OCTOBER 2018
GITEX EDITION
SHAPING THE FUTURE Building The World’s Biggest Specialist In Cyber & Cloud Transformation MEET OUR VENDORS
CONTENTS
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Primed For Success
Nathan Clements, MD of Exclusive Networks MENA, on why his company is uniquely positioned to reap the benefits of booming demand for emerging technologies.
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It’s Time For Change Raising The Bar Frederic Denoyel, CFO of Exclusive Networks Middle East, shares strategies to address the new dynamics in the market.
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Built To Protect
Tabrez Surve from F5 Networks Top executives from the Fortinet give explains his company’s recently us the lowdown on the ever-changing enhanced solutions around cloud and threat landscape. application security.
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Rewriting The Rules The Road To Cyber Amine Dembri from SentinelOne Resilience highlights why signature-based traditional security tools are not adequate for endpoint protection.
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Sébastien Pavie from Gemalto offers advice on how to fend off cyberattacks and data breaches.
15 Keeping Pace With Innovation Jono Clarke-Storey from Skybox offers advice for protecting information asset.
PUBLISHED BY
MD INTERVIEW
Exclusive Networks
Primed For Success Exclusive Networks has chalked out a roadmap spanning both cloud migration and cybersecurity, offering differentiated solutions to channel partners. Nathan Clements, Managing Director of Exclusive Networks Middle East and North Africa, on why his company is uniquely positioned to reap the benefits of booming demand for emerging technologies. Do you think value-added distributors have a pivotal role to play in this digital era? As digital transformation gains traction in the Middle East, cloud and cybersecurity have become a dominant agenda in boardrooms today. In a world increasingly defined by digital, the channel needs to be in sync and help their customers navigate this complex technology landscape in terms of both migration and protection. As a global cloud and cybersecurity value-added distributor (VAD), Exclusive Networks is accelerating the market entry and growth for innovative cloud and cybersecurity technologies. Our business model of ‘single-touch/ multiple markets’ specialist distributor has made us the number one choice for vendors and resellers alike. We are unique in that we combine specialist value-added technical and marketing support with the volume and reach of a global distributor. Reseller partners around the world rely on us to create new business opportunities and generate revenue streams from new technologies. Exclusive Networks continues to challenge traditional distribution models, redefining what it means to be a VAD. Over the last two years, Exclusive Networks has evolved rapidly and adapted to fast-changing markets and technologies to stay relevant to our vendor and reseller partners. We have been very focused on building a portfolio with vendors who are best in their field and investing in our people because we believe only a highly committed team can drive business growth and success.
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What are you showcasing at Gitex this year? This year at Gitex, we will be officially launching Exclusive Group’s first Cyber and Cloud super centre. We are leveraging the region’s largest technology show to drive home a key message – we are a proven and specialised distributor not only in cybersecurity but also the cloud. In the past few months, we have been training our partners in cloud technologies in addition to hosting our usual security workshops for them. We will also be launching our Cloud Training Centre, which enables us to deliver authorised and approved cloud training to technical and sales teams across the region. Another major highlight at this year’s show will be our diversified portfolio of products and solutions. There are around industry leading 15 vendors we are working with as of today. We will be formally launching some of our new relationships at Gitex.
For more information, please write to: theexclusivesales-ae@exclusive-networks.com
To what do you attribute your success? We are enjoying a period of sustained growth. It’s easy to say this growth has come from our existing vendors and also the addition of new vendors and services. But, in parallel to this, we have an energetic and highly motivated team, which has allowed us to deliver good growth consistently. Our people are our DNA. We have been successful in finding the best industry talent and making Exclusive Networks a place where people aspire to work. We continuously train and mentor our staff, so they understand what vendors and channel partners expect of them. We believe in the saying, “if you do the same things, you get the same results.” Success breeds complacency, and we ensure that there is no room for that by meeting regularly with our partners and look for ways to challenge ourselves, so we are constantly evolving and improving. The global private equity firm Permira has recently acquired a majority stake in Exclusive Networks. What does it mean for your business? The investment from Permira is the biggest ever in cyber/cloud distribution, and we will use this funding to accelerate our expansion plans worldwide and diversify the product portfolio. The investment validates our status as a global specialist VAD for cybersecurity and cloud and will enable us to extend our value-based service offerings with a bigger geographical footprint. This partnership will be critical to our continuing success.
Exclusive Networks
CFO MESSAGE
It’s Time For Change Frederic Denoyel, CFO of Exclusive Networks Middle East, shares strategies to address the new dynamics in the market.
Customers across the Middle East are looking to reduce cost, management complexity and mitigate risk in these tough economic times. We have forged strong relationships with key technology suppliers to offer our channel partners robust solutions that address these toughest business challenges faced by their customers. Around 70 percent of the market in Europe has already adopted the hybrid cloud strategy, which will certainly be a high-growth area in the coming years in the Middle East. While not every business may have made a huge shift to move their critical workloads into the hybrid cloud, many companies are trying it out with basic applications and information. On the other hand, today we have more endpoints and data that need to be managed and protected. As a result, many enterprise customers are now looking for support for their migration strategies from old storage systems to new highly available data infrastructure and the hybrid cloud. Organisations with a hybrid cloud strategy also face significant challenges around IT complexity
and data protection; it is imperative for them to have the right level of security in place to ensure data and information assets are protected at all times. For distributors and channel partners, this has opened up a big opportunity to provide niche solutions and services for their customers to bridge the divide between onpremise systems and public clouds. Partners can add value by helping their customers architect a hybrid cloud model combining infrastructure resources on premises with public cloud offerings and help them unlock operational efficiencies and cost benefits of the hybrid cloud. At the same time, the march towards a hybrid future has many companies rethinking their approach to cybersecurity as traditional security controls, designed primarily for physical form factors, are inadequate to mitigate risk and protect virtual infrastructures. IT leaders are concerned about security and resources required to drive the migration to hybrid IT environments successfully and often need assistance. Partners have a crucial role to play by supporting them with the skills and tools and create a robust roadmap spanning both migration and protection. However, for partners to create a viable niche in the hybrid cloud market, they will have to upskill internal capabilities and provide value-added services, which in turn, will accelerate business growth and profitability. Another area where businesses are directing their technology investment is meeting compliance requirements, such as GDPR, which goes hand-inhand with security-focused initiatives. This is an area organisations can’t afford to ignore. The new wave of
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Organisations with a hybrid cloud strategy also face significant challenges around IT complexity and data protection; it is imperative for them to have the right level of security in place to ensure data and information assets are protected at all times.”
stringent data protection laws is forcing companies to change the way they process, store, and protect customers’ data. With such regulations affecting every business, this is a new avenue for partners to evolve as trusted advisers and navigate their customers through this complex landscape by adding compliance audits and evaluation services to their mix of offerings.
For more information, please write to: theexclusivesales-ae@exclusive-networks.com
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MEET THE TEAM
Exclusive Networks
Committed And Responsible With extensive training opportunities and formal development programs, Exclusive Networks attracts top industry talent and offers its employees a path up the ladder. Meet the team behind the success of Exclusive Networks. OLIVER DOWNS Sales Operation Manager Our Inside Sales Team handles all new business enquiries ranging from scoping, presales, quotations, orders, to post-sales support for our 800 plus reseller partners. This team is tasked with managing all sales enquiries and creating more qualified sales opportunities. We have grown our Inside Sales team over the 12 months to support the growth of our product portfolio. They play a proactive role in driving better sales coverage for the company and free up our account managers and vendor specialists to focus on growing our business with highest levels of customer satisfaction.
JIJO JOSEPH Head of Strategic Accounts Today our region continues to embrace technologies such as cloud and cybersecurity. For small and medium companies, cybersecurity is now a top priority because they have become vulnerable targets for cybercriminals. The cost of a security breach can be fatal – it can either paralyse their operations or put their companies out of business. We are seeing a dramatic increase in small and medium sized company spending across for their security enhancements with no limit. These investments mainly include endpoint protection, email security, UTM, identity and access management solutions. Another key trend among SME sized organisations is the surge in demand for cloud services. The increasing uptake in the cloud services by them is driven by cost-efficiency and scalability. This has made it imperative for our channel partners to offer cybersecurity SaaS solutions to their customer base.
SCHOLASTICA NYAMBURA Inside Sales - Team Leader Inside Sales is the core point for all our vendors and customers as we are responsible for capturing leads, processing them, helping build data analysis and hence creating more business in cross-selling opportunities. With consistent procedures, we make sure that we support the business with our vendors and customers for greater end result.
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For more information, please write to: theexclusivesales-ae@exclusive-networks.com
Exclusive Networks
MEET THE TEAM
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You don’t build a business – you build people – and then people build the business” – ZIG ZAGLER KATHERINE MASTERS Vendor Alliance Manager Exclusive Networks has been working on diversification in terms of adding new vendors within our portfolio. Since joining the company, I have been working on developing key vendors such as Nutanix, Rubrik, SentinelOne, FireEye, Fortinet, to name a few. Each vendor has a different approach towards gaining market share with different set of challenges. I believe as vendor managers, we have a big responsibility in bridging the gap between sales and marketing and creating mutually beneficial and collaborative relationships with our suppliers.
GRANT TAYLOR General Manager, KSA This year has seen the KSA operation go through a marked change in terms of both go-to-market strategy and personnel. We took the decision to create an incremental business team dedicated to delivering net new business to the channel through the process of lead generation at the end user level and following this with sales pre-sales and post-sales capability to ensure our partners were supported in every facet of the sales cycle. We have successfully delivered genuinely incremental business to our partners and to our vendors.
MOHAMMED OLAYAN Technical Manager – ME At the heart Exclusive Networks’ strategy to provide world-class support services is our training centre, which provides hands-on technical training. It is designed to give IT engineers a structure learning experience in a classroom environment and provide them the required levels of certifications and experience to handle technical issues. Backed by certified trainers, our training programmes combine real-world scenarios with hands-on activities to help our customers develop the competencies and skills required to address the most complex of technical challenges.
MALLIKA SHARMA Head of Marketing With Exclusive’s portfolio of disruptive technologies, our marketing strategy is centred around building brands, with full emphasis on reaping maximum ROI. With the aid of sophisticated digital marketing techniques and innovatively themed events, we drive initiatives with our vendors and channel partners. These endeavors enable us to identify new opportunities and maximize our reach across the region. With a burgeoning portfolio and specific rules related to MDF provisioning, there is an added pressure on us to be compliant while also ensuring a creative approach in marketing.
For more information, please write to: theexclusivesales-ae@exclusive-networks.com
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INTERVIEW
F5 Networks
Raising The Bar Tabrez Surve, Regional Director, Gulf & Turkey, F5 Networks, explains his company’s recently enhanced solutions around cloud and application security. Can you tell us about F5’s work in application security space? Cloud-based apps and mobility have changed the game. Data is now accessible from devices over which app providers have no control and from locations and networks that are out of their reach. Perimeter-based security is no longer adequate against sophisticated cybercriminals. Today, security needs to follow the app, which must be given its own protective perimeter along and DDoS protection, as well as personal, private web application security policies. As a result of this necessary shift, we are seeing demand growing for technologies that can help organisations safeguard their applications and fully tap into the speed and flexibility afforded by cloud technology in all its forms. The technologies that are resonating most right now include our recently launched Advanced WAF (AWAF) solution, which means companies can adapt their security for web and mobile apps, whether onpremises or in the cloud to defend against malicious bots and exploits. AWAF also prevents malware from stealing credentials from victim devices and stops further credential theft-related attacks like Brute Force or Credential Stuffing. In addition, it detects mobile app tampering and ensures app-layer DoS mitigation. The latter includes automated configuration tuning, client and server behavioural analytics, as well as real-time dynamic signatures. In addition, DevOps and NetOps teams can easily deploy app protection services in any environment that can be configured for individual applications. Other benefits of a full proxy WAF include the ability to isolate application traffic, services, and infrastructure resources to withstand client-side L7 attacks and server-side data leakage. Attacks are blocked as
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they happen. The interface is also simple enough to make quick alterations without taking services offline. How is F5’s transition from core hardware business to software products unfolding? F5’s profile is growing significantly in the region as we ramp up our focus on security and cloud-related solutions. We are consistently achieving double-digit growth and the Middle East is among our strongest performing geographical areas. The size of our team reflects our strong business performance, and an ambitious hiring programme is in place to ensure we continue to scale. This includes partnerships with local educational institutions. From a project perspective, we are currently providing critical services to enable growth and innovation for major clients in sectors such as finance and banking, telecommunications, government, construction, energy and retail. As the region accelerates its digital transformation ambitions, expect our services to become much more in demand, particularly as they related to multi-cloud deployments and intensifying security needs. Ultimately, F5 is evolving to becoming a multi-cloud application services company. We are committed to reaching every application and delivering services wherever and however our customers want to consume them. What is F5’s cloud strategy? We believe it is important to focus on the benefits cloud technology brings. The cloud is a powerful way for organisations to strengthen legacy infrastructure by customising their strategy to ensure that security, policy controls, skills, and business models are constantly attuned to the speedy rate of innovation. To succeed, decision-makers need to ensure their
For more information, please write to: theexclusivesales-ae@exclusive-networks.com
cloud migration strategy provides the foundation for innovation, business growth, and customer value. It is important to note that no single cloud option best serves all infrastructure demands. The era of cloud migration is swiftly accelerating, and multi-cloud technology is set to open a wider spectrum of profitable opportunities for businesses to achieve improved agility, greater scalability, better aligned operational costs, as well as a clearer focus on business retention and expansion. With advanced security combined with cloud automation solutions, organisations can dramatically improve their ability to efficiently orchestrate cloud usage and manage their operations more effectively. At the end of the day, a multicloud model makes IT departments service brokers, helping organisations optimise application security whilst maximising yield from existing infrastructure via standardisation. Successful operations take an integrated approach to the cloud and avoid department silos. How do you reward partners who have invested in enhancing F5 product knowledge and skills? We are continually enhancing our partner strategy in concert with our ever-growing network. This includes broadening our application service consumption models, strengthening existing partnership capabilities and enhancing support for multi-cloud, hybrid, and security initiatives. There is huge potential to expand and enhance our reach working with our existing partner base, as well as cloud enablement and migration partners to deliver best-inclass solutions across the region. As ever, our marketing team plays an integral role in this process, equipping all key stakeholders with the latest messaging, tactics and resources for optimal field impact.
Fortinet
INTERVIEW
Built To Protect
With a large product portfolio, Fortinet is boosting security across core networks, remote devices and the cloud. Top executives from the company give us the lowdown on the ever-changing threat landscape and how partners can benefit from the market demand for advanced security tools.
Alain Penel, Regional Vice President, Fortinet Middle East
How do you see the threat landscape evolving in the region? Cybercriminals are becoming smarter and faster in how they leverage exploits to their advantage. They are also maximizing their efforts by targeting an expanding attack surface and by using iterative approaches to software development facilitating the evolution of their attack methodologies. Virtually no firm is immune from severe exploits as cybercriminals are relentless and are automating their toolsets and creating variations of known exploits. Of late, they are also more precise in their targeting, relying less on blanket attempts to find exploitable victims. In the coming months, we can expect to see a lot more cryptojacking attempts, botnets, and malware attacks. Do you think firewalls will continue to be the first line of defense for an organisation’s infrastructure? Firewalls are still an effective first line of defense in stopping malicious
programs from reaching the network. However, with the increasing volume and sophistication of cyber-attacks, it takes only one threat to slip through security for a data breach to occur. CISOs have adopted sandboxing as an essential component of their security strategies to help combat previously unknown threats. Today’s threats are increasingly sophisticated and often bypass traditional malware security by masking their malicious activity. A sandbox augments security architecture by validating threats in a separate, secure environment. The FortiSandbox offers a powerful combination of advanced detection, automated mitigation, actionable insight, and flexible deployment to stop targeted attacks and subsequent data loss. It’s also a key component of our Advanced Threat Protection solution.
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Today’s threats are increasingly sophisticated and often bypass traditional malware security by masking their malicious activity.”
What should users consider when deploying a next-gen firewall? While the security provided by NGFWs can continue to play a key role in keeping your network safe, not all NGFWs are built the same. Today’s organizations need advanced NGFWs that can protect from known and unknown threats hidden in cloud traffic, share and correlate threat intelligence, and adapt to shifting network environments, all while handling the rigorous performance and capacity demands imposed by today’s 100 Gbps core networks and SSL encrypted traffic. Today’s NGFWs need to be able to accelerate SSL inspection, handle IPv6 traffic without imposing penalties, provide the capacity and intelligence to secure IoT, provide deep inspection into unstructured data, authenticate and segment traffic and endpoint devices, provide a variety of critical security services without trading performance for protection, and support the levels of network connectivity for various deployment modes. The FortiGate HighPerformance NGFW provides all these functions and protect the network and data center against advanced threats with the industry’s best threat protection and price performance. FortiGate high end series features purpose-built security processor innovation to deliver uncompromising security and performance with superior SSL inspection and NGFW performance for the edge, data center and internal segments.
For more information, please write to: theexclusivesales-ae@exclusive-networks.com
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INTERVIEW
Fortinet
Customers benefit from the knowledge and confidence that the Fabric-Ready partner has worked with Fortinet to validate and deliver integrated security solutions ready for deployment.
Zacky Vaz, Channel Manager, Fortinet Middle East
Can you tell us about Fortinet’s fabricready partner programme? The Fortinet Fabric-Ready Partner Program is Fortinet’s premium technology partnership program, and partner inclusion in the program signals to customers and the industry at large that the partner has collaborated with Fortinet and leveraged the Fortinet Fabric APIs to develop validated, end-to-end security solutions. Partners benefit from the Program by being allied with the market leader who is the most widely deployed and growing rapidly.
Where should the channel be focusing its efforts when it comes to security? There is a huge opportunity for SMB Partners to focus on Network security solutions. SMB’s rely on their channel partners to offer competitive solutions including managed services etc., to meet their stringent IT budget. Hence the opportunity for partners lies in being trusted advisors and not simply push products. From an enterprise partner perspective, Cloud deployments are becoming more and more popular. Several of the large public cloud providers are building datacenters in the region so the adaptation rates are expected to only increase. Additionally, the virtualization and SDN technologies will require specific understanding and security skill set. Today’s enterprises are dealing with constant change affecting different parts of their business. And
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Partners have always been a critical element of Fortinet’s go-tomarket strategy.”
Manal Abi Rafeh, Senior Field Marketing Manager, Fortinet Middle East
Channel partners have an outdated approach to marketing. What would you like to change? Channel partners need to step up their marketing game and look beyond traditional marketing tactics. My focus is on helping them update their skills and help them grow their revenues. We employ a digital and traditional strategy to include partner motivation
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activities, lead generation campaigns, media outreach campaigns, to allow us to create a strong base of customers in the Enterprise sector and compete with brands that have a large share in the said sector on a global scale. What kind of marketing support do you provide the partners to extend their sales reach? Fortinet helps all certified and registered partners by providing them with access to in-depth product information, discounts, training and certification
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Gaining expertise within security enables partners to be trusted advisors to customers and help address rapidly changing business and consumer demands along with security threats.” far too often, the various solutions to these new realities do not align. This is especially true of business goals and cybersecurity policy. Gaining expertise within security enables partners to be trusted advisors to customers and help address rapidly changing business and consumer demands along with security threats. Customers are looking for partners based with specific skill sets and partners need to differentiate themselves based on their expertise.
information, price lists, promotions, campaign tools, and rewards and rebate information. We support deal registration, record keeping, product tutorials and videos, and a lot more support content, in addition to financial and marketing support. Can you elaborate on your partner enablement model? Partners have always been a critical element of Fortinet’s go-to-market strategy. Our goal is to enable our partners to transform the security of their customers, enabling them to safeguard their evolving network requirements. That means providing our partners with the security technology and support they require to deliver those industry-leading protection and value-added services that enable their customers to successfully and confidently deploy their digital transformation strategies.
WORLD-CLASS EXPERTISE. TRAINING AND SERVICES.
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INTERVIEW
SentinelOne
Rewriting The Rules Amine Dembri, Middle East Regional Sales Manager, SentinelOne, highlights why signature-based traditional security tools are not adequate for endpoint protection today. What are some of the broad industry trends in endpoint protection today? Endpoint protection measures must evolve beyond signatures and static file analysis. Many solutions on the market today still heavily rely on signatures; these are typically legacy AV products. Signatures are ill-equipped to handle the rapidly changing threat landscape. Many next-gen solutions rely on static file analysis or AI to replace signatures. This is a much more effective and resilient approach to handling threats that present themselves in files, however, the threat trend we’re seeing is a marked increase in fileless malware. These are attacks in which no malware exists in a file, and the payload is delivered via another mechanism such as a script. SentinelOne’s proprietary behavioral AI technology is vector agnostic and extremely effective in blocking everything from garden variety malware to fileless attacks and even sophisticated nationgrade attacks. Also, endpoint protection tools must be deployable. What good is buying a tool that is impossible to deploy or requires too many man-hours to manage? We see two phenomena appearing on the endpoint scene: Products that have noticeably low efficacy rates and products which are constantly throwing up too many false positives. What’s the point of deploying endpoint protection if malware is constantly raiding systems? If the endpoint protection is flagging benign programs as malware, too much time and end user pain is part of the process. SentinelOne couples the industry’s highest efficacy rates (as proven in testing and a variety of third parties such as NSS) with the lowest false positive rates, both online and offline. Testing in-production, both online and offline, is critical to
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only” approaches or focused on manual response measures, SentinelOne built a single code base which starts with visibility to prevent malware pre-execution while preserving forensic integrity to allow for both automated remediation or manual response if so desired, pre-execution.
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Humans will always remain a critical part of cybersecurity programs, intelligent software helps humans scale and make better decisions.”
experiencing a solution’s deployment readiness in your enterprise. Another key trend is the convergence of EPP and EDR. The notion that protection and visibility/response should require separate tools is flawed. We see customers desiring solutions that let them leverage intelligent automation to prevent, detect, and even respond to threats (if needed) in real-time. Endpoint protection requires a multilayered approach. While other vendors have preached “prevention
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When can expect endpoint security to be automated with AI and Machine Learning? That’s exactly what we’ve done. We use machine learning to power our static file analysis and behavioral AI that’s embedded in our agents. The decisions made by these technologies without the help of humans enable autonomous response - this is how we’re disrupting the EPP (protection) and EDR (visibility/ response) markets. Humans will always remain a critical part of cybersecurity programs: intelligent software helps humans scale and make better decisions. Will endpoint protection platforms replace traditional anti-virus software? Yes, we see this trend very clearly happening: while legacy AV still has significant market share, newer technologies that enable higher levels of protection and more capabilities are replacing legacy AV each and every day. 80% of our business is AV replacements, many of which are extremely high profile. We’ve already replaced legacy AV in thousands of accounts - particularly in 3 of the Fortune 10. The market is seeking a solution to a business problem that saves them time; cyber professionals across the globe are looking for highly effective, easily deployable, and fully integrable solutions. These are the key reasons customers choose SentinelOne to replace their legacy AV each and every day.
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INTERVIEW
Gemalto
The Road To Cyber Resilience Sébastien Pavie, Regional Director META, Enterprise & Cybersecurity at Gemalto, offers advice on how to fend off cyberattacks and data breaches. How do you help your customers help address evolving data security needs? It’s not a question of if your network will be breached, the only question is when. With the velocity of business accelerating, transformative technologies such as cloud, mobile, and the Internet of Things are being deployed at a rapid pace. With that in mind, we advise customers to shift their security strategy from “breach prevention” to “breach acceptance”. While there is no “one size fits all” prescription for achieving the secure breach reality, there are three steps that every company should take to mitigate the overall cost and adverse consequences that result from a security breach. To “secure the breach”, we advise customers to take the following steps: Encrypt all sensitive data at rest and in motion: Locate your sensitive data and encrypt it. Whether your data resides on-premises, in virtual environments, the cloud or is in motion, encryption will render it useless to attackers. Securely manage and store all of your encryption keys: Store encryption keys securely and separately from encrypted data. By centrally managing the key lifecycle, you ensure you maintain ownership and control of your data at all times. Manage and control user access: Manage and control access to your corporate resources and apps by verifying a user’s identity, assessing and applying the right access policy, and enforcing the appropriate access controls using single sign on.
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By building each of these three steps into your IT infrastructure and overall security strategy, you can effectively prepare for a breach, and avoid falling victim to one. How do you secure cloud and IoT environments? There are many ways an attacker can access features or data on a connected device. The three main target hacking points are: the device, the cloud infrastructure, and the network. At Gemalto, we see three essential pillars to secure the IoT data at rest and in motion: Securing the device: Gemalto’s embedded software and hardware solutions for consumer electronics and M2M help Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) overcome security challenges. For example, our M2M-optimised SIM and embedded SIM (eUICC) are both tamper-resistant environments that represent a strong authentication token for cellular applications. They encrypt and authenticate data and securely identify devices on global mobile networks. Securing the cloud: Some major forms of threat come from the enterprise or cloud environment that smart devices are connected to. Gemalto solutions for data encryption and cloud security provide a comprehensive portfolio for cloud service providers and enterprises to secure their enterprise and cloud assets. IoT security lifecycle management: Managing the lifecycle of security
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components across the device and cloud spectrum is a critical element for a robust and long-term digital security strategy. Security is not a one-off activity, but an evolving part of the IoT ecosystem. Adding new devices, end-of-life device decommissioning, device integration with a new cloud ecosystem, managing secure firmware/ software downloads - all these activities necessitate comprehensive management of identities, keys and tokens. Is multi-factor authentication the best defense against fraud? Businesses need to implement layered security for access and data protection including access management based on multi factor authentication as well as data encryption through our Secure the Breach approach in order to keep the data safe even in the event of a data breach. Beyond encryption, multi-factor authentication also serves a vital function within any organization – securing access to corporate networks, protecting the identities of users, and ensuring that a user is who he claims to be. Evolving business needs around cloud applications and mobile devices, combined with rising threats, and the need to reduce costs, require entirely new considerations for access control. Because multi-factor authentication security requires multiple means of identification at login, it is widely recognized as the most secure method for authenticating access to data and applications.
Skybox
INTERVIEW
Keeping Pace With Innovation
Jono Clarke-Storey, EMEA Channel Director, Skybox, offers advice for protecting information assets in an increasingly dangerous cyber threat landscape. What are the best practices for filtering all the vulnerability noise and prioritizing the most dangerous threats? To find the “signal in the noise” of vulnerabilities, organisations have to put their vulnerability occurrences in the context of their attack surface. A threat-centric vulnerability management (TCVM) approach is best practice because it analyses vulnerabilities from the perspective of potential business impacts, network exposure and exploitability. The TCVM process starts with centralised, up-to-date vulnerability occurrence data that’s automatically correlated with CVSS scores, asset criticality and exploit availability and activity in the wild. Vulnerabilities are further analysed via attack simulations on an offline network model to identify which vulnerabilities are exposed to threat origins outside or within the organisation. Exposed vulnerabilities with active exploits in the wild represent the most critical risks and imminent threats to the organisation. Remediation is aligned with these priorities, and vulnerabilities are automatically matched to available patches and IPS signatures; the network model can also be used to plan networkbased mitigation options that effectively shield vulnerabilities until they can be fully remediated. Why is it important for security teams to have a comprehensive, macro view of the network? You can’t protect what you can’t see. Being able to have a centralized, comprehensive map of the network
infrastructure — including on-prem networks, public and private clouds and IT- connected operational technology (OT) environments — its security controls and assets is fundamental to an effective security program. What’s better is layering in vulnerability data and threat intelligence to make this a valuable, risk fighting tool in the effort to understand, control and minimize your attack surface. To create such a model means breaking down data silos not just between multi-vendor solutions, but also between disparate data sets to understand the interrelationships of security processes. For example, when making a firewall change, without an attack surface model, it’s very difficult to tell if that change will create a new vulnerability exposure because firewall management and vulnerability management teams, tools and processes rarely interact. By making visibility the cornerstone of all your security management processes, you’re laying a solid foundation on which to establish strategic, systematic risk reduction program. How critical is secure change management? Being able to securely and accurately provision changes is vital not just to reducing cyber risks but also enabling business operations as well. But dynamic, complex environments and the attention to detail required can turn change management into a source of risk rather than a means to control it. Without proper visibility and context of the attack surface, change management — whether performed by manual or automated means — can
actually increase an organisation’s risk of cyberattack. To achieve secure change management, organisations need analytically driven, automated workflows that take into account how the proposed change will impact the attack surface. Each request should be automatically analyzed for rule and access policy violations as well as new vulnerability exposures the change would create. This approach limits the implementation of risky changes which would cause valuable resources to be wasted on roll backs and increase the risk of cyberattack. Analytics-driven automation can also provision approved changes and provide third-party validation that the change made matches the original intent. How can you help organisations to orchestrate and automate incident detection and response? At Skybox Security, we’re on the proactive side of security management, but many of our customers find value in leveraging Skybox for incident response as well. By automating data collection, normalization and merging with Skybox, IR teams have comprehensive and fresh data at their fingertips. Automatically and continuously building this data into the organisation’s attack surface model gives IR teams an invaluable tool to understand how an attack could spread and how to contain it quickly. Skybox’s automated access simulations can analyse access end to end — between and within on-prem, multi-cloud and OT networks — with details on security controls blocking or allowing that access at any point in the path.
For more information, please write to: theexclusivesales-ae@exclusive-networks.com
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INTERVIEW
Proofpoint
The Weakest Link Nik Churchley, Director of EMEA Channel Sales, Proofpoint, explains why email continues to be the number one threat vector Email fraud attacks are growing at exponential rates simply because they work and result in serious paydays for criminals: our latest research shows that Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks targeting organisations increased 85% year over year in Q2 2018. The cybercriminal barrier to entry is low, but the cost to organisations can be extremely high: these attacks simply trick individuals into wiring money or sending sensitive data, and involve no more sophisticated techniques than email spoofing and classic credential phishing. For most organisations, securing their email channel is a top priority. Start developing a multi-layered defence strategy that spans People, Process and Technology. People by training your employees to recognise phishing emails; Process by ensuring that you have Data Loss Prevention and Encryption in place to protect your data assets; and finally Technology with the deployment of the latest email authentication protocols such as DMARC, which is to date the only
“ technology layer that eradicates domain spoofing, a key tactic used by cybercriminals. Proofpoint is relentlessly focused on enabling organisations to safeguard their greatest risk—their people—by preventing, defending, and responding to threats across an ever-changing landscape. To do this, we encourage
WHAT GARTNER SAYS ABOUT PROOFPOINT Proofpoint continues to lead the market with R&D investments in innovative features and corporate acquisitions to complement its enterprise capability (for example, the acquisition of the fraud division of Return Path, as well as the acquisitions of FireLayers, Sendmail, Armorize Technologies and NetCitadel). It has the sharpest focus on email security issues, particularly advanced threat defense, resulting in one of the highest growth rates in this market. In addition to SEG capabilities, the company offers email continuity, archiving, e-discovery, social media risk, large file transfer and incident response. Proofpoint is a very good shortlist candidate for organizations looking for a full range of best-of-breed SEG functionality in supported geographies. More information at www.proofpoint.com
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For more information, please write to: theexclusivesales-ae@exclusive-networks.com
Proofpoint is one of the fastest growing public cybersecurity companies, offering over 25 cloud-based solutions that map to how people are working today.”
organisations to take a People-Centric approach to cybersecurity. This means having real-time visibility into who is targeted, how, and why so companies can focus on their most at-risk users and better protect them. Today, Proofpoint is one of the fastest growing public cybersecurity companies, offering over 25 cloudbased solutions that map to how people are working today. As such, our portfolio is constantly expending to match the needs of our partners’ customers and address today’s threat landscape. Over the last few years, we have made strategic additions to our portfolio such email fraud protection, cloud application protection and more recently, phishing simulation and security awareness training with the acquisition of Wombat Security Technologies.
SCANNERS AREN’T ENOUGH. Skybox Vulnerability and Threat Management GET TOTAL NETWORK VISIBILITY, DISCOVER HIDDEN VULNERABILITIES, PRIORITISE SMARTER, AND MITIGATE FASTER.
www.skyboxsecurity.com When scanning isn’t enough . . . Skybox provides complete vulnerability discovery — even in unscanned or unscannable systems — and faster prioritisation using advanced analytics, comprehensive modelling, attack path analysis and real–world threat intelligence.
VENDORS
NuMeRu
The ‘Exclusive’ Formula For Data Centre Transformation
If you’re sold on the idea of enterprise hybrid cloud but don’t want a difficult transition, make it simple to migrate away from complex legacy data centres with NuMeRu. NuMeRu combines the three essential elements of the ultimate next-generation data centre stack ready to transform your digital future now, so you can enjoy: - Significantly lower running costs - Maximum hybrid cloud performance - Highly agile data and application processes - Optimised efficiency through automation NuMeRu helps you achieve webscale economics through an agile, softwaredefined technology stack that is no
longer locked down to proprietary infrastructure or legacy complexity; enabling you to create fast, secure data and application services. So get ready to go with a rapidly deployable data centre transformation using game-changing technologies from marketleading vendors: Nu = Nutanix Delivering scale through the world’s most advanced hyperconverged compute, virtualisation and storage platform Me = Mellanox Delivering speed through flexible, SDNbased Ethernet cloud networking for
blistering datacentre performance Ru = Rubrik Delivering strength through a unique data management solution for instant recovery, search, development and cloud
Security Made Simple Brett Cardon, VP of EMEA Channels, Exabeam, on how to detect and thwart attacks by leveraging big data security analytics platform.
What are the latest SIEM trends and is there an edge Exabeam can highlight in this dynamic environment in terms of its SIEM offerings? The complexities in securing modern digital businesses, along with the increase in sophistication of malicious threats and cybercrime, are fuelling growth
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in the security information and event management (SIEM) market, which is expected to hit $4.54 billion in 2019. Historically dominated by a handful of providers, in recent years, the market has shifted to platforms that can support the massive data volumes generated by cloud applications and mobile device use. Exabeam is carving out a growing piece of the market, with 250 percent market growth in 2017, coming off 300 percent growth in 2016. It’s on track to more than double in 2018. Fuelling this success is the growing industry recognition for its Security Management Platform (SMP), which offers superior threat identification and response capabilities compared to legacy SIEMs. Built on open source, big data technology, including Elasticsearch and Hadoop, it provides unlimited secure data collection, indexing and search. Advanced machine
For more information, please write to: theexclusivesales-ae@exclusive-networks.com
learning capabilities provide rapid insights into all events, including attacks and vulnerabilities so subtle and precise that humans simply cannot see them. Can machine learning help companies to respond faster to ransomware? Yes, machine learning (ML) can help companies respond faster to ransomware. ML collects data using algorithms for prediction, classification, and insight generation, which allows many cybersecurity issues – such as ransomware – to be solved in an efficient manner. The key to stopping ransomware is to find attackers in your system before they begin to encrypt. Using a behavior-based approach is ideal to detect a ransomware attack, since it uses models and rules to track user behavior.
VENDORS
Ready For The Future Vincent Spijker, Channel Marketing Manager EMEA, Cloudian, explains how enterprises can capitalize on the power and scale of object storage. Object storage is rapidly emerging as the next generation of enterprise storage, offering IT managers an alternative to SAN and NAS in this $52 billion market. Unlike those traditional storage types, object storage is limitlessly scalable and directly searchable. Serving a market with over 50% annual growth in data created, object storage is designed for unstructured data types: files, images, media, research data, engineering drawings, etc. These data types today comprise 80% of data created. Cloudian object storage systems offer the three key attributes essential to nextgen storage systems:
• Exabyte Scale: Cloudian systems grow to whatever scale you need, simply by adding nodes. • Geo-distribution: Built on the same technology as public cloud infrastructure, Cloudian storage nodes join together to form a single cluster that can be located in one data center or distributed across multiple sites. • Cloud integration: Connect seamlessly with AWS, Azure, and GCP, then use Cloudian’s integrated tools to replicate or fluidly migrate information. Build private cloud, hybrid-cloud, or multi-cloud infrastructures to meet your goals.
Ideal for capacity-intensive workloads, typical Cloudian use cases include media and entertainment, healthcare, data protection/backup target, financial data, and engineering files. Cloudian is today deployed by over 240 customers, including Vox Media, WGBH, Motorola, T-Mobile, Hospital Corporation of America, Saturday Night Live, the California Department of Technology, the State of Utah, Element Fleet, and others.
The Need For Pervasive Visibility Sam Kumarsamy, Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Gigamon, highlights why the company’s new security delivery platform can better detect attacks missed by traditional security tools. GigaSECURE Cloud provides an intelligent filtering technology that allows virtual machine (VM) traffic flows of interest to be selected, forwarded, and delivered to the monitoring infrastructure centrally attached to the GigaSECURE Security Delivery Platform, thereby eliminating any traffic blind spots in the enterprise private clouds or service provider NFV deployments.
How do you bring visibility to virtual environments? With exponential growth in virtualized traffic within the data center, a primary challenge for the centralized monitoring infrastructure is to access this virtual traffic for application, network and security analysis. The
Is it time for enterprises to rethink network security deployments? As Gigamon works with enterprises, we’re seeing a pattern among their burning priorities. They want to increase efficiency and decrease complexity in the security prevention stack. At the same time, they want to increase confidence in security posture, and better manage the access to and control of data across the enterprise.
Meanwhile, many of them are dealing with initiatives that further stress their security posture and tools. For example, they are upgrading the network from 10 to 40 or 100G, introducing exponential increase in the volume/speed of data. They are also moving to the cloud or to virtual networks and dealing with new threat vectors as data moves laterally, not just in and out. The challenge with ad-hoc security deployments typically used in organisations today is that they throw more tools at the problem in the hope that the next security threat can be detected. Unfortunately, this does not scale. You still end up with significant blind spots because you still have a very static way of looking at things. A specific security tool, such as an Advanced Persistent Threat tool, is still only getting visibility into a portion of the infrastructure.
For more information, please write to: theexclusivesales-ae@exclusive-networks.com
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VENDORS
Dealing With The Data Deluge Roland Stritt, Director Channels EMEA and Mohammed Tamimi, Regional Director, talk about Rubrik’s unique value proposition in data management. What is your go-to-market strategy? STRITT: Rubrik is following a 100% channel strategy worldwide. Given this fact Rubrik is working close Roland Stritt, Director together with our Channels EMEA, Rubrik channel partners and they are key to our success. We follow a channel strategy that helps partners to differentiate, being enabled and rewarded for their investment. It is all about focus. Rubrik is only onboarding a few partners per region to ensure strong relations and collaboration between the channel partners and the Rubrik Field Sales
Team. Part of our strategy is to build up the right channel capacity per region and being able with this approach to avoid over distribution. This ensures a profitable business for our partners with Rubrik. Partners that are interested to work with Rubrik should want to innovate, scale and disrupt the market with Rubrik. Quid pro Quo is our guidance – and enables us to build up a win-win situation with our partners. We invest in partners that invest in us. What is unique about Rubrik’s all-in-one appliance-based approach to backup and recovery? TAMIMI: Rubrik’s Cloud Data Management platform democratizes public cloud for all enterprises by delivering a modern solution to recover,
manage, and secure all data, regardless of location. The power within an enterprise to scale organically and respond Mohammed Tamimi, to shifting Regional Director, Rubrik business needs depends on instantaneous access, efficient data delivery, and intelligent data management across the entire organization. Rubrik eliminates the barriers to data mobility, providing mission critical functions needed to drive business agility, cost effectiveness, and performance as enterprises shift workloads to the cloud.
AI-Ready Infrastructure At Scale Enterprises will tap the power of artificial intelligence (AI) for faster innovation and a competitive edge. Yet AI requires entirely new infrastructure, and its complexities are holding enterprises back from moving into the modern era of intelligence. AIRI’s the industry’s first integrated AI-Ready Infrastructure, architected by Pure Storage and NVIDIA, to extend the power of DGX systems, enabling AI-atscale for all enterprises. AIRI delivers a tightly integrated hardware and software platform out-of-box for AI, empowering data scientists to focus on algorithms and slashing time-to-insight from weeks to hours. FAST Empower your data scientists to tap into the power of a supercomputer. AIRI delivers an unfettered performance of
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“
AIRI offers the simplest scalable architecture for demands at any scale.”
optimized frameworks immediately – while the AIRI Scaling Toolkit enables a quick start on multi-DGX-1 training workloads. Christian Putz, Director, Emerging, EMEA at Pure Storage
tens of racks of legacy infrastructure in ¼ of a rack. SIMPLE Get started in hours, not weeks. NVIDIA GPU Cloud Deep Learning Stack delivers
For more information, please write to: theexclusivesales-ae@exclusive-networks.com
FUTURE-PROOF The most advanced platform for realworld AI, AIRI also offers the simplest scalable architecture for demands at any scale. Add DGX’s for faster training, and/ or add blades for bigger datasets. AIRI grows with your AI workload needs – without downtime.
Your Exclusive Invitation
Meet Our Vendors For Roundtable Session
Event Highlights Proven pedigree in helping
Your trusted Cyber & Cloud
Launching the first “Cloud
define, develop & drive new
specialist, showcasing the
Expert Training Program�
market opportunities.
most disruptive technologies.
Get In Touch With Us To Register Marketing-ae@exclusive-networks.com | www.exclusive-networks.ae | Call: +971 4 3757612
NEWS
Permira
Take Advantage Of The Cloud Skills Crisis With Exclusive Networks Cloud is a big change for organisations, and it requires different skill sets and different ways of provisioning services. Around 70 percent of enterprises face cloud skills shortage, stalling business transformation projects and slowing innovation. The lack of trusted cloud advisors is estimated to be costing business $258 million a year. To tackle this crisis, Exclusive Networks is launching a new dedicated service to train and enable the channel to develop skills. Exclusives’ strategy is to win more business and beat the competition with the right cloud expertise. This
service revolves around a truly vendor-neutral model that won’t restrict knowledge to a single architecture or solution stack. Because our new cloud service is vendor neutral and project ready, you can develop solutions that are less reliant on proprietary approaches, increasing your credibility and consultative value while reducing commercial risk and optimising agility. Here are some reasons why you should rely on Exclusive’s Cloud Competency Centre? • Increase revenue from cloud transformation projects
• Acquire more net-new customers • Add margin and value to existing solutions and services • Avoid pitfalls of proprietary vendor training • Increase customer loyalty and relevance • Become a trusted advisor for the assessment of new cloud products, platforms and services • Create a new revenue stream by selling CCP to end customers Book your appointment now with our cloud specialists for a certification with the vendors in our portfolio.
Exclusive Networks Fuels Growth Strategy With Permira Exclusive Group, the value-added services and technologies group, has completed a major investment transaction with funds advised by private investment firm, Permira. Rather than dilute its distinctive, value-oriented approach by consolidating with other major VAD players, this catalyst will enable Exclusive Group to extend its vision and create the world’s largest global specialist VAD in cyber and cloud transformation, with a target to reach $10bn annual revenue in the years ahead. Olivier Breittmayer, CEO at Exclusive Group, said: “Cybersecurity and cloud are the leading business priorities in this age of digital transformation, both as separate disciplines but – even more so – joined together as a co-dependent whole. Both sectors are becoming increasingly complex, and both suffer from a huge lack of skills and
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knowledge. The Industry needs a VAD that can fill this gap and we aim to do that. We believe we have the right and relevant focus; vendors, services and skill set to build a compelling offer for channel partners and vendors to realise significant profitable growth.” By pursuing a specialist focus in cyber and cloud, Exclusive Group is addressing the widening global shortage in skills and knowledge among channel partners and enduser organisations to enable the desired pace and success of digital transformation. “We have some of the best people in the world and by far the highest ratio of engineers of any distributor in our class,” added Breittmayer. “We also have the greatest track record of ensuring local, regional and global market success for disruptive technologies. Our strategy will see us continue to build out the
For more information, please write to: theexclusivesales-ae@exclusive-networks.com
strongest possible vendor portfolio in our ‘cyber super centres’ and ‘cloud competency centres’ – across all relevant segments – and expand our service offerings and global footprint to meet the demands of any project.” Michail Zekkos, Partner in the technology team at Permira commented; “Exclusive Group’s unrivalled focus and commitment to cyber and cloud is very exciting and we are delighted to partner with the company. We believe that enterprise cloud and cybersecurity will continue to rapidly converge, creating a tremendous market opportunity for the company to enable that transition while positioning its channel partners at its forefront. Preserving the entrepreneurial spirit and independence of the business while continuing to innovate with speed and at scale will be key to executing on its next phase of growth.”
LAST YEAR - WE THREW THE PARTY OF THE YEAR. THIS YEAR - WE'RE DOING IT AGAIN. Time? 6.45 PM onwards When? 16th October 2018 Where? McGettigan’s, DWTC
Join EXN, our vendors and our partner community for informal drinks & Networking.
Entry to thirsty club is by invite only and limited for the first 200 registrants. Collect your entry bracelets from
For more information Email - MSharma@exclsuive-networks.com
Call - 00971 56174 0835