CXO DX August 2021 by LeapMediaSolutions

» EDITORIAL

ADOPTING TO A CHANGING FUTURE CXODX organized its first industry summit under the banner of ‘Future workspace Summit & Awards” on 28th July as a virtual summit and a physical awards ceremony. The virtual summit had focused on how the future of work is getting remodeled, compelled by the challenges of the pandemic and facilitated by the Technologies that were already driving digital transformation. The discussions by the panelists through the various sessions brought to the fore different perspectives but in sum, all seemed to converge on the view of how the changes we see today in terms of adoption of a hybrid work model will stay on. The challenge will be to enable and secure such remote working as required. At a Gala event later in the evening, Awards were presented for some outstanding initiatives by the Technology CXOs across different verticals. The role of IT teams and Technology leaders has never been as truly prominent as has been in the past year and a half since they were called upon to either jumpstart or accelerate digitalization initiatives in their respective organizations. The region’s organizations indeed have been quite prompt in adopting IT advancements and the vision of the leaders at the top has no doubt played a key role. This who have embraced the best of IT have a fair chance of being among the trend setters in their respective industries as they would have the options to streamline and optimize their work processes seamlessly. CXO DX will continue to bring to the region events that become platforms for exchange of ideas by Technology leaders on topics that are not just trending but are critical for the road ahead. The Cloud Accelerate Summit & Awards, scheduled to be held in November this year, will be yet another initiative in this direction. We do hope you will enjoy leafing through this issue where you can see all the winners of the UAE edition of the Future Workspace Awards, as well as catch some highlights from the summit, in addition to the insightful articles by industry experts.

R. Narayan

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Pooja Panjwani Assistant Project Manager

Co-Founder & MD

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SAUMYADEEP HALDER

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Co-Founder & Editor in Chief

MALLIKA REGO Co-Founder & Director Client Solutions

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RAMAN NARAYAN

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Editor in Chief, CXO DX

Nihal Shetty Webmaster

REGISTERED OFFICE: Office 10, Sharjah Media City | www.cxodx.com AUGUST 2021 / CXO DX

» CONTENTS INSIGHT

28 » THREE CHALLENGES TO MEET AS BUSINESSES TRANSITION TO WORKING FROM ANYWHERE Jaleel Rahiman,Director ‑ IT & PRIME Digital, PRIME HEALTHCARE GROUP LLC discusses how the healthcare group is investing into digital transformation

28 32 » COMPONENTS OF SELF-SERVICE APPLICATION DELIVERY

SPOTLIGHT

12 » THE FUTURE OF WORK IN FOCUS An engrossing virtual summit set up the first half of the inaugural Future Workspace Summit & Awards with the focus on redefining of the workspace

Karthik Krishnaswamy, Director of Product Marketing for NGINX at F5 says Self-Service Application Delivery bridges the divide between developer productivity and infrastructure reliability

30 » RANSOMWARE REALITY IS BITING, SO HOW DO BUSINESSES BITE BACK?

16 16 » A FITTING GRAND FINALE A spectacular Awards gala brought up a fitting grand finale to the inaugural Future Workspace Summit & Awards, held on the 28th of July at the Mandarin Oriental in Dubai.

CXO DX / AUGUST 2021

Dave Russell, VP, Enterprise Strategy, Veeam a clamp down on ransomware is going to require international co-operation and government action beyond anything we’ve seen in the cybersecurity sphere.

34 » THE NEW NORMAL OF CYBERSECURITY Babur Nawaz Khan, Technical Marketing Engineer at A10 Networks discusses the rise of Zero Trust in an age of increased phishing, DDoS and ransomware attacks

32 REGULARS

06 » NEWS 36 » TECHSHOW 38 » TRENDS & STATS

» NEWS

PALO ALTO NETWORKS AND GOOGLE CLOUD EXPAND PARTNERSHIP Jointly developed Cloud IDS provides simple, managed, cloud native network-based threat detection Palo Alto Networks and Google Cloud have announced Cloud IDS (Intrusion Detection System), a jointly developed network threat detection service to help cloud customers solve critical network security challenges. Built with Palo Alto Networks’ industry-leading threat detection technologies, Cloud IDS provides simple, managed, cloud native network-based threat detection — offering Google Cloud customers the highest levels of security efficacy in just a few clicks. The new service is the result of a year-long joint design and engineering effort between Google and Palo Alto Networks, focused on combining security of Palo Alto Networks with the infrastructure of Google Cloud. “Businesses are betting on the cloud for their most important initiatives, and one of the most fundamental factors to their success will be security,” said Nikesh Arora, chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks. “We’ve had a tremendous strategic partnership with Google over the past three years that helps ensure that our joint customers can have a simple, secure journey to the cloud. This service takes that to new levels.” “Customers demand uncompromising security that is simple

Nikesh Arora

Chairman & CEO, Palo Alto Networks to deploy and easy to manage. We built Cloud IDS to address these requirements, by bringing together Palo Alto Networks best-in-class security with Google’s secure and scalable infrastructure,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud. “This is one of the many ways Google Cloud and Palo Alto Networks are partnering together to deliver solutions that solve our customers' security challenges.”

VECTRA AI PARTNERS WITH MICROSOFT ON ZERO TRUST SECURITY FRAMEWORK Vectra strengthens Zero Trust with Visibility and analytics gating the behavior of users, workloads, networks, and devices as though they originate from an untrusted network by leveraging its analytics and understanding of users and accounts, tracking them between on-premise and cloud.

Randy Schirman

Vectra VP, Partnerships Vectra AI, a leader in threat detection and response, has announced that the Vectra Cognito platform delivers key Zero Trust capabilities for Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Azure customers. Vectra is uniquely positioned as an integral part of the model which assumes breaches by investi-

CXO DX / AUGUST 2021

Since cloud applications and a mobile workforce have redefined the security perimeter, and corporate resources and services now often bypass on-premises, perimeter-based security models that rely on network firewalls and VPNs have become obsolete. To address this, Microsoft developed the Zero Trust Maturity Model to adapt to the complexities of modern environments effectively. With the integration of the Vectra Cognito platform, customers will have access to AI-powered threat detection to monitor and verify the communications to their business-critical applications. “The Vectra Cognito platform was devel-

oped on the idea that standard, static security measures like firewalls, NAC, and VPNs were not enough to protect the modern enterprise,” said Randy Schirman, Vectra VP of Partnerships. “With the hybrid remote work model effectively rendering traditional security measures obsolete, we are completely aligned with the Microsoft Zero Trust Model approach.” The Vectra Cognito Platform uses AI to efficiently find and prioritize hidden attacks in real-time inside Microsoft 365, Azure Active Directory (AD), cloud, data center, IoT, and enterprise networks before attackers cause irreparable harm to the organization. The platform allows security teams to prevent attacks earlier in the kill chain, ensuring that applications essential to business continuity are available and accessible for the entire extended workforce.

» NEWS

WATANIA SIGNS BIOS MIDDLE EAST AS BUSINESS CONTINUITY PROVIDER BIOSME has delivered over 60 successful DR projects to customers across the GCC BIOS Middle East, a specialist in disaster recovery services, has been appointed Disaster Recovery Service (DraaS) provider by National Takaful Company PJSC, “Watania”, as part of a proactive strategy on the part of the Abu Dhabi-based insurance company to ensure business continuity and embed resilience across its operations. BIOSME is the first and only company in the Middle East to be recognized by Gartner as a “niche player” for DRaaS. BIOSME was appointed by Watania as its Draas provider after an exhaustive search for local providers. Watania depends on reliable infrastructure and full-time application availability at all times, so any downtime and data loss could disrupt business continuity. When BIOSME came on board, the team identified over 30 workloads as critical to the business. These included core insurance

applications, Financial System and Digital Platform to name few. BIOSME specialises in taking a bespoke, solutions-driven approach that focuses on each client’s unique business requirements. As such, multiple tools were used to replicate critical databases and virtual machines to CloudHPT, the GCC’s local cloud, in Dubai. BIOSME delivered a blended service-level agreement (SLA) with a recovery point objective (RPO) of less than 10 minutes and a recovery time objective (RTO) of less than one hour. Martin Sebastian, CIO, Watania said, “We ran our entire production in DR with 100% user capacity and successfully completed the switchback. The exercise was a great experience and a confidence booster for Watania. Everything went smoothly obviously with some lessons learnt as well.” Dominic Docherty, MD, BIOSME said,

Dominic Docherty MD, BIOSME

“Disaster recovery is an essential business strategy to ensure operations stability in challenging and uncertain operating environments. We are happy to be able to support Watania and its customers in ensuring business continuity over the foreseeable future.”

SOPHOS BOOSTS ADAPTIVE CYBERSECURITY WITH BRAINTRACE ACQUISITION

Braintrace’s NDR technology will be deployed as a virtual machine, fed from traditional observability points al private networks (VPNs), and other Sophos has acquired Braintrace, further sources. These additional layers of visenhancing Sophos’ Adaptive Cybersecuibility and event ingestion will signifirity Ecosystem with Braintrace’s propricantly improve threat detection, threat etary Network Detection and Response hunting and response to suspicious ac(NDR) technology. Braintrace’s NDR tivity. provides deep visibility into network traffic patterns, including encrypted traffic, without the need for Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) decryption. As part of the acquisition, Braintrace’s developers, data scientists and security analysts have joined Sophos’ global Managed Threat Response (MTR) and Rapid Response teams. Sophos’ MTR and Rapid Response services business has expanded rapidly, establishing Sophos as one of the largest and fastest-growing MDR providers in the world, with more than 5,000 active customers. Braintrace’s NDR technology will support Sophos’ MTR and Rapid Response analysts and Extended Detection and

Joe Levy

Chief Technology Officer, Sophos Response (XDR) customers through integration into the Adaptive Cybersecurity Ecosystem, which underpins all Sophos products and services. The Braintrace technology will also serve as the launchpad to collect and forward third-party event data from firewalls, proxies, virtu-

Joe Levy, CTO, Sophos said,“We’re particularly excited that Braintrace built this technology specifically to provide better security outcomes to their Managed Detection and Response (MDR) customers. It’s hard to beat the effectiveness of solutions built by teams of skilled practitioners and developers to solve real world cybersecurity problems.” Sophos will deploy Braintrace’s NDR technology as a virtual machine, fed from traditional observability points such as a Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN) port or a network Test Access Point (TAP) to inspect both north-south traffic at boundaries or east-west traffic within networks. AUGUST 2021 / CXO DX

» NEWS

BEYONDTRUST INTRODUCES NEW PRIVILEGE MANAGEMENT FOR WINDOWS & MAC New integrations with ServiceNow, VirusTotal, and MFA streamline workflows and enhance security Beyond Trust has announced further product enhancements and integrations to its BeyondTrust Privilege Management for Windows & Mac (PMWM) product. The latest feature enhancements include: Multifactor (MFA) Integration: Any MFA provider can now be integrated via the Open ID Connect (OIDC) protocol, and MFA messaging can be combined with other message types such as challenge/response to vastly improve security. Advanced Parent Tracking: This new feature is an enhancement of Trusted Application Protection and Application Control and tracks the use of COM and WMI as methods of creating child processes (Windows only). ServiceNow (SNOW) Integration: For BeyondTrust customers who use ServiceNow to manage IT-related tickets, this new integration enables their end-users to make requests for approval directly

into ServiceNow as a ticket. Reputation-Based Analytics with VirusTotal Integration: Bring insight and information directly to Privilege Management for Windows & Mac reporting to make better, more secure decisions on whether an application should be allowed or blocked. Export to CSV: BeyondTrust has added CSV export capabilities within the Privilege Management Cloud console, making export of all data for subsequent manipulation and sharing easier than ever across Computers, Groups, Policies, Users, and Audit Activity. Web Policy Updates: These features improve the user experience, and include: • Creating and deleting customized messaging, allowing further personalization for end-users • Updating Challenge/Response key configuration for easier setup and management • Adding applications via template, mak-

Dan DeRosa

Chief Product Officer, BeyondTrust

ing it easier to add new rules to policies “The latest Privilege Management for Windows & Mac releases exemplify our innovative approach to Endpoint Privilege Management, by focusing on capabilities related to enabling endpoint security,” says Dan DeRosa, Chief Product Officer at BeyondTrust. “With the massive shift of endpoints outside of the traditional perimeter as a result of the remote working expansion, it’s more critical than ever to protect them from the threats of ransomware and other threats.”

CYBEREASON ACQUIRES EMPOW TO ENHANCE XDR Powerful predictive Algorithm and 70+ Technical integrations added to Cybereason XDR company based in Tel Aviv. The empow acquisition adds innovative predictive response technology, a library of out-ofthe-box data integrations, and top-tier engineering and product talent. These capabilities will be incorporated into the Cybereason XDR offerings to further deliver on the company’s mission to end cyber attacks on the endpoint, across enterprise, to everywhere the battle is taking place.

Lior Div

CEO, Co-Founder, Cybereason Cybereason has announced the acquisition of empow, a security analytics

CXO DX / AUGUST 2021

The acquisition of empow will enable the integration of empow's patented prediction technology into Cybereason XDR. This powerful ML prediction algorithm anticipates attacker intent and next steps by seamlessly correlating inputs from the entire cyber ecosystem, combining endpoint, network, identity and

application telemetry. empow’s adaptive decision-making engine formulates preventative defense measures in real-time to detect, respond to and end malicious activity at the earliest stages of an attack. “The parallels between the evolution of the Cybereason solution over the last few years and the more recent development of the empow offerings are astounding,” said Cybereason co-founder and CEO Lior Div. “When we really dug into the empow capabilities, we saw how complementary our approaches are to solving the critical security issues that organizations are struggling with, and we realized that bringing empow’s capabilities and team to Cybereason was both a sound business decision and a catalyst for further market disruption.”

» NEWS

ALJAMMAZ TECHNOLOGIES SIGNS DISTRIBUTION AGREEMENT WITH HEWLETT PACKARD ENTERPRISE The distributor will enable their partner ecosystem to deliver edge-to-cloud empowered solutions from HPE

Through this agreement both organizations plan to jointly develop and enable their partner ecosystem to deliver next generation edge-to-cloud empowered solutions from HPE to support the digitization of the economy in Saudi Arabia in line with Saudi Vision 2030. By working with HPE, AlJammaz is looking to help accelerate its partners’ digital transformation journeys.

AlJammaz Technologies, a leading distributor and cloud aggregator in Saudi, GCC and the Middle East, signed a distribution agreement with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) for distribution coverage across Saudi Arabia. With this partnership, AlJammaz Technologies is authorized to distribute Innovative edge-to-cloud solutions from across the HPE portfolio, including Compute, Storage, Software and Intelligent Edge. AlJammaz will also offer solutions as-a-service via the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform, as well as a wide range of networking solutions from Aruba.

“We’re excited about our partnership with HPE and look forward to empowering our channel partner ecosystem of System Integrators, MSP’s, CSP’s, VAR’s and local ISV’s to deliver next generation edge to cloud solutions for digital transformation with market leading offerings from HPE and Aruba. With our vast experience and resources, at AlJammaz Technologies our team will assist HPE to recruit the right mix of new partners, empower and enable existing channel partners across Saudi Arabia,” said Eng. Asim AlJammaz CEO of AlJammaz Technologies. “We are very excited about our partnership with AlJammaz Technologies in Saudi Arabia. There is a great opportunity for both organizations to work together and unlock the full potential of our HPE GreenLake edge to cloud platform,” said Issa Al-khamees, Saudi Arabia & Gulf MD at Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

VIRSEC HIGHLIGHTS NEED FOR APPLICATION-AWARE WORKLOAD PROTECTION The Virsec Security Platform delivers a solution for container workload protection with runtime visibility and zero-dwell-time defense Virsec, a leader in application-aware workload protection, announced that regional companies emerging out of the pandemic are accelerating their investments into digital transformation. They are increasingly concerned about the everyday announcements of cybersecurity compromises at large and medium enterprises, global and regional. As organizations face growing sophistication of cyberattacks, the demand for effective solutions is skyrocketing. Advanced attack techniques, that execute at runtime in the memory layer, have become mainstream and companies are struggling to combat them. Virsec Security Platform delivers a powerful solution for container workload protection with runtime visibility and ze-

ro-dwell-time defense throughout running container images, including binaries, libraries, interpreted code, and memory. “It is imperative we change the way we think about the protection of our assets and infrastructure. Conventional security tools, like blacklisting models, were designed to address yesterday’s challenges, and we can’t continue to accept these offerings as the ideal option to mitigate advanced threat scenarios,” said Bobby Gupta, Senior Vice President and Managing Director International, Virsec. With more than 50 patents, Virsec provides application-aware workload protection platform that incorporates System Integrity Assurance, Application Control and Memory Protection into a single solution. Virsec delivers in-depth visibility across the entire workload and detects

Bobby Gupta

SVP & MD International, Virsec and blocks known and unknown threats that remain concealed by heuristic and endpoint security solutions. The Virsec solution maps the expected performance of each application on a workload and protects the memory those applications use to execute. AUGUST 2021 / CXO DX

» NEWS

CHECK POINT SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGIES EXPANDS SUPPORT FOR ALIBABA CLOUD Integration of Check Point CloudGuard with Alibaba Cloud will offer advanced security and visibility across entire cloud infrastructure for organizations bone of Alibaba Group and a global leader in cloud computing and artificial intelligence. Alibaba Cloud’s customers will benefit from enhanced cloud network security and posture management, while other organizations have the opportunity to leverage Alibaba Cloud within their multi-cloud environments.

Itai Greenberg

VP, Product Management & Product Marketing, Check Point Software Technologies

Check Point Software Technologies announced that it is extending its multi-cloud support through the integration of Check Point CloudGuard with Alibaba Cloud, the digital intelligence and technology back-

Through the integration, organizations will benefit from advanced security and visibility across their entire cloud infrastructure, thanks to the ability to: • Deploy advanced security capabilities including firewall, Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), application control, Internet Protocol Security Virtual Private Network (IPsec VPN), antivirus, threat prevention, anti-bot, and more. • Gain visibility across their entire cloud infrastructure with a fully unified, integrated cloud native solution. • Achieve and maintain compliance with a robust library of out-of-the-box compliance

and governance rulesets, as well as easy customization with Check Point’s Governance Specification Language (GSL) builder. Check Point CloudGuard Posture Management enables organisations to visualise and assess their cloud security posture across various platforms including Alibaba Cloud, and detect and remediate misconfiguration. “Check Point CloudGuard offers enterprises unified and automated cloud native security across multi-cloud environments. As more enterprises move to the cloud, many are looking for the best solutions to manage their security and compliance posture across their entire cloud infrastructure. Our support of Alibaba Cloud will enable them to receive advanced security and visibility while maintaining continuous compliance,” said Itai Greenberg, VP of Product Management and Product Marketing, Check Point Software Technologies.

CRAYON WINS MICROSOFT PARTNER OF THE YEAR AWARD FOR KSA Recognition was for providing outstanding solutions and services in Saudi Arabia Awards were classified in various categories, with honorees chosen from a set of more than 4,400 submitted nominations from more than 100 countries worldwide. Crayon was recognized for providing outstanding solutions and services in Saudi Arabia.

Crayon, a global leader in IT services and innovation, has announced it has won the Saudi Arabia 2021 Microsoft Partner of the Year Award. The company was honored among a global field of top Microsoft partners for demonstrating excellence in innovation and implementation of customer solutions based on Microsoft technology. “We are honored to be recognized as the Microsoft Partner of the Year for the Kingdom as it is a strong testimony of our commitment in establishing a solid customer-centric organization in Saudi Arabia,” said Feras Bilto, Country Manager for Crayon Saudi Arabia. “Our team strives towards driving impact in our communities and ecosystems. The exceptional circumstances from the pandemic era highlighted how our partnership with Microsoft really made a difference in helping students adopt distant learning and customers in enabling their employees to work remotely.”

CXO DX / AUGUST 2021

Ziad Rizk

CEO Crayon Middle East & Africa

The Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards recognize Microsoft partners that have developed and delivered outstanding Microsoft-based solutions during the past year.

“As part of the Saudi 2030 vision, we are witnessing an incredible and ambitious journey where Technology and Digital Transformation is at the core. Our strong partnership with Microsoft, along with this award, further validates and accelerates Crayon’s ambitions in the Kingdom, in making it a regional hub for our Digital Transformation, AI and Cloud services. We are truly excited for what the future holds for Saudi and the positive impact that the Crayon and Microsoft partnership can have on it,” said Ziad Rizk, CEO Crayon Middle East & Africa.

» NEWS

INGRAM MICRO SIGNS DISTRIBUTION AGREEMENT WITH CROWDSTRIKE Ingram Micro, a global technology and supply chain services provider, announced the signing of a distribution agreement with CrowdStrike, a leader in cloud-delivered endpoint and workload protection. This agreement will scale Ingram Micros’s training, quoting, and fulfillment of CrowdStrike to reseller partners in the region. Dr. Ali Baghdadi, SVP & Chief Executive Ingram Micro META Region and EMEA Cyber Security commented, “We are delighted to team with CrowdStrike, a company recognized as a leader in endpoint protection by security professionals, industry analysts, and independent testing organizations across the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Pakistan.” The demand for cybersecurity has been driving millions in investments for in-

stitutions of all sizes, Baghdadi continued. “Companies of all sizes are increasingly vulnerable to cyber-attacks that can generate significant financial losses and other irreparable corporate risks such as those related to compliance and GDPR. We believe in the ability of CrowdStrike’s Falcon platform to help meet this growing market demand, as platform is flexible and extensible when it comes to meeting our customers’ endpoint security needs.” “We are excited to welcome Ingram Micro as a CrowdStrike partner,” said Mohamad Bitar, CrowdStrike’s Regional Alliances Manager, META. “Their deeply experienced and dedicated technical team has the ability to reach customers and resellers across the Gulf. Ingram Micro also has a wide scope, focusing on SMBs and mid-market and replacing legacy antivirus for customers.”

Dr. Ali Baghdadi

SVP & Chief Executive Ingram Micro META Region and EMEA

SERVICENOW UNVEILS SOLUTIONS TO SUPPORT HYBRID WORK ENVIRONMENTS New updates respond to hybrid work environment demands for flexible, agile workplace service management applications ServiceNow has announced updates to its Workplace Service Delivery solution to support employees and facilities teams in an increasingly hybrid work environment that demands flexible, agile workplace service management applications. ServiceNow gives employees a consumer-grade mobile experience to reserve workspaces, conference rooms and services and navigate workplaces. For businesses, ServiceNow’s Workplace Service Delivery solution provides the data and insights needed to better inform real estate costs and optimization. New features of Workplace Service Delivery include: • Intelligent and intuitive reservation capabilities in the Workplace Reservation Management application for a consumer-grade reservation experience. • Workplace Reservation Management already makes it simple for employees to

• The Workplace Space Management app provides facilities teams with a single solution to measure and define spaces as flexible or permanent and retire old spaces to optimize a company’s real estate portfolio. • New mapping enhancements help employees locate permanent or reserved workspaces, find and reserve conference rooms or workspaces near teams, and navigate their work campus with ease.

Blake McConnell

SVP, Employee Workflow Products, ServiceNow reserve workspaces, desks and conference rooms. • New space utilization capabilities within the Workplace Space Management application help facilities teams optimize real estate spend.

“The pandemic accelerated companies’ digital transformation efforts as they looked to create great experiences for their employees and customers,” said Blake McConnell, SVP of Employee Workflow Products at ServiceNow. “Now companies need to leverage their digital transformation investments as they plan for a return-to-workplace that drives employee productivity and supports the hybrid workplace.” AUGUST 2021 / CXO DX

» SPOTLIGHT

THE FUTURE OF WORK IN FOCUS An engrossing virtual summit set up the first half of the inaugural Future Workspace Summit & Awards with the focus on the impact of technologies in redefining the workspace

he inaugural Future Workspace Summit & Awards organized by Leap Media Solutions, publishers of CXO DX, the region’s leading content platform for the CXO community, was held on 28th July. The event followed a hybrid format with a virtual summit in the day followed by a physical Awards ceremony in the evening. The summit’s focus was to examine defining role of technology in enabling and securing the future of work. The virtual summit held via an engaging online platform through the course of the day and through several sessions of keynotes and panel discussions addressed the significant topic of the role of Technology in reimagining the future of work, at the office or from anywhere as the workforce becomes more distributed. The virtual 3D event Platform also featured exhibitor booths and several other features, enhancing the opportunities for interaction between attendees and speakers as well as exhibitors.

CXO DX / AUGUST 2021

The Panel discussion ‘Workspace Transformation – Best Practices and Challenges’ looked at how workspace transformation is a long term change being accelerated by the unprecedented challenges since the initial days of the pandemic. The second panel discussion on ‘Strategies for Multicloud Adoption’ highlighted how organizations are looking at leveraging the best of the cloud by cherry picking best cloud services from different cloud vendors and how they are implementing and consolidating their multi cloud infrastructure. The third panel discussion ‘Role of Edge Computing in disrupting Key Industries’ brought into focus how Edge Computing with its distributed computing topology helps eliminate some of the bottlenecks of cloud computing and also addressed various aspects of how edge computing will a potential game changer for many industries in extending their services. The 4th and final panel discussed ‘Role of SASE, ZTNA and XDR in Redefining Security’. The keynote speakers were Ben Mc-

Donald, Middle East Marketing Lead, Dell Technologies; Ali Shabdar, Regional Director MEA, Zoho; Sameer Semaan, Channel Manager Middle East, Pure Storage; Claude Schuck, Regional Sales Director Middle East, Veeam; Vaidy Panchabikesan; Regional Sales Director, Kissflow; Ajay Nawani, Director Sales Engineering, MEA, Sophos; Abhinav Guha, Senior Security Architect, Mindfire Technologies; Rakesh Mathiselvan, Lead Solutions Engineer, Freshworks. The Summit sponsors included Dell Technologies and Mindware as the Platinum sponsors. The event’s Gold sponsors included Pure Storage & VAD Technologies, Kissflow, Zoho, Sophos, Microsoft, Veeam, Redington, Mindfire Technologies as well as Freshworks. HCL, Knowlarity & Infoblox were the silver sponsors. D-Link was the Networking Partner, Finesse, the Awards partner and the Exhibition partners included Human Logic and Gamalearn.

» SPOTLIGHT

HIGHLIGHTS OF PANEL DISCUSSION ON ‘WORKSPACE TRANSFORMATION – BEST PRACTICES AND CHALLENGES’ Piyush Chowhan, CIO, Lulu Group: “While digital transformation isn’t new, during Covid the pace of digital transformation has quickened. Consumers have transformed and organizations have to keep up with that pace of transformation. For organizations who have been slow and were looking at transformation programs over a period of 3-5 years, the luxury of time is no longer available. Workforce transformation needs to be a key pillar of the transformation efforts. For instance digital collaboration tools and methodologies need to be used effectively.” Mubarik Hussain, Director of IT, Bloom Holding: “We had already invested in cloud based solutions including security and were looking to move more workloads to the cloud. In the last one year, they have come in handy. There has been a huge learning curve. People adopted quickly and operation carried on seamlessly across our multiple lines of Business. One of the interesting aspects of transformation is that culturally, you need to accept the change and adopt. Culture plays a huge role and so along with the hard side of it with technology investments, the soft side of it in terms of the culture in the organization and ability to embed the change required.” Umesh Moolchandani, Group IT Head, Bin Dasmal Group: “Suddenly there was a need to adopt quickly to the external challenges resulting from the pandemic. We were already leveraging the benefits of cloud and online tools. Certain job roles were comfortable with work from home but certain jobs profile in production, operations and deliveries needed people to come to the workplace. We had to adopt to the situation and con-

tinue supporting the business in dealing with suppliers and customers during the challenging times. We had to have some workforce working remotely and the challenges included configuring the systems according to their needs and also training them to use the collaboration tools on a regular basis.” Alisagar Bohari, Senior Director IT, Zulekha Hospital “It was important for everyone to be connected with the systems including doctors, front end and backend staff. We had to make sure they were available. Secured remote access to doctors was already in place even prior to Covid so as to enable them to check patient records and prescribe treatment as required. Post Covid, we had to give the remote access to back office staff such as those involved in the insurance claims processing. This is now the new normal. Some people were stuck in home countries and couldn’t travel and so a secure remote access option was a blessing to ensure work carried on. However, in healthcare, you still needed the staff to be in the hospital.”

Vaidy Panchabikesan, Regional Sales Director, Kissflow: “The workplace is no longer a physical location. It is a digital workplace and can be anything from basic set of tools like virtual meeting, social media and workflow tools. Digital workplace is a cloud based platform that allows employees to move from a physical workplace to a digital one and it contains all tools required including application, data tools and collaboration options. It is kind of an employee experience platform and providing this and enabling our customers has been our focus.” Prem Anand, Regional Manager, MEA at Zoho Corporation: “The first question organizations had to face was do they have the right tools to work from home? We shifted to work from home in February 2020. That was one of the biggest decisions. Since we were technology ready on the cloud, we didn’t feel the disruption. The organizations that didn’t have remote tools in place had faced challenges. We helped several of these companies transform to a remote work culture.” AUGUST 2021 / CXO DX

» SPOTLIGHT

HIGHLIGHTS OF PANEL DISCUSSION ON ‘STRATEGIES FOR MULTI-CLOUD ADOPTION’ Jaleel Rahiman, Director – IT & PRIME Digital, PRIME Healthcare Group LLC: “Healthcare has certain constraints as a sector because of the sensitive nature of patient data. There are restrictions on hosting data outside the country that limits our cloud strategies. The core applications are still on the private cloud or on Premise and then we have non -core applications hosted on public clouds. Cloud adoption is also by basis of cloud solutions available. Most solutions are available on cloud and it will be a mixed bag of cloud solutions in your environment hosted on different cloud providers but in healthcare, the core applications in healthcare will stay largely on private cloud than on public cloud.” Dr. Nasser Almurqab, COO, University Of Dubai: “ University of Dubai has been using different clouds since set up. There is sensitive data about students and faculty members that are hosted in private cloud. Others like HR, workflow of internal processes, the LMS and others like Library databases are on clouds hosted by different cloud service providers. We have a multi cloud strategy but rely on private cloud for sensitive data. Managing the costs and complexity is a challenge in a multi cloud environment. Determining the right cloud for every application or service is a challenge. Keeping up with upgrades is a challenge as well. And challenges also multiply with respect to ensuring data protection housed in different places.” Vinay Sharma, Group IT Director, Gulftainer: “Logistics needs real time information and availability of systems and latency play a big role. So multicloud is a core part of our strategy and we have moved our systems recently to a multi cloud architecture to maximize best in class services from a combination of private cloud, public cloud and hybrid cloud. This gives the opportunity to accelerate digital transformation.” Gigi Mathew Thomas, Group Head –

CXO DX / AUGUST 2021

IT & Digital Transformation, Ittihad International Investment LLC: “Being in the investment holding spectrum, there are many scenarios that we come to face with from having solutions hosted on premise to a hybrid cloud and then with acquisitions we make that could be on different cloud environments, leading to a multicloud environment. As far as adopting cloud services, each of the cloud providers and aggregators come with their strength in terms of specialized services and offerings, which we can choose to leverage.”

Amjad Boka, Systems Engineer at Pure Storage: “We have seen lots of customers moving to the cloud of late. Vendors are providing infrastructure for customers to be able to use the cloud and multi cloud. For instance, you can move containers between on premise and clouds and this flexibility gives customers the freedom to adopt multi cloud. We have crease Pure as a service wherein you can buy a prescription which you can use anywhere on premise or in any public cloud to help our customers and we have seen a lot of adoption.”

HIGHLIGHTS OF PANEL DISCUSSION O SASE, ZTNA AND XDR IN REDEFINING Sultan Al-Owais, Director IT, Ministry of Cabinet Affairs: “We have more agility today in adopting cloud Technologies to get the work done for organizations from an IT stand point but that does allow for a myriad number of weaknesses and configuration mistakes, necessitating a different approach to controls for preventing such cyberattacks. The emergent approaches of SASE, Zero Trust, XDR etc are extensions to what we should have been doing along, except for the fact that the threat factors are more pronounced because everything is in the cloud, whereas in the earlier era our networks were more limited in terms of access by eternal threat factors.”

» SPOTLIGHT

HIGHLIGHTS OF PANEL DISCUSSION ON ‘ROLE OF EDGE COMPUTING IN DISRUPTING KEY INDUSTRIES’ George Akhras, CIO, AMSI: “Edge computing resolves the issues of latency that one may face with cloud computing. In this age, customer experience is paramount and to take care of that, speed and accuracy of services is most important, which edge computing helps achieve.” Arun Tewary, Strategy Advisor and Director, Finesse:“Although the term is becoming prominent now, it has existed for long. Organizations cannot afford a centralized cloud processing for all transactions. What processing can be done at the source is done and with adequate results achieved. So edge computing a computing topology will be a dominant trend. Claude Schuck, Regional Sales Director Middle East, Veeam: “The pandemic has obviously enhanced the need for edge to be more accessible, more user friendly and computing and for transactions at the edge. Edge means decentralized from a data point of view how you are securing and accessing the data at the edge or the entry point is important because all that data is required by the

ON ‘ROLE OF G SECURITY’

company for streamlining its performance.”

customer experience, delivering information at the edge is important.”

Saymaad Mansoor, Head of IT, Siddco: “We live in an era where data means everything. Millennials are becoming a major focus as a customer segment and they want information instantly regarding products and services while the existing customers aren’t getting any younger. There has to be a balance and to enhance

Tamer Hamed, Group CIO, Ducab: “In the last couple of year and specifically last year has been a game changer in terms of automation. There is a great demand for automation. They see automation as a key driver of agility. Within manufacturing, supply chain has to be a key focus for automation as it is the bread and butter in the sector.”

Dr. Lt.Col. Hamad Khalifa Al Nuaimi, Head of Telecommunications division, IT Center, Abu Dhabi Police General HQ: since the pandemic started, most work is happening remotely. Cyber attacks have increases with increased use of cloud services. There is a need for more trust among users of cloud services. The government entities are being encouraged to digital transformation. Cybersecurity awareness must be enhanced. The future is to enhance services and secure them as well for access from anywhere anytime. Abhinav Guha, Senior Security Architect, Mindfire Technologies: “The

offensive side of security and ethical cybersecurity as an afterthought. Skillsets that comes along with offensive security vis a vis the skillsets with defensive security are not comparable and is in favor of the offensive side. Defensive security is reactive and that is where the focus is going. If you understand your offensive capabilities better, you are better equipped to deal with the threats.” Dr. Mohammad Khaled, Safe Digital Though Leader: “Cybersecurity has to be an integral part of the digital transformation initiatives. It has to be embedded in policies and included from the earliest stages even before we start the digital journey and move towards integrating IT and OT systems etc.”

AUGUST 2021 / CXO DX

» FUTURE WORKSPACE AWARDS 2021

A FITTING GRAND FINALE

spectacular Awards gala brought up a fitting grand finale to the inaugural Future Workspace Summit & Awards, held on the 28th of July at the Mandarin Oriental in Jumeriah, Dubai. The Future Workspace Awards held by CXO DX honored the stalwarts from the IT domain who are spearheading the IT initiatives of their respective organizations and in keeping their organizations up to speed even in the face of the pandemic and have some recent deployments that have led to successful Business transformation. Awards were presented in CIO and CISO categories across different verticals. Awards were also presented organizations for some outstanding initiatives by over the past year that have enhanced their digital capabilities. In addition, there were also awards presented in vendor and distributor categories.

CXO DX / AUGUST 2021

» FUTURE WORKSPACE AWARDS 2021

CIO OF THE YEAR AWARDS

Jaleel Rahiman, Director IT & PRIME Digital, Prime Healthcare Group

Aliasgar Bohari, Senior Director IT , Zulekha Hospital

Mubaraka Mubarak Ibrahim, Acting CIO, Information Sector - Director of Health Information Systems

Mustansir Aziz, Head of IT Gulf Diagnostic Center Hospital

Dr. Nasser Almuraqab COO and Director of IT, University of Dubai.

Joseph Aninias, Director, Information Management & Technology, Abu Dhabi AUGUST 2021 / CXO DX

» FUTURE WORKSPACE AWARDS 2021

CIO OF THE YEAR AWARDS

Shabeer Mohammed, Head of Technology GEMS Education

Nithin Geo Thomas, Head of IT Amity Education Middle East

Sunil Nair, IT Head Al Falah University

Samit Jha, Director of IT Laticrete International

Saymaad Mansoor, Head of IT Speed House

Shailesh Mani, GM-IT Flemingo International

CXO DX / AUGUST 2021

» FUTURE WORKSPACE AWARDS 2021

Sumith Poolappan, Head - IT Operations, Strategy & Governance, flydubai

Javeria Aijaz, Senior Director Technology & Innovations at Farnek Services

Manish Bindra, Group CIO Galadari Brothers

Umesh Moolchandani, Group IT Head Bin Dasmal Group

Gigi Mathew Thomas, Group Head - IT & Digital Transformation, Ittihad International Investments LLC.

Anindo Banerjee, Head of Information Technology, Dubai Holding Entertainment AUGUST 2021 / CXO DX

» FUTURE WORKSPACE AWARDS 2021

CIO OF THE YEAR AWARDS

Brigadier Khalid Nasser Alrazooqi, General Director Artificial Intelligence Department at Dubai Police

Younis Othman, CIO/Director of IT Department Dubai Customs

Khalfan Matar Al Hassani, Director Monitoring and Control Centre

Sultan Al-Owais, Director IT Ministry of Cabinet Affairs

Sheeba Hasnain, CIO, (Confidential)

CXO DX / AUGUST 2021

» FUTURE WORKSPACE AWARDS 2021

CISO OF THE YEAR AWARDS

Finto Thomas, Head of Security Alef Education

Mohannad Hennawi, IT Head, NAFFCO

Amar Prakash, Information Security Manager First Abu Dhabi Bank

Anoop Kumar, Information Security Manager Gulf News, Al Nisr Publishing AUGUST 2021 / CXO DX

» FUTURE WORKSPACE AWARDS 2021

WORKSPACE TRANSFORMATION OF THE YEA

Zulekha Hospital

University of Dubai

Abu Dhabi University

Laticrete International

CXO DX / AUGUST 2021

» FUTURE WORKSPACE AWARDS 2021

AR AWARDS

Smart Umm Al Quwain

Lulu Group International

Sharjah Finance Department

Galadari Brothers

Blue LLC AUGUST 2021 / CXO DX

» FUTURE WORKSPACE AWARDS 2021

FUTURE ACCELERATORS OF THE YEAR

Seham El Behissy, Product & Connected Services, GM Renault Africa India Middle East Pacific

VENDOR OF THE YEAR AWARDS

Enterprise Vendor of the Year Dell Technologies

CXO DX / AUGUST 2021

Business Software Vendor of the Year Kissflow

» FUTURE WORKSPACE AWARDS 2021

VENDOR OF THE YEAR AWARDS

Data Management Vendor of the Year Veeam

CX Vendor of the Year Freshworks

Enterprise Storage Vendor of the Year Pure Storage

SMB Networking Vendor of the Year D-Link

Cloud Telephony Vendor of the Year Knowlarity AUGUST 2021 / CXO DX

» FUTURE WORKSPACE AWARDS 2021

DISTRIBUTOR OF THE YEAR AWARDS

Remote Work Solutions VAD of the Year Logicom

Storage Distributor of the Year VAD Technologies

Retail Distributor of the Year Redington Gulf

CXO DX / AUGUST 2021

Cybersecurity VAD of the Year Ingram Micro

Cloud Aggregator of the Year Redington Value

Enterprise VAD of the Year Mindware

Managed Security Services Provider of the Year Mindfire Technologies

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» INSIGHT

THREE CHALLENGES TO MEET AS BUSINESSES TRANSITION TO WORKING FROM ANYWHERE Kristine Dahl Steidel, Vice President, End User Computing, EMEA, VMware explains on how to work towards resolving the key challenges while embracing remote work from anywhere With almost two thirds (62%) of UAE organisations saying they realize the benefits of remote work and can’t go back to the way they used to be , it’s clear that the concept of ‘work’ underwent a major shift due to COVID-19. In the main, this forced change in working practices has been a success, and the hybrid approach in allowing employees to work from anywhere is now gaining ground. But as we move from the short-term ‘band-aid’ IT fixes of the last 12 months to longer term solutions, these same teams are having to build the capabilities to support a more permanent distributed, ‘anywhere working’ model. After a year of scrambling to make sure employees can be productive from home, and moving into the next phase of what work can really look like – to working from anywhere – what challenges do IT teams face? Investments in workspace technology have largely followed working models: office-first and remote maybe second or third. In a distributed working model, digital-first has to be the compass. Here are the top three challenges they will need to conquer to ensure this transition works – for the IT team, for employees, for customers, and for commercial and talent competitiveness. Challenge 1: From friction to frictionless employee experiences The scramble to enable remote working was all about one thing – access. Overnight, IT teams had to equip employees with digital tools and put in place processes and solutions that would give them access to applications and data to do their job. A year on and employees continue to be plagued by inconsistent, unconnected experiences across mobile and PCs. That's because IT were building these processes and solutions on siloed, on-premise PC management tools unsuitable for an anywhere workforce.

CXO DX / AUGUST 2021

Moving forward, IT teams need to ensure their workforce can reliably access applications and data, on whatever mobile or desktop device they are using and get IT support when they need it. Reliable connection is also key; poor experiences with VPNs can mean work slowing or stopping altogether. The focus has to be on removing digital friction that impacts productivity. It helps improve employee wellbeing and provides a sense of connection. This in turn, helps companies retain and attract talent at a time when these experiences increasingly influence people’s choice of job and company. Providing these frictionless experiences will require investment in a hybrid architecture, which offers a more streamlined, continuous experience. The future anywhere workforce is all about enabling a multi-modal work experience and giving employees a choice of devices with high-quality experiences.

Challenge 2: From fragmented security to zero trust

Overnight remote working meant taking trusted PCs, laptops and phones out of a corporate network and the protective ‘bubble’ of the office. Within the bubble, employees were able to access applications safely inside the data centre. Outside it, meant moving endpoints and applications out to a distributed edge where, if an attacker penetrated through one endpoint, the brand and collateral damage could be far higher. Removing the traditional corporate firewall protections and putting in bolton security solutions left IT systems, devices and applications vulnerable. It’s unsurprising that the rise in remote working in 2020 coincided with 80% of organisations experiencing cyberattacks. Now, IT has to manage an increasingly bigger attack surface as users, endpoints and applications spread further and further out across a company’s network. CIOs and their teams recognise that current tools, reliant on the traditional network security approach with a static perimeter are ineffective. With mobile, cloud, IoT, and edge computing, the network has become blurred and there are now numerous entry points, making assets behind the perimeter increasingly difficult to defend. As user, endpoints and applications become 'anywhere', so must security. It has to be the brains behind what you deploy no matter where the user is, they must be treated the same. That means zero trust.

» INSIGHT How the security operations centre (SOC) conducts itself has also needed to adapt. No longer seen as ‘mission control’, the SOC must break silos down between teams and learn to collaborate and manage the security operations of the business remotely. Based on the concept of “never trust, always verify” the zero trust approach doesn't trust anything either inside or outside an organisation’s network. It also removes the broad level of access that comes with a traditional network perimeter, which presents a large attack surface and lateral movement without scrutiny. But this only works if IT teams build security in from the start rather than bolting it on as an afterthought. They need to move away from the approach of trying to prevent breaches at all costs to building intrinsic security into everything – the application, network, anything that carries data - right from the start.

Challenge 3: From operational complexity to simplicity

The sudden move to remote work meant companies urgently invested in tools and applications that would help with collaboration, productivity and access – from team chat apps and video conferencing to remote desktop software and focus apps. At the time, they offered quick fixes to allow employees to do their job. But, integrating so many solutions in such a short space of time is not always successful and a year on, IT teams find themselves with a complex mix of multiple tools and siloed teams managing those tools. To remove this complexity will require two steps. They need to first untangle the web that they have found themselves in by simplifying and streamlining. This means considering carefully which tools are being used the most and which aren’t. Secondly, they need to grow the variety of devices and platforms that are needed for the future anywhere workforce by looking at where there are holes in the employee experience or areas of friction. It's all about scalable solutions. Existing virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), digital workspace and security solutions might have allowed employees to start working from home quickly during the pandemic, but can they scale for the long term, as a growing number of employees expect seamless remote-work experiences? If solutions can’t scale, distributed workers could be plagued with productivity-sapping availability issues while IT administrators become overwhelmed with complexity. It's also about automation. Modern IT needs to work for every functional group within the organisation - IT, development, operations, employees, information security. For example, automatically detecting and patching security vulnerabilities to help protect endpoints before they become enterprise-wide risks. It makes the lives of the IT teams easier and gives them back time to spend on realising the future anywhere workforce.

The new permanent

Change isn’t just about the physical equipment or experiences, it’s also about mindset. The crisis forced change at a rate that many didn’t think possible. But to make these IT investments successful long-term means also changing the cultural mindset within the organisation, removing traditional biases around remote working and recognising that work is what you do, not where you do it.

Kristine Dahl Steidel

Vice President, End User Computing, EMEA, VMware

"The focus has to be on removing digital friction that impacts productivity. It helps improve employee wellbeing and provides a sense of connection. This in turn, helps companies retain and attract talent at a time when these experiences increasingly influence people’s choice of job and company." As the dust begins to settle on the last year, we can see more clearly where band-aid solutions put in place to temporarily solve challenges - rapid deployment of devices to home locations or sudden investments in different collaboration tools - have become opportunities for CIOs and their teams to establish a digital-first investment strategy for the future. Employees have become comfortable with flexible working and the realisation that they don’t need to live in expensive cities to work for a certain type of company. If they wish to compete for market share, talent and recognition, organisations will need to invest now for what is a foregone conclusion – that anywhere working is here to stay. AUGUST 2021 / CXO DX

» INSIGHT

RANSOMWARE REALITY IS BITING, SO HOW DO BUSINESSES BITE BACK? Dave Russell, VP, Enterprise Strategy, Veeam a clamp down on ransomware is going to require international co-operation and government action beyond anything we’ve seen in the cybersecurity sphere

ansomware attacks have bitten a gaping hole in the pockets of businesses who are having to pay extortionate ransoms in response to highly targeted attacks by sophisticated criminal organisations. The problem has only worsened with the onset of mass remote working. The extension of the office’s boundaries into online and remote locations has exposed severe vulnerabilities, and criminals are all too willing to take advantage.

continue exploiting this lucrative illegal market, as is evident from the 600% uplift in attacks since COVID-19 first emerged.

Right now, a new ransomware attack will occur every 11 seconds. To put this in context, in the five minutes it takes you to read this article, 27 businesses will have been attacked by ransomware. The best piece of advice on ransomware is not to give in and pay. But despite the majority of businesses will pay the ransom that this attack demands. Many feel under extreme pressure to limit the damage of downtime caused by ransomware, and the quickest resolution is to pay up.

This is organised crime

It’s not a surprise that so many have chosen to pay when they’re already grappling with the challenges and pressures of operating throughout the risky business terrain that COVID-19 has created. However, this is simply encouraging cyber-attackers to

CXO DX / AUGUST 2021

On a positive note, businesses and governments have recognised that this can’t continue. Ransomware is now on the agenda of every boardroom, and even made the cut for discussion at the G7, as well as numerous other diplomatic talks between global leaders. Now is the time to think about modern data protection and its future. And now is the time to bite ransomware back. It’s easy to forget that there’s a criminal behind the ransomware that makes itself at home within your business system. While it may once have been deemed something loitering on the web and only harmful if clicked on, many are starting to recognise the severe, complex, and targeted nature that ransomware really has. This is organised crime, and it works innovatively to infiltrate your business and your supply chain. It quite honestly poses a genuine threat to entire industries and communities. So how can we start clamping down on the perpetrators behind this? The downside to such a connected and digital world means an attacker can operate in completely different areas of

» INSIGHT

" This is organised crime, and it works innovatively to infiltrate your business and your supply chain. It quite honestly poses a genuine threat to entire industries and communities.." Dave Russell

VP, Enterprise Strategy, Veeam

the world, making it difficult to prosecute using the same legal system your business is subject to. The reality is that a clamp down of this scale is going to require international co-operation and government action beyond anything we’ve seen in the cybersecurity sphere. And of course, this is going to take time, which, as you know, is something businesses don’t have when facing constant threats. Therefore, while we wait for these political interventions to happen, businesses must be fully prepared for the ongoing onslaught of ransomware attacks, especially now they’re operating in remote locations. Previous cybersecurity measures won’t be enough, we have to adapt to the enemy by deploying modern data protection measures.

think about security in the physical space because the enemies are operating in the digital one. Another important aspect is thinking about the hacker’s success rate. In many cases they’ll spend all day attacking systems. They dedicate their time to evolve and innovate their attacks to overcome the security barriers that are holding them back. We need to anticipate they will eventually be able to do this, even if the best cybersecurity defences are in place. As we can see from the number of businesses paying ransoms, an attack can cause enough damage to push businesses into paying out rather than taking alternative routes.

In the same was that a detective has to think like a criminal to solve a crime, the only way businesses will successfully protect themselves sufficiently from cyberattacks is to think like the hackers. They’re relentless, hyper-aware, and stringent. Employers and employees must act the same to stop vulnerabilities from opening up.

It’s up to every organisation across every industry to invest in modern data protection practices to minimise the impact of ransomware attacks. Viewing attacks as an inevitability is the first step towards creating a more cyber-secure culture, with employees who are more educated and aware of ransomware. At the same time, businesses need to have the right safeguards in place to minimise disruption, including anti-virus software and firewalls, plus continuous backup and recovery to offer adequate insurance against the crippling effects of ransomware.

Good digital hygiene must become second nature, as opposed to something practiced for a week following annual cyber security training, and forgotten about until the next one. Failure to patch software should create the same attention as failing to lock up the office overnight. Not having a disaster recovery plan is akin to skipping contents insurance. We can’t simply

If the worst happens, and your systems are compromised, the business won’t collapse, and the attacker won’t get everything they want. The cybersecurity landscape may feel rocky right now, but there are steps we can and should take to better protect ourselves from the damages. It’s time to bite the ransomware hackers back.

Think like a hacker

AUGUST 2021 / CXO DX

» INSIGHT

Components of Self-Service Application Delivery

Karthik Krishnaswamy Director of Product Marketing, NGINX, F5

Karthik Krishnaswamy, Director of Product Marketing for NGINX at F5 says Self-Service Application Delivery bridges the divide between developer productivity and infrastructure reliability

he modern market demands agility, flexibility, and above all speed. The faster you crank out new applications and features the better – and companies are taking note.

According to Allied Market Research, the global DevOps market generated $3.36 billion in 2017 and is expected to reach $9.40 billion by 2023. That equates to a CAGR of 18.7% from 2017 to 2023. While the opportunities ahead are vast, so too are the challenges. Infrastructure teams are now facing a new development centric reality in which they must work at the same pace as development teams to deliver the services and policies required across a complex web of data centers, cloud, and virtualized environments – all without getting in the way.

The Infrastructure Bottlenecks that Developers Dread

The rise of virtualization and containerization has helped infrastructure teams achieve more agility, shifting NetOps and SecOps teams left so they can automate infrastructure as part of the application development lifecycle. Still, infrastructure teams continue to be bottlenecks even as DevOps teams reach new heights. The reality is that infrastructure is still moving too slowly. Who wants to wait days – let alone weeks or months – to get moving? No one, and especially not developers driven by market

CXO DX / AUGUST 2021

expectations to deliver more and as quickly as possible. As a result, these bottlenecks (and how developers seek to avoid them) can pose serious risks not only to the reliability and security of applications but to the entire organization.

The Shadow IT that Infrastructure Teams Dread

Many DevOps teams seem to be finding that the best path to productivity is using emerging techniques and tools (both open source and proprietary), whether their IT team approves them or not – the “shadow IT” so dreaded by infrastructure teams. For instance, automation tools like Ansible or Terraform make life easier by deploying infrastructure as code. Or maybe a DevOps team starts using a project on GitHub that makes testing or application updates faster and integrates with existing CI/CD tooling. Why do enterprise developers turn to the dark (or at least shadowy) side? It’s because they’re focused on one end goal: releasing code fast. They often lack the context and visibility of the big picture they need in order to recognize the kinds of tool design and implementation weaknesses that can bring down mission critical apps or compromise customer data. That’s the thing about infrastructure – developers may not want to be slowed down by it, but everyone notices when something goes wrong. At the same time, curbing the freedom of developers can impair their ability to move quickly, impacting market competitiveness and revenues. It’s a catch 22 scenario. The market says move faster, but it also says be available, stable, and secure.

» INSIGHT Self-Service Empowers DevOps to Run Safely

balancers themselves in near real time, using a service portal or configuration API instead of filing a ticket with the infrastructure team. No more waiting hours, days, or even weeks to test the efficacy of the new code.

Say a company has 30 different development teams working on 50 separate microservices. How do you let them provision services, test and deploy new features, and coordinate security changes on new code without them ending up waiting six weeks to get a green light? That’s where self service comes in.

The self service load balancer sits in its own dedicated tier behind the primary, network based load balancer. Moreover, each application (or even service or microservice) gets its own dedicated load balancer instance in this tier. This ensures that each configuration change doesn’t need to be regression tested against all other applications.

How can organizations provide development teams with the freedom they need while also ensuring that infrastructure teams can do their jobs?

Given their history with DevOps and shadow IT, infrastructure teams might well believe that self service only leads to chaos. When developers are left entirely to their own devices and adopt shadow IT, they sometimes leave a trail of high costs, duplicated effort, inconsistent policies, and incompatible platforms and standards in their wake. In other words, developers are running with scissors. In many organizations, infrastructure teams see it as their responsibility to take away the scissors and make developers walk, and developers end up resenting them for it. To eliminate this friction, infrastructure teams need to adopt a new goal – not to stop developers from running, but to provide different tools that are safe to run with. Infrastructure teams need to offer app delivery and security services that integrate into CI/CD frameworks and work seamlessly with legacy apps and cloud native modern apps. This enables developers to consume infrastructure resources and security policies without ever having to file a ticket.

Three Components Of Self-Service Application Delivery

To provide self service application delivery and security, you need three primary components: a load balancer, a web application firewall (WAF), and a self service portal. All three need to work in concert with each other, and be deployed as Infrastructure as Code. Given most developers work on multiple platforms, the components also need to be infrastructure agnostic – deployable across bare metal, virtual machine, and cloud platforms. Infrastructure teams can be heroes instead of villains in the eyes of their DevOps colleagues if they start by providing services and tools that offer top notch developer experiences. Here’s a rundown of the characteristics needed to make these components self serviceable: • Self-Service Component 1: A Lightweight, Software Based Load Balancer. As they roll out new features or deploy new services, application teams need to test code. They may choose to ramp up traffic slowly to the new code (canary testing), test how users react to the new code versus old code (A/B testing), provide zero down time rollover to the new code (blue green deployment), or provide a failover mechanism in case the new code doesn’t work as desired (circuit breaker pattern). All of these testing patterns require a load balancer to direct users and traffic based on the developer’s desired outcome. In a self service environment, application teams configure app specific load

• Self-Service Component 2: An Integrated Web Application Firewall A self service load balancer boosts developer productivity by eliminating processes that slow the release of new code. For the enterprise to minimize risk of exploits in this new code, however, a WAF is needed. But there’s a catch: WAFs are not necessarily easy to configure. In fact, many application teams see WAFs as an impediment they’d rather avoid. That’s where an integrated WAF comes in. Just as with the load balancer, enterprises need a lightweight, software based WAF that can sit closer to the app – running near or in the same instance as the software load balancer. Think of each application as a room in a house. A self service load balancer is the door to each of these rooms. The WAF is the lock on that door. In today’s zero trust environment, each door needs its own lock. Enterprises can no longer rely on a single security control for the whole house. The self service WAF is one where security teams can configure each WAF with fine grained security controls that are unobtrusive to the developers’ work. The same CI/CD pipeline and Infrastructure-as-Code automation that enables your canary, A/B, blue green, and circuit breaker patterns can configure necessary security policies to ensure new code is protected against known exploits, denial-of-service attacks, and bot attacks. • Self-Service Component 3: An Application-Centric Portal with RBAC Your lightweight, software based load balancer and WAF perform the heavy lifting at the data plane. However, to truly operate them in a self service environment you need a way to expose these capabilities via portals and with role based access control (RBAC). This requires additional control and management plane technologies layered atop the data plane. Specifically, a control plane provides additional configuration and orchestration capabilities. This makes your infrastructure self serviceable by enabling new instances of load balancers and WAFs to be spun up and down as needed, as well as being capable of fast configuration changes. All of this needs be exposed via an API so that it can be automated and integrated into CI/CD pipelines. On top of the control plane sits a management plane where you can create your self service portal and enforce RBAC policies. This way specific application teams only see the infrastructure that they have permission to configure. These portals need to be application centric (as opposed to infrastructure centric) so that the teams can focus on the policies, workflow, and traffic management specific to their app. AUGUST 2021 / CXO DX

» INSIGHT

W THE NEW NORMAL OF CYBER SECURITY Babur Nawaz Khan, Technical Marketing Engineer at A10 Networks discusses the rise of Zero Trust in an age of increased phishing, DDoS and ransomware attacks

hen the COVID-19 pandemic struck, cyber criminals saw their opportunity, and they took it. With corporate offices, government agencies, schools, and universities shifting from in-person to remote work models, and even many healthcare interactions moving online, the rushed nature of the transition led to inevitable cyber security gaps. Consumer broadband and personal devices undermined the corporate security stack; unsafe user practices and overlooked security patches opened ample vulnerabilities throughout the environment. Meanwhile, an anxious and often confused public proved easy prey for phishing attacks. The impact was all too predictable: phishing attacks, DDoS attacks, and ransomware attacks all spiked. Eighty percent of firms saw an increase in incidents in 2020, and the COVID-19 pandemic was blamed for a 238 percent rise in cyber attacks on banks. Phishing has jumped 600 percent since the end of February 2020.

Why Ransomware Attacks and Costs are Soaring

The pandemic-driven surge in ransomware was immediate and dramatic. Ransomware attacks rose 148 percent in March 2020, with average payments up 33 percent to $111,605 compared with Q4 2019—and reaching $170,000 by Q3 2020. While the rise in ransomware strikes likely resulted in part from greater opportunities for hackers, combined with the increased effectiveness of phishing attacks targeting news-obsessed users, a change in tactics may also have played a role. While earlier attacks generally focused on the traditional encryption-payment-decryption ransomware model, hackers are now seeking to increase their returns through data exfiltration, stealing data and offering it for sale on the black market. For ransomware victims such as government agencies, corporations, healthcare systems, and universities, the growth in data exfiltration can compound the already considerable damage of a ransomware attack beyond the ransom itself, potentially including violations of customer privacy, the loss of corporate data, and massive reg-

CXO DX / AUGUST 2021

» INSIGHT ulatory files. Add to this hidden costs such as system downtime, reduced efficiency, incidence response costs, and brand and reputation damage—bringing total global costs to more than $1 trillion each year.

Taking Data Protection Inside the Perimeter with Zero Trust

In the era of public cloud, mobility, and work-from-home, the notion of perimeter security has quickly become outdated. It’s not just that the attack surface has changed; organizations have also gained a new understanding of the identity of potential attacker, including trusted insiders who don’t even realize that they’re abetting a crime. It’s common to think of an internal threat actor as a disgruntled employee or spy undermining cyber security with ill intent, but it’s even more common for a well-meaning employee to inadvertently open the door to hackers through poor password hygiene, nonsecure practices, or the ever-popular phishing lure. While awareness and education can help lessen the risk of successful phishing and ransomware attacks, a single moment of inattention and carelessness can be enough to devastate the business. It’s safer to assume that anyone, even a trusted user with a heart of gold, can pose a security risk, and design your cyber defense strategy accordingly. Hence the rise of Zero Trust—the notion that we shouldn’t trust anything or anyone, inside or outside the network, with access to our computer systems. In practice, this means measures such as: •

•

Moving beyond the idea of inside versus outside and redesigning cyber defense in terms of secure micro-parameters, with multiple points of network defense Implementing the ability to control, inspect, and restrict network traffic traveling in any direction—northsouth or east-west—within your organization Subjecting users to checks and balances, each time they cross into a different area of the network or try to access a new set of resources, to verify their need and privileges Ensuring timeliness and preventing excess privileges from accumulating by periodically revoking and refreshing access and credentials

Babur Nawaz Khan

Technical Marketing Engineer, A10 Networks

•

Continuously monitoring who’s accessing whatand the level of risk these activities might present

Why SSl Inspection is Critical for Zero Trust

As organizations move to implement Zero Trust, they quickly run into the issue of visibility in a world of pervasive TLS/ SSL encryption. To enable fast threat detection and response times, it’s essential to be able to decrypt, inspect, and re-encrypt network traffic quickly and efficiently at scale without impairing cost or adding complexity. A centralized, dedicated SSL decryption capability makes it possible to provide visibility into network traffic for each element of the cyber security stack without the inefficiencies and per-

formance penalties of device-by-device decryption and re-encryption. Similarly, a centralized approach to management can help organizations ensure consistent and efficient policy enforcement across the security infrastructure. As a strategy rather than a product category, Zero Trust implementation requires more than simply plugging in a new box. Rather, it represents a new way of thinking about cyber security, embodied in evolving approaches to management, automation, auditability, resiliency, and integration. By approaching Zero Trust in this way, organizations can mitigate the security risks endemic in the new normal, and better protect their business from threats of all kinds.

AUGUST 2021 / CXO DX

» TECHSHOW

4G AC1200 LTE ROUTER The DWR-M961 utilizes dual-active firewalls (SPI and NAT) to prevent potential attacks across the Internet. Industry standard WPA/WPA2 wireless encryption keeps your wireless network secure and your traffic safe, allowing you to share your 3G/4G connection without worrying about unauthorized users accessing your network.

D-Link’s DWR-M961 E1 4G CAT6 AC1200 LTE Router allows you to access mobile broadband networks from anywhere. Once connected, you can check e-mail, surf the web, stream media and make phone calls. Use your carrier’s SIM/UICC card to share your 3G/4G Internet connection through a secure wireless network or by using any of the four Gigabit ports. The DWR-M961 lets you connect to your 3G/4G mobile connection with fast downlink speeds of up to 300 Mbps and uplink speeds up to 50 Mbps, giving you the speed you need for fast, responsive Internet access. Surf the web with ease and stream music and video over the Internet to your PCs and mobile devices.

The DWR-M961 can be installed quickly and easily almost anywhere. It can be configured through almost any web browser without the need for special software. This router makes it possible to stay connected, even when conventional broadband services are unavailable4G AC1200 LTE Router

Key Features: •

LTE CAT6 with Carrier Aggregation for downlink speeds up to 300 Mbps and uplink speeds up to 50 Mbps

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Built-in SIM card slot for a mobile broadband connection

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Gigabit wired connectivity for lightning-fast gaming and file-transfers to wired devices

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Supports WEP, WPA/WPA2 and WPA-PSK/WPA2-PSK encryption

FORTIGATE 3500F NGFW FortiGate 3500F Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) to protect organizations with hybrid data centers against the ever-growing threat landscape and ransomware attacks. FortiGate 3500F offers some of the industry’s highest performance numbers, including TLS1.3, with automated threat protection post decryption. Additionally, FortiGate 3500F is built with zero trust network access (ZTNA) capabilities, further delivering consistent security and seamless user experience to any user at any location with its security-driven networking approach. With the industry’s highest Security Compute Rating (SCR) of 6x IPsec, FortiGate 3500F

CXO DX / AUGUST 2021

NGFW secures the data center edge, core and interconnect by providing ultra-fast secure data center to data center paths to build disaster recovery sites. It also enables organizations to secure data center to cloud paths for cloud onramps with full compliance and controls. Powered by Fortinet’s ASIC SPUs, FortiGate 3500F offers some of the highest performance numbers for NGFW with 12x higher speeds than leading competitors. As a result, FortiGate 3500F delivers unparalleled performance levels and hyperscale to inspect, segment and secure locally hosted data and workloads at network speeds.

» TECHSHOW

LOGITECH ZONE TRUE WIRELESS EARBUDS Logitech is helping professionals stay clear, confident and connected in the next phase of hybrid work with the launches of its Zone True Wireless and Zone Wired Earbuds, the first targeted to be certified by all three major cloud video conferencing platforms—Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and Zoom Video Communications, Inc. Logitech Zone True Wireless earbuds upgrade video calls with the shape and fit users love, combined with the powerful audio that professionals need. Equipped with a premium noise-canceling mic and Active Noise Cancellation, Zone True Wireless gives crystal clear audio on every call, regardless of distracting surroundings. This, along with a minimalist, modern design, enables a stylish look and a high-quality sound on video that helps users stay in the zone. Bluetooth plus the USB receiver provides a reliable connection between Zone True Wireless and both your smartphone and your computer, allowing users to effortlessly join video meetings and phone calls, moving easily between their two devices - all with double the battery life of leading consumer devices. These features give users confidence that their wireless earbuds are ready for every video meeting. Additionally, the certification with major video conferencing platforms sets a higher bar for audio than leading consumer offerings, and for IT managers, it provides reliable performance across multiple devices within their entire IT ecosystem. Alongside Zone True Wireless, Logitech is also debuting Zone Wired Earbuds for professionals and teams who want a professional-grade, plug-and-play option. Zone Wired Earbuds allow users to join from anywhere work takes them via

USB-C, USB-A, and 3.5mm connectors.

Key Features: •

Equipped with a premium noise-canceling mic and Active Noise Cancellation, Zone True Wireless gives crystal clear audio on every call

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Allows users to effortlessly join video meetings and phone calls, moving easily between their two devices

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Certification with major video conferencing platforms sets a higher bar for audio than leading consumer offerings

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Zone True Wireless will be available in two colors, Graphite and Rose. The earbuds provide wearable comfort, connection across devices and perfect clarity on every call.

Key Features: •

FortiGate 3500F offers the industry’s highest security compute rating of 6x for performance compared to competitors - including support of TLS1.3 - to detect attacks, like ZEUS, Trickbot, Dridex, and protect organizations from network, application and file-based attacks and many other sophisticated threats.

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FortiGate 3500F is the only NGFW in the industry that natively integrates access proxy capabilities to enable zero trust network access (ZTNA). This allows organizations to host applications anywhere with consistent policy controls to enable and secure hybrid workforce models with seamless and superior user experience.

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FortiGate 3500F also natively integrates with FortiGuard Security Services. This further helps organizations protect themselves against network anti-virus, mail security, anti-DDoS, and similar functions, like IPS and anti-malware solutions.

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An industry first, only Fortinet offers Secure SD-WAN, SD-Branch, and ZTNA in one single offering.

AUGUST 2021 / CXO DX

» TRENDS & STATS

WORLDWIDE IAAS PUBLIC CLOUD SERVICES MARKET GREW 40.7% IN 2020 Amazon, Microsoft and Alibaba led the 2020 race to the cloud

he worldwide infrastructure as a service (IaaS) market grew 40.7% in 2020 to total $64.3 billion, up from $45.7 billion in 2019, according to Gartner, Inc. Amazon retained the No. 1 position in the IaaS market in 2020, followed by Microsoft, Alibaba, Google and Huawei. “Hyperscale providers are continuing to build distributed cloud and edge solutions that extend the public cloud’s reach into private and on-premise locations, addressing the needs of organizations relating to data sovereignty, workload portability and network latency,” said Sid Nag, research vice president at Gartner. “This fact, coupled with reliance on the public cloud by a majority of organizations during the pandemic, drove another year of double digital market growth in 2020.” In 2020, the top five IaaS providers accounted for 80% of the market, and nearly 90% all IaaS providers exhibited growth. Amazon continued to lead the worldwide IaaS market with $26.2 billion of revenue in 2020 and 41% market share (see Table 1). Amazon’s 28.7% growth was slightly

slower than that of the market, with their sales growth primarily reflecting increased customer usage. Microsoft maintained the No. 2 position in Gartner’s IaaS market share with nearly 60% growth, reaching $12.7 billion in revenue in 2020. The global healthcare crisis and disruption in workplace environments during the pandemic era drove increased demand from existing Microsoft Azure customers to migrate mission-critical workloads, such as from healthcare applications with AI-assisted bots, digital twins in manufacturing and e-commerce in retail. The dominant IaaS provider in China, Alibaba, grew 52.8% in 2020 with revenue surpassing $6 billion, up from $4 billion in 2019. In 2020, Alibaba saw its highest growth rate in the education vertical at 105%, driven by downloads of Alibaba’s enterprise communication and collaboration platform DingTalk among employees and students working and studying from home. After its second consecutive year of over

200% growth in the IaaS market, Huawei broke into the top five IaaS vendors for the first time in 2020, with $2.7 billion in revenue. Over 90% of this revenue comes from Greater China, a region that continues to see rapid cloud market growth. “After 2019, Huawei made a hard pivot away from selling equipment to investing heavily in their cloud services business which is starting to yield results,” said Nag. Google’s IaaS revenue grew 66% to reach nearly $4 billion in 2020. Spending from the retail, government and healthcare sectors helped drive Google’s growth in IaaS in 2020, as did their focus on supporting the development and deployment of cloud applications in both a hybrid and multicloud model. “The era of CIOs investing in cloud IaaS and platform as a service (PaaS) discretely is long over,” said Nag. “While the cloud market will continue to grow, the real opportunity for providers comes from growth in cloud-adjacent technology markets such as edge, 5G and AI, as CIOs look to invest in technologies that address their complex and emerging use cases.”

Worldwide IaaS Public Cloud Services Market Share, 2019-2020 (Millions of U.S. Dollars) 2020 Revenue

2020 Market Share (%)

2019 Revenue

2019 Market Share (%)

2019-2020 Growth (%)

Amazon

26,201

40.8

20,365

44.6

28.7

Microsoft

12,658

19.7

7,950

17.4

59.2

Alibaba

6,117

9.5

4,004

8.8

52.8

Google

3,932

6.1

2,367

5.2

66.1

Huawei

2,672

4.2

882

1.9

202.8

Others

12,706

19.8

10,115

22.1

25.6

Total

64,286

100

45,684

100

40.7

Company

Source: Gartner 2021

CXO DX / AUGUST 2021

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