne will showcase its Cloud Data Security product lineup, including the recently launched, Threat Detection for Amazon S3 and Threat Detection for NetApp. These solutions are specifically designed to address the growing complexities of malware attacks in cloud ecosystems, providing robust protection to businesses operating in cloud spaces. During the event, the company will host live demonstrations of the advanced threat detection technology deployed in these products and their efficiency and effectiveness in automating malware scanning in NetApp and Amazon S3 storage environments.

“As the world’s largest and most inclusive tech event, GITEX provides us with an unparalleled platform to bring our cybersecurity solutions to a diverse and influential audience and to connect with potential customers, partners, and industry experts from around the world, to expand our network and brand presence,” said Meriam El Ouazzani, Regional Director – Middle East, Turkey, Africa at SentinelOne. “Our presence will underscore the pivotal role that SentinelOne plays in redefining cybersecurity and safeguarding businesses against emerging threats, and we are keen to share insights and best practices to help leading organisations prevent threats, reduce risk and keep their systems and data safe.”

To learn more about SentinelOne and see its autonomous security solutions in action, visit Hall 25 E45.

DATAIKU Dataiku will exhibit at this year’s GITEX Global under the theme, “Maximising Business Value with AI: Scaling Across the Organisation”. At a time when the region is displaying a notable uptick in the adoption rates of a range of AI technologies, Dataiku will use GITEX as a platform to showcase how it enables organisations to reap the maximum rewards from their AI investments by making AI accessible to users with varying skill sets and roles.

“Dataiku is the Everyday AI company,” said Sid Bhatia, Regional VP and GM for 40

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the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa, at Dataiku. “By empowering data experts and domain experts to work together to build AI into their daily operations, we enable everyone to add value — to be extraordinary, and to power their company into the future as a competitive force. We will attend GITEX 2023 at a nexus point in the history of AI, when technologies such as large-language models have entered the public consciousness and are seeing accelerated adoption. Our goal at this year’s event is to put these developments in context and show attendees how they can leverage them to mature their AI mix.”

Dataiku’s GITEX 2023 focus will be its recently updated eponymous flagship platform. Dataiku 12 offers integration with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, allowing business users to incorporate the tool’s learning models into their native data projects by extending datasets and performing tasks using a visual interface and naturallanguage prompts.

At GITEX Global 2023, Dataiku will exhibit from Stand CC2-15.

SOLARWINDS SolarWinds will present at booth H7-F50 alongside its value-added distribution partners in the region – CyberKnight and Spire Solutions – showcasing its full-stack observability products, comprehensive database management portfolio, and service management solutions.

SolarWinds enables companies to manage increasingly complex hybrid and multi-cloud environments to accelerate

digital transformation, drive automation, modernise applications, and undertake cloud migration initiatives. The company has further enhanced its solutions through the unified SolarWinds Platform, providing customers with full-stack observability powered by AIOps, database, service management, security, and automation capabilities to identify and remediate issues and improve service delivery, reliability, and productivity—all while reducing costs.

“Today, digital transformation and innovative technology are the main drivers of all industries and economies, which is why GITEX GLOBAL 2023 is extremely beneficial for our business. The trade fair is an ideal platform to tell the tech landscape

what AI-powered innovations we offer to accelerate the digital economy,” said Abdul Rehman Tariq, regional sales director, Middle East. “Our participation in the event reflects our commitment to the UAE market and is a great opportunity to demonstrate how SolarWinds and our value-added distribution partners in the region can help organisations accelerate their digital journey and drive enhancements in hybrid cloud and observability solutions.”

EXTREME NETWORKS Visitors to Extreme’s stand will learn how they can leverage their networks as a strategic asset to improve operations, drive better experiences for end users and positively impact organisational outcomes,

in the technology landscape, GITEX 2023 gives us the welcome opportunity to learn, discuss and exchange insights that will shape our digital future. This year we’ll demonstrate how the power of network analytics, AIOps, machine learning and automation can improve operations and drive better customer experiences. Together with our partners and the customers we are re-imagining connectivity to create one infinitely distributed, scalable and customer-centric network.”

Demonstrations will include the network industry’s first digital twin capabilities within the ExtremeCloud IQ platform.

At the Extreme Networks stand; C10 in Hall 20, attendees will learn more about: • Extreme’s new regional UAE Data Center, which supports AI-driven networking and data sovereignty. Within two months of its launch, the RDC already manages over 5000 devices from 300+ customers.

• ExtremeCloud IQ, an end-to-end cloud management platform that gives customers improved visibility and control over their entire network, as well as access to the networking industry’s first digital twin capabilities. With a digital twin of their network, customers can simplify staging, validation and deployment of switches and access points from the cloud and significantly reduce the time it takes to complete a deployment. The platform also includes explainable machine learning and AI features to help IT teams reduce mean time to resolution, distinguish network anomalies and verify and trust proactive insights.

• How Wi-Fi solutions which are being used to transform fan experiences and streamline operations for clubs like Manchester United at Old Trafford.

Maan Al-Shakarchi, Regional Director – META, Extreme Networks, said, “Extreme strives to push the boundaries of what can be achieved by leveraging the network as a strategic asset. With the META region facing new and exciting developments

TENABLE At the event, Tenable will showcase its powerful Tenable One Exposure Management Platform, which harnesses the power of generative AI, putting more power than ever in the hands of security teams. Tenable One informs their exposure management programmes to identify and remediate cyber risk wherever it exists. Tenable will also demonstrate its powerful operational technology security, cloud security and identity exposure capabilities.

Over the past year, record-breaking data breaches have continued to dominate headlines and ransomware has crippled the operations of numerous organisations. Organisations are battling to keep threat actors out of their infrastructure but are continuously in reactive mode. Tenable’s approach turns this around. Its exposure management platform combines broad exposure coverage spanning IT assets, cloud

resources, containers, web applications and identity platforms, with threat intelligence and data science from Tenable Research. This helps focus efforts to prevent likely attacks and accurately communicate cyber risk to support optimal business performance.

“Too often, security teams are focused on identifying indicators of compromise, preoccupied with halting attacks before too much damage can occur. However, that’s just too late. Once an attacker is inside the infrastructure, it’s already game over,” said Maher Jadallah, Senior Director Middle East & North Africa, Tenable. “At GITEX 2023, we want to show security teams how to gain the upper hand, helping them to change focus from constantly firefighting to proactively addressing their cyber risks. Our team will be on hand to help visitors understand how to refocus their efforts to prevent likely attacks, empowering organisations to accurately identify the risk their business faces and ultimately close the windows and doors attackers are climbing through.”

Tenable will be co-exhibiting, alongside AmiViz from both H24-A40, Hall 24 (Cyber Valley), Ingram Micro from booth H2-A1, Hall 2 and Al Jammaz Technologies H2-C1, Hall 2. The Tenable Team will be offering demonstrations of its exposure management platform TenableOne, as well as Tenable Vulnerability Management, Tenable Security Centre, Tenable OT Security, Tenable Identity Exposure, and Tenable Lumin.

ORACLE Latest Artificial Intelligence innovation that is geared to help the UAE’s National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence 2031 succeed is Oracle’s key focus at GITEX GLOBAL 2023. Oracle will present a comprehensive portfolio of AI solutions including next gen cloud applications on a best-in-class AI cloud infrastructure and state-of-the-art generative AI innovations to support the implementation of the UAE’s National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence 2031 – a plan that aims to generate up to AED 335 billion in economic growth.

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PREVIEW

“His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai has set a vision to make the UAE, the world’s most prepared country for Artificial Intelligence. Over the last three decades, Oracle has consistently kept pace with, and meaningfully contributed to the UAE’s national aspirations, and we are ready again to help fulfil this vision with powerful AI innovation from Oracle”, said Nick Redshaw, senior vice president – Tech Cloud, Middle East and Africa, and UAE country leader, Oracle. “GITEX has always been an opportunity for us to respond to the UAE’s economic priorities, and this year we will demonstrate how

our latest Generative AI innovation can help address the most complex business challenges across diverse industries, to help drive growth.”

“Specially designed AI focused interactive pods across finance, healthcare, human resources, customer experience and many more functions, and Generative AI demo stations operated by Oracle’s AI experts, will help business and technology leaders explore customised growth scenarios for their businesses”, said Leopoldo Boado Lama, senior vice president – Business Applications, ECEMEA, Oracle.

“Our presence at GITEX GLOBAL is headlined with the popular Oracle Red Bull Racing experience. Visitors can once again experience what it’s like to be at the wheels of the championship winning Formula 1 car and learn about the role Oracle Cloud powered real time data plays 42

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in helping Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez win. Our technology partnership is a prime example of how Oracle Cloud can help organisations innovate consistently and stay ahead of the competition”, added Leopoldo.

At the show, Oracle will also highlight the capabilities of its established cloud regions in Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the UAE. The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) region in Dubai has successfully completed the Dubai Electronic Security Center’s (DESC) cloud service provider security standard audit, a framework for supporting government entities with cyber risk management based on international standards such as ISO 27001 and the Cloud Security Alliance Cloud Controls Matrix. OCI has also successfully completed UAE-specific third-party assessments including the Information Assurance Regulation (IAR) and Abu Dhabi Information Security Standard (ADISS).

special sessions focusing on retail and e-commerce, and AI & Hyperforce. The first session will be a panel discussion presented by Thierry Nicault and featuring special guests from the retail sector.

Attendees will learn how the region’s leading retail companies use data, AI, and CRM to deliver profitable growth.

SALESFORCE

IFS

Taking part for the first time at GITEX 2023, Salesforce will present its new Einstein 1 platform and Einstein Copilot, the AI assistant for all CRM applications.

As the first event to showcase Einstein 1 after the company’s launch event at Dreamforce in San Francisco, GITEX attendees will see firsthand how the new Salesforce AI platform enables organizations to safely connect any data and build AI-powered apps with low-code and deliver entirely new and modern customer experiences.

“The Salesforce community in the MENA region, supported by our vibrant partner ecosystem, is proactively embracing AI to differentiate its own trusted customer experiences, whether in the retail, real estate, or financial services sectors,” said Thierry Nicault, Area Vice President and General Manager, Salesforce Middle East. “Given its focus on AI for the 2023 edition, GITEX is the ideal destination to show customers and collaborators the benefits of Einstein 1 to develop and deliver more personalized customer interactions across the region.”

At GITEX, Salesforce will stage two

IFS is set to demonstrate the latest IFS assyst 11.7 version at GITEX Global 2023.

Having analysed market trends and noted continuous feedback from customers, the new release has several innovations and enhancements that will help customers with their Enterprise Service Management needs powered by artificial intelligence, automation and analytics.

Speaking on the company’s participation at GITEX Global 2023, Martin Schirmer, President at IFS assyst said, “Being the largest tech event in the

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PREVIEW

world, GITEX Global provides an excellent platform for IFS assyst to showcase our innovative solutions to a global audience.

We look forward to demonstrating how our Enterprise Service Management solution is seeing great demand as organisations look to modernise the employee experience.

The event allows us to share insights on how we are helping enterprises achieve customer excellence by promoting synergy in the workplace and elevating the service experience.”

IFS assyst is instrumental in helping technology departments that require greater delivery with fewer resources, including adapting to changing demands without requiring significant increase in resources. The solution enables organisations to automate repetitive tasks and workflows, allowing valuable resources to be redirected to strategic initiatives through automation, self-service and efficient workflows. This aligns well with many assyst customers’ goals, including those of a government agency Ministry of Media, based in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, as they sought to modernise and enhance their service delivery while streamlining operations. Delve into the details of this success story here.

On day 3 of the event, October 18, IFS assyst’s Vice President Sales MEA/APJ, Allam Al Beainy will deliver a presentation on the critical role that ESM plays in enhancing customer satisfaction. The presentation will take place at midday in Hall 13, Tech Talk 13.

Senior IFS assyst executives will also be available at Stand D-30 in Hall 7.

PURE STORAGE Pure will showcase new additions to the portfolio which truly enable customers to remove the final remnants of legacy architecture and spinning disk from their data centres, including: • FlashArray//E, the latest addition to Pure Storage’s flagship FlashArray family of products, which delivers the simplicity and efficiency of flash for all file and block data repositories, from content libraries to backup sets to active archives.

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VMWARE

• New models of FlashArray//X and FlashArray//C which deliver up to 40% higher performance, 30% more inline compression to stretch storage capacity, and new ransomware protection capabilities delivered entirely via non-disruptive upgrade.

• FlashBlade//E, a scale-out unstructured data repository built to handle exponential data growth with energy efficiency.

Legacy storage systems are a drain on enterprises’ IT teams and budgets, as they are challenging to manage, require significant power and cooling, take up large amounts of space and their components fail too often, causing disruption and risking valuable data. Pure Storage’s solutions support enterprise’s growing data storage requirements, with one consolidated management platform in Pure1, delivered via a flexible consumption model through Evergreen.

“Customers come to us for infrastructure that supports their business needs and frees up teams to focus on strategic tasks. At GITEX, we will be showcasing solutions that are unique in helping customers to implement the most modern, simple storage delivered with a cloud operating model and via flexible consumption,” commented Omar Akar, Regional Vice President for Middle East & Emerging Africa at Pure Storage.

Additionally, at the event, Pure Storage will stream a series of live podcasts from a studio on the company’s stand.

VMware will showcase its latest innovations and solutions to empower customers to become truly innovative digital organizations by securely managing and operating their operations across multi-cloud environments, at GITEX 2023.

From its booth in Hall 7, Stand H7 – B10, VMware will demonstrate how its newest launches – many of which will be on show for the first time in the Middle East – can enable customers to drive enterprise adoption of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and tap into the value of trusted data. The new solutions help to modernise, optimise, and better protect organizations with new cloud transformation capabilities; develop, deliver, and enhance apps across clouds; accelerate digital transformation at the edge; and improve the employee experience.

Visitors to VMware’s stand will also get the chance to experience the company’s new Private AI offerings that drive enterprise adoption of generative AI and tap into the value of trusted data as part of a multi-cloud strategy.

Ahmed Auda, Vice President and GM, Middle East, Turkey & North Africa, VMware, said: “As we move rapidly into the AI era, VMware is dedicated to helping organisations embrace a multicloud and app-centric approach while simultaneously empowering them to tap the power of generative AI to gain maximum value from their data. We look forward to demonstrating how

organizations in the region can achieve greater levels of agility and efficiency by embracing a multi-cloud approach, while also respecting data sovereignty rules and customers’ data privacy needs. We’re excited to meet customers and new prospects from all verticals to demonstrate how they can take their innovation to the next level.”

Top VMware regional and global executives including Ahmed Auda, Joe Baguley, VP and CTO EMEA; and Ricky Cooper, head of worldwide partner and commercial sales, will attend the event and be on hand to discuss innovation with customers and new prospects.

VECTRA AI Vectra AI announced its participation in the upcoming GITEX Global 2023, where the company will introduce the region to

AI-driven, fully integrated hybrid attack detection and response platform, to deliver extended detection and response (XDR) for hybrid attacks, at speed and scale. The Vectra AI Platform, with patented Attack Signal Intelligence™, delivers the integrated signal enterprises need to optimise their investment in XDR. At GITEX, Vectra will show how its new flagship platform can address what Elkhayat calls the “spiral of more” — more attack surface, more sophistication in attack methods, more tools, more rules, more security analyst burnout.

The Vectra AI platform allows organisations to integrate Vectra AI’s public cloud, identity, SaaS, and network signal with existing endpoint detection and response (EDR) signal to arm SOC teams in their fight against the evergrowing sophistication, speed, and scale of hybrid attacks.

Vectra’s GITEX exhibit will feature demo pods highlighting each aspect of the company’s new AI platform — Cloud Detection and Response, Identity Detection and Response, Network Detection and Response, Managed Detection and Response, Investigation and Threat Hunting, and Respond UX Powered by AWS. At GITEX Global 2023, Vectra will exhibit from Stand B40 in Hall 23.

CLOUDERA a first-of-its-kind cybersecurity platform built for the modern hybrid environment.

“Cyber leaders long to be resilient to the twisting evolution of the hybrid threat landscape,” said Taj El-khayat, Area VP, EMEA South, at Vectra AI. “They want to modernise security operations with AI but do not feel able to justify to their colleagues the budgets associated with rip and replace. Nonetheless, they feel that without the ability to stay one step ahead, or at least keep up, with the adversaries, a major cyber incident is inevitable.”

In answer to its customers’ concerns, Vectra developed the industry’s first

At Gitex 2023, Cloudera will showcase an LLM Chatbot Augmented with Enterprise Data for companies to unlock value from their data further and succeed with enterprise AI in a trusted, secure and responsible manner. The blueprint brings generative AI based on large language models to companies.

While publicly available AI services are attractive for companies, they need to build these interactive experiences on their proprietary data in the right context without sharing their data with external services. With the Cloudera offering, businesses can develop their own AI application powered by an open-source LLM of their choice with their data,

all hosted internally in the enterprise, empowering all their developers and lines of business – not just data scientists and ML teams – and truly democratising AI. Many organisations need help to extract total value from their data assets scattered across diverse cloud and onpremise environments. Cloudera’s Open Data Lakehouse helps customers unlock the potential of their data, irrespective of its location. Modern data architectures enable organisations to optimise cloud costs while preparing data for current and future AI developments.

Cloudera will also release the second part of their Evolve Data Study conducted in May 2023, which explores the role of data in digital transformation projects and how organisations can gain a competitive advantage by costeffectively harnessing data.

“Being a prominent technology expo, GITEX provides an excellent platform for Cloudera to highlight its interest and commitment to innovation.

These exhibitions provide an excellent platform to engage with people, showcase Cloudera’s capabilities, and foster relationships with partners and customers, all while fueling innovation in the tech sector at GITEX 2023,” said Karim Azar, Regional Vice President, Middle East & Turkey at Cloudera.

Cloudera invites all GITEX Global 2023 attendees to visit their booths in Hall 16, number H17-B30/H16-B10, and engage with their experts to learn more about these critical topics.

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INTERVIEW

UNLEASHING THE POWER OF IoT

YASSER ALSAIED, VICE PRESIDENT OF INTERNET OF THINGS AT AMAZON WEB SERVICES, ON HOW THE HYPERSCALER IS CONNECTING, MANAGING AND SECURING THE IOT ECOSYSTEM.

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hat is AWS IoT Core, and how does it facilitate IoT device communication?

AWS IoT Core is a service that helps customers connect, manage, and scale their device fleets easily and reliably without provisioning or managing servers. Through AWS IoT Core, customers can connect billions of IoT devices, avoiding managing infrastructure costs, licensing fees, and other operational expenses. With native support for a managed MQTT broker (a standards-based messaging protocol, or set of rules, used for machine-tomachine communication) that supports persistent, always-on connections and advanced message retention policies and handles millions of devices and topics simultaneously, AWS IoT Core enables customers to scale their connected solution to process trillions of messages seamlessly. Some use cases include monitoring and managing industrial operations, building differentiated consumer-oriented smart home products, innovating with automotive data, and developing standards-compliant products.

How does AWS IoT Greengrass extend IoT capabilities to edge devices?

AWS IoT Greengrass is an Internet of Things (IoT) open-source edge runtime and cloud service that helps customers build, deploy, and manage software for edge devices. Customers use AWS IoT Greengrass for their IoT applications on millions of devices in homes, factories, vehicles, and businesses. Through this service, they can program their devices to act locally on the data they generate, run machine learning inferences locally on edge devices using models trained in the 46

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cloud, filter and aggregate device data, and only transmit necessary information to the cloud.

AWS IoT Greengrass lets customers quickly and easily build intelligent device software and offers prebuilt components to accelerate their application development process.

AWS IoT Greengrass also provides a secure way to seamlessly connect edge devices to any AWS service as well as to third-party services. Once software development is complete, AWS IoT Greengrass enables the users to remotely manage and operate software on their devices in the field without needing a firmware update. AWS IoT Greengrass helps keep the devices updated and makes them smarter over time.

What is the role of AWS IoT Device Defender in ensuring the security of IoT deployments?

AWS IoT Device Defender is a fully managed IoT security service that enables customers to secure their IoT configurations continuously. With AWS IoT Device Defender, customers get tools to monitor, identify, and respond to security

issues. AWS IoT Device Defender audits security configuration across a customer’s fleet to ensure it adheres to security best practices, continuously monitors for any abnormal device behavior, generates alerts on security issues as they arise, and provides built-in mitigation actions for these security issues.

The service also identifies opportunities to use AWS IoT security controls effectively. However, if security misconfigurations are not remediated, or new attack vectors are disclosed publicly before devices are patched, the security of connected devices may be compromised.

AWS IoT Device Defender complements preventative security controls in AWS IoT by helping customers identify devices already compromised and initiating containment and corrective actions.

What is AWS IoT Events, and how does it enable real-time monitoring and automation?

For those customers, detecting when a critical event has occurred is hard and requires the creation of custom logic, which in turn requires the engagement of specialized system integrators. AWS IoT Events makes it possible to easily and cost-effectively detect events systemwide and respond with appropriate actions to drive results, such as optimizing manufacturing efficiency or improving production quality.

AWS IoT Events makes it easy to detect and respond to events that happen across multiple IoT devices, equipment subsystems, and applications. For most IoT customers, IoT deployments consist of multiple pieces of equipment with many independent sensors.

What are the different connectivity approaches supported by AWS IoT for device communication?

AWS IoT provides native support for multiple connectivity approaches, such as MQTT5, Amazon Sidewalk, WebRTC, LoRaWAN, enabling developers to quickly build standards-compliant smart home solutions. For example, Amazon Sidewalk, a popular shared-network service, integrates with AWS IoT Core to enable developers to easily provision, onboard, and monitor Amazon Sidewalk devices. Cloud.

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VIEWPOINT

DATA STORAGE RESHAPED ALEX MCMULLAN, CTO INTERNATIONAL, PURE STORAGE, ON THE IMPACT OF AI ON STORAGE

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s a technology with huge but unrealised potential, AI has been on the corporate agenda for a long time. This year it has undoubtedly gone into overdrive, due to Microsoft’s $10 billion investment in OpenAI, together with strategic initiatives by Meta, Google and others in generative AI. Although we’ve seen many advances in AI over the years, and arguably just as many false dawns in terms of its widespread adoption, there can be little doubt now that it’s here to stay. As such, now is the time for CTOs and IT teams to consider the wider implications of the coming AI driven era.

In terms of its likely impact on the technology sector and society in general, AI can be likened to the introduction of

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the relational database, in that it was the spark that ignited a widespread appreciation for large data sets — resonating with both end users and software developers. AI and ML can be viewed in the same terms as they provide a formative foundation for not only building powerful new applications, but also enhancing and improving the way we engage with groundbreaking technology alongside large and disparate datasets. We’re already seeing how these developments can help us solve complex problems much faster than was previously possible.

Understanding AI data storage challenges To understand the challenges that

AI presents from a data storage perspective, we need to look at its foundations. Any machine learning capability requires a training data set. In the case of generative AI, the data sets need to be very large and complex, including different types of data. Generative AI relies on complex models, and the algorithms on which it is based can include a very large number of parameters that it is tasked with learning. The greater the number of features, size and variability of the anticipated output, the greater the level of data batch size combined with the number of epochs in the training runs before inference can begin.

Generative AI is in essence being tasked with making an educated guess

VIEWPOINT

or running an extrapolation, regression or a classification based on the data set. The more data the model has to work with, the greater the chance of an accurate outcome or minimising the error/cost function. Over the last few years, AI has steadily driven the size of these datasets upwards, but the introduction of large language models, upon which ChatGPT and the other generative AI platforms rely, has seen their size and complexity increase by an order of magnitude. This is because the learned knowledge patterns that emerge during the AI model training process need to be stored in memory — which can become a real challenge with larger models. Checkpointing large and complex models also puts huge pressure on underlying network and storage infrastructure, as the model cannot continue until the internal data has all been saved in the checkpoint, these checkpoints act as restart or recovery points if the job crashes or the error gradient is not improving.

Given the connection between data volumes and the accuracy of AI platforms, it follows that organisations investing in AI will want to build their own very large data sets to take advantage of the unlimited opportunities that AI affords. This is achieved through utilising neural networks to identify the patterns and structures within existing data to create new, proprietary content.

Because data volumes are increasing exponentially, it’s more important than ever that organisations can utilise the densest, most efficient data storage possible, to limit sprawling data centre footprints, and the spiralling power and cooling costs that go with them.

This presents another challenge that is beginning to surface as a significant issue — the implications massively scaled-up storage requirements have for being able to achieve net zero carbon targets by 2030-2040.

It’s clear that AI will have an impact on sustainability commitments because of the extra demands it places on data centres, at a time when CO2 footprints and power consumption are already a major issue. This is only going to 50

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increase pressure on organisations, but it can be accommodated and managed by working with the right technology suppliers. The latest GPU servers consume 6-10kW each, and most existing datacentres are not designed to deliver more than 15kW per rack, so there is a large and looming challenge for datacentre professionals as GPU deployments increase in scale.

Flash optimal for AI Some technology vendors are already addressing sustainability in their product design. For example, all-flash storage solutions are considerably more efficient than their spinning disk (HDD) counterparts. Some vendors are even going beyond off the shelf SSDs, creating their own flash modules which allow all-flash arrays to communicate directly with raw flash storage, which maximises the capabilities of flash and provides better performance, power utilisation, and efficiency.

As well as being more sustainable than HDD, it’s also a fact that flash storage is much better suited to running AI projects. This is because the key to results is connecting AI models or AI powered applications to data. To do this successfully requires large and varied data types, streaming bandwidth for training jobs, write performance for checkpointing (and checkpoint restores), random read performance for inference and crucially it all needs to be 24x7 reliable and easily accessible,

across silos and applications. This set of characteristics isn’t possible with HDD based storage underpinning your operations, all-flash is needed.

Data centres are now facing a secondary but equally important challenge that will be exacerbated by the continued rise of AI and ML. That is water consumption, which is set to become an even bigger problem — especially when you take into consideration the continued rise in global temperatures.

Many data centres utilise evaporative cooling, which works by spraying fine mists of water onto cloth strips, with the ambient heat being absorbed by the water, thus cooling the air around it. It’s a smart idea but it’s problematic, given the added strain that climate change is placing on water resources — especially in built-up areas. As a result, this method of cooling has fallen out of favour in the past year, resulting in a reliance on more traditional, power intensive cooling methods like air conditioning. This is yet another reason to move to all-flash data centres, which consume far less power and don’t have the same intensive cooling requirements as HDD and hybrid.

The road ahead for AI and data storage As AI and ML continue to rapidly evolve, the focus will increase on data security (to ensure that rogue or adversarial inputs can’t change the output), model repeatability (using techniques like Shapley values to gain a better understanding of how inputs alter the model) and stronger ethics (to ensure this very powerful technology is used to actually benefit humanity).

All these worthy goals will increasingly place new demands on data storage.

Storage vendors are already factoring this into their product development roadmaps, knowing that CTOs will be looking for secure, high-performance, scalable, efficient storage solutions that help them towards these goals. The focus should therefore not be entirely on the capabilities of data storage hardware and software, the big picture in this case is very big indeed.

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VIEWPOINT

NAVIGATING UNCHARTED WATERS FOR UAE BANKS, MANAGING TECHNOLOGY RISK IS AN OPPORTUNITY, NOT A BURDEN, WRITES ALI KADDOURA, COUNTRY MANAGER – UAE, SERVICENOW.

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n the modern FSI industry, technology risk management is about much more than just keeping the lights on. Having faced crisis after crisis since 2008, banking leaders are riskworn and looking to wrestle the bull into submission through real-time risk control and resilience. As customers do more of their banking online through apps, bots, and websites, it has become apparent that risk is something that is there for all to see, rather than something only the board discusses. In the 2020s, every bank employee must be a risk officer.

According to its central authority, the United Arab Emirates’ banking sector

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has an aggregate asset base worth US$1 trillion. Financial institutions here have enthusiastically embraced technology to dazzle customers. Many have understood that technology risk management can be turned on its head to become a competitive advantage.

Yes, the customer demands new digital experiences delivered in a steady, innovative stream. And yes, this brings risks like cyberattacks, fraud, and service failure. But this is not the whole story.

ServiceNow recently interviewed 750 senior banking executives around the world. The findings, published

in our “Conquering technology risk in banking” report, paint a picture of the Bank of Tomorrow, in which the capability to innovate is inextricably linked to the quality of risk management. In fact, some 70% of CEOs and CROs said accelerated digital innovation was driving a need for enhanced technology risk management. The modern bank must therefore take a fresh look at best practices as they relate to the intersection of risk management and tech innovation. Here are the five ways banks can turn technology risk into an advantage.

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VIEWPOINT

accuracy and improves data quality.

Integrated risk platforms use automation to provide banks with a comprehensive view of cyber, technology, enterprise, and operational risks. Normalised data and common toolsets allow organisations to innovate within the context of risk. An integrated platform can facilitate effective transference between different kinds of risk. It can, for example, allow for scenarios like a systems failure that shuts down trading.

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Build a single source of truth Data will be central to both innovation and risk mitigation. Data is how we personalise customer experiences, but it is also how we improve our threat posture. Both use cases call for the enabling of visibility across the enterprise so that decision-making by experience leaders and risk managers is supported by homogeneous information. Often, vendor risk data must reside side by side with customer and transaction data. Advanced analytics, dashboards, and other tools are going to be commonplace in all departments to enable the extraction of insights, be they risk-related or experience-related.

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Equate risk and innovation Banks must align risk and business priorities so they can take knowledgebased decisions and make the right trade-offs. This is impossible without collaboration, not only between internal business units, but between the bank and its partners and suppliers. The bank of the future will introduce risk management across functions, ensuring they innovate together and handle risk together.

Automation is a great way to bring more efficiency to the identification and detection of risk, as well as the protection of assets. It can also speed up response, compliance, and analysis.

Automation allows significant leaps in

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Invest in next-gen technology Adopting the latest technology can, in and of itself, mitigate the risk posed by that technology. Legacy systems are notorious for being out of support or close to it. By modernising their IT systems, banks can take advantage of the cloud for resilience and cybersecurity orchestration. Banks would be well served to ramp up their investments in more sophisticated cybersecurity defense technologies, such as security information and event management systems (SIEM), which can help spot patterns in security data; cloud-access security brokers (CASB), critical for securing sprawling cloud platforms; quantum cryptography to improve encryption; and endpoint detection and response (EDR) to continuously monitor end-user devices.

However, arguably one of the areas we will see the biggest investments is in artificial intelligence tools that will enable banks to reduce human error and identify and respond to risk more quickly. Another area is blockchain, which can also improve security, as well as the transparency and traceability of transaction data, all of which combine to lower the risks of errors and fraud. And predictive analytics and digital twins can combine to build simulations that allow senior decision makers to gauge risk probabilities and impacts.

The list goes on. A range of IT, security, and risk management tools are already available to improve security posture and automate workflows to mitigate human missteps and boost productivity. Others monitor and address regulatory matters and automatically audit risks.

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Unite teams Culture is crucial. If banks want to effectively manage tech risk and ensure resilience, they must communicate the essence of risk — its identifying marks and its impacts — to every employee. All stakeholders must be involved in strategy, and all departments must be trained on risk and collaborate on execution. It is important to assign critical tech risk roles to varying functions in the bank, including operational risk, cybersecurity, data privacy digital transformation, IT risk management and data quality and governance.

Furthermore, to aid in coordination it would be beneficial to assign IT risk to the job description of the CRO.

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Modernise governance In an ESG-driven world, banks must address the need for compliance planning, monitoring, and maintenance while tracking changes in national, regional, and international regulations.

Each institution must be able to identify, measure, test, and report these risks and incorporate them into their own, preferably non-financial, frameworks. Technology risks represent potential impact in areas like strategy, finance, operations, compliance, and reputation, so it is essential that the board is actively involved — data is crucial in enabling these decision makers to insulate the organisation from fallout.

The Bank of Tomorrow Following these best practices brings many benefits. In risk and compliance, we see reporting, risk identification, response, control testing, and issue resolution are all faster, leading to fewer breaches.

And on the performance side, we see reduced costs and improved revenue (which leads to higher profitability) in addition to accelerated innovation, and enhanced customer retention rates.

Organisations are also more scalable, with faster times to market. And these are all hallmarks of the Bank of Tomorrow.

PRODUCTS

Canon LabelStream LS2000 Designed for industrial-scale label printing, the LabelStream LS2000 is based on a new blend of innovative and proven Canon technologies. As Canon’s first water-based inkjet label press, the LabelStream LS2000 prints CMYK plus white on self-adhesive substrates including paper and film with a new ink set designed to comply with food safety standards. The LS2000 makes Canon’s LabelStream digital label press series accessible to a broader range of label converters serving industries including food and beverages, personal care, household goods and electronics, and the manufacturing of bespoke or customised products.

Built on water-based inkjet technology, the LabelStream LS2000 is the ideal solution for label converters looking for a reliable, productive, and flexible digital press that fulfils the demand for shorter runs of diverse, self-adhesive labels,

produced against tighter deadlines. This demand results, amongst others, from the need to respond quickly to a growing array of different products, packaging innovations, and the challenges of an ever-changing supply chain.

The LabelStream LS2000 is a five-colour (CMYK plus white) inkjet label press that prints at up to 40m/min with a maximum printing width of 340mm. The press features a new 2400 x 1200 dpi printhead with an ink circulation mechanism that keeps the ink moving along a precise flow path to the tips of all the nozzles, minimizing nozzle failure due to clogging and helping to extend the life of the printhead. For reliable and stable production, printhead maintenance and quality control are automated, as is colour measurement and adjustment, while the digital front end offers tight workflow integration for outstanding ease of use and operational efficiency.

Galaxy SmartTag2 Samsung Electronics announced the Galaxy SmartTag2, launching globally on October 11. Galaxy SmartTag2 brings enhancements to the Galaxy SmartTag line that enable new and better ways to keep track of valuables. Upgrades to the design and usability create even more use cases for the device than ever before.

Galaxy SmartTag2’s brand-new Lost Mode allows users to input their contact information via a message.

Then, anyone who discovers an item with a Galaxy SmartTag2 attached can use their smartphone to scan the tag and see the owners’ message and contact 56

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information. This means a Galaxy SmartTag2 attached to a pet’s collar is now a convenient way to ensure the pet owner’s phone number is always there, in most places where the pet might wander. Lost Mode works with any mobile device with NFC reader and web browser.

Galaxy SmartTag2 now provides an improved Compass View feature, enhancing the user experience by providing arrows to show the direction and distance of the Galaxy SmartTag2 in relation to the user. This mode is available on any UWB-supported Galaxy smartphone, such as the Galaxy S23 Ultra.

NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 NVIDIA is advancing rendering technology once more with the introduction of NVIDIA DLSS 3.5, featuring Ray Reconstruction, which is a new AI model that enhances ray-traced images for intensive ray-traced games and apps.

Ray Reconstruction replaces hand-tuned denoisers, which resolve sampled rays in a scene, with an NVIDIA

supercomputer-trained AI network that generates higherquality pixels in between sampled rays.

Trained with 5X more data than DLSS 3, DLSS 3.5 recognizes different ray-traced effects to make smarter decisions about using temporal and spatial data, and to retain high frequency information for superior-quality upscaling.

REALME 11 5G The new realme 11 5G boasts the Samsung ISOCELL HM6 sensor, offering a resolution up to 108MP and a spacious 1/1.67-inch sensor size. This combination empowers realme 11 5G to capture incredibly sharp images, granting users the creative freedom to tell their stories with exceptional detail.

Additionally, it supports a 3x lossless zoom-in mode. This feature opens up new perspectives in mobile photography, allowing users to explore unique angles and compositions.

67W SUPERVOOC Charge: In terms of charging capabilities, realme 11 5G stands out in its segment by offering an exceptional feature – the 67W SUPERVOOC Charge. This represents a substantial enhancement over the typical 33W charging speed found in this category. Thanks to this high-powered charging system, the device can charge its large 5000mAh battery

to 50% in just 17 minutes. The smartphone also delivers an outstanding battery life in a variety of scenarios, including 590.3 hours of standby time, 18.7 hours of video playback, 44.6 hours of music playback, 20.9 hours of navigation, 9.9 hours of MLBB gaming, and 8.7 hours of Free Fire gaming.

Experience Ultra Smooth Display with 120Hz Dynamic Refresh Rate: realme 11 5G boasts a 6.72-inch screen featuring a crisp FHD+ resolution of 2400×1080. It also enables a seamlessly smooth viewing experience thanks to its high refresh rate of up to 120Hz. What sets this display apart is its support for Dynamic Refresh Rate, featuring six different stages up to 120Hz. The intelligent system will automatically choose the most suitable stage based on your usage scenario, ensuring optimal performance and efficiency.

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BLOG

RESHAPING THE DEFENSE SUNIL PAUL, MD OF FINESSE, EXAMINES THE ROLE OF SIEM AND MDR SOLUTIONS IN NAVIGATING THE CYBERSECURITY LANDSCAPE.

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rganisations are continuously grappling with the constant evolution of cyber threats. They require a well-rounded security strategy encompassing prevention, threat detection, and response capabilities to safeguard their operations from potential dangers before they can disrupt the business.

Companies increasingly turn to Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and Managed Detection and Response (MDR) solutions to secure their critical data and digital assets.

What is SIEM? Information Technology (IT) systems continually generate a substantial flow of data through logs that record user and application activities, while security devices continuously produce vast amounts of data for analysis. Valuable indicators of compromise for threat detection can be found within this data. SIEM systems aggregate data from endpoint, network, identity, cloud, and human security sources and conduct real-time analysis to pinpoint abnormal activities, which are categorised and prioritised based on event severity.

SIEM systems also help organisations meet regulatory compliance through their centralised logging, reporting, and auditing capabilities and showcasing their security status.

According to Technavio, the global 58

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SIEM market size is estimated to grow by $3,416.2 million from 2022 to 2027.

On the other hand, MDR is an outsourced cybersecurity service that combines expert human analysis with cutting-edge technologies to enable continuous monitoring, advanced threat detection, and responsive incident management.

MDR solutions support enterprises by helping them to detect and respond proactively to the next generation of cyber threats like ransomware attacks, advanced malware, insider threats, supply chain compromise, and phishing, and in most cases, supplement that with remediation recommendations and solutions.

MDR services can be an ideal way for security teams to utilise multiple security tools to keep up with constantly emerging threats or for smaller organisations without enough resources to create and staff an in-house security team.

The global MDR market was valued at $2,631.87 million in 2022 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 15.8 percent during the 2023-2025 period.

MDR and SIEM could be differentiated as follows: • MDR is a service, and SIEM is a technology. The former comprises technology, processes, and human expertise, while the latter comprises hardware and software.

• SIEM aims to monitor known threats and detect anomalies, while MDR aims to detect and respond to unknown threats.

• SIEM collects data and analyses logs to generate alerts that rely on the organisation’s incident response capabilities, while MDR offers proactive threat hunting and detection Choosing between SIEM and MDR solutions depends on an organisation’s specific security needs and budget.

SIEM solutions suit organisations

needing compliance management, event correlation, and centralised security monitoring, provided they have the in-house resources and expertise to support setup, configuration, and ongoing management.

MDR services provide proactive threat detection, 24/7 monitoring, and expert incident response. They’re beneficial for organisations lacking internal cybersecurity know-how and can reduce false alarms and the burden of constant alerts, thanks to skilled security analysts handling system management and data filtering.

However, MDR focuses on endpoint threat detection and response and includes security protocols, controls, and other internal operations. In that sense, compliance is not within MDR’s ambit.

A blended approach would be to use a SIEM solution for compliance and monitoring known threats and an MDR solution for more proactive threat detection and incident response.

Cloud SIEM solutions are increasingly being deployed to identify potential security threats in an organisation’s IT infrastructure.

Cloud SIEMs can also leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) more effectively to analyse vast amounts of data in real time and identify anomalies, patterns, and indicators of compromise that may go unnoticed by human analysts to enable organisations to detect and respond to threats more effectively.

In the case of MDR, AI tools can automate security responses to reduce false positives and escalate high-risk alerts for immediate action.

Cybercrime is predicted to cost the world $8 trillion in 2023, according to Cybersecurity Ventures. As customers deal with an ever-expanding range of cyber security threats, they must invest in SIEM, MDR or a blend of both to manage and address these challenges.