Issue 04 | December 2013
riding the growth wave Wringing more value out of emerging technologies
Published by
THE
LINK from the MANAGEMENT
Lee Reynolds and Tim Martin (Managing Directors), Gareth Morgan (Director of Sales), and John Andrews (Marketing Director) Computerlinks Middle East, India and APAC
Welcome to the fourth edition of The Link. We’ve made it to the New Year, and what we see is a future brimming with positive possibilities. It’s no secret that the last few years have been hard on the channel, but 2013 was a crucial time in its recovery, meaning we witnessed a lot of new business, won over new and important customers and contributed overall to the health of the local IT landscape. The last quarter in 2013 has been a resounding success for Computerlinks. Our presence at GITEX 2013 was one contributing factor, but we were also recently recognised with the prestigious Hot 50 award for ‘Best Consulting Services’, which is something we’re particularly proud of. At Computerlinks, our aim is to align our strategy with our portfolio vendors in order to enhance the value that we offer through professional services. Today, the way forward is through services, and at Computerlinks, we play that collaborative role
The road ahead in supporting our customers to move forward by nurturing the value proposition for them. We look forward to more of the same in 2014, though we do anticipate new trends sweeping across the regional IT scene, which will provide more opportunities than ever. As specialists in infrastructure management and security, we at Computerlinks anticipate that two of the most important trends of 2014 will be software-defined networking (SDN), despite it still being something of a buzz term, as well as 40GbE and 100GbE Ethernet. When it comes to SDN, there’s still a lot of confusion in the marketplace about the benefits that the technology can bring, but we see that changing over the coming months. We’re working with a lot of interesting vendors in this space, and the technology, combined with the strength of our sales engineers’ knowhow, is beginning to make a real case for itself within regional enterprises. Over the course of 2014, we expect SDN to take off in a big way and we hope to be able to implement some of the most important deployments that the region will see. Meanwhile, 40GbE and 100GbE Ethernet is making real headway, as enterprises continue to need more bandwidth. But the new Ethernet standard is about much more than speed – we foresee our customers using the technology to build themselves more intelligent networks. It’s about using the bandwidth intelligently, and being able to cope with all the pressures that networks are placed under in the modern age. As is the situation
with SDN, there’s still a little confusion over 40GbE and 100GbE Ethernet in the Middle East, but we believe that, as the technology becomes more readily available – and we’re working on helping to make that so – enterprises will be able to start seeing the benefits. Naturally, if you have any questions about either SDN or 40GbE – and what we offer in those spaces – please don’t hesitate to contact one of our sales engineers. Naturally, trends such as cloud, Big Data, mobility and virtualisation are expected to take off in a big way over the next year, and though we did see the channel leverage these technologies to a certain extent this year, things are likely to step up a notch in the New Year, so we’re also looking forward to helping the region develop its interest in these spaces. Indeed, this issue of The Link revolves around how some of these trends are evolving and affecting the channel enterprise. We speak with channel managers from our vendor-partners to better understand the unadorned facts in the channel space – hopefully it’ll help shine a light on some of the mysteries surrounding these new trends. Again, please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions regarding the articles you read here. All that’s left to do now is to wish you a wonderful, bright and successful 2014. We hope that you enjoyed a well-earned break over the holiday season, and we look forward to getting back to work with you this year. The management.
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December 2013 | The Link
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JOHN’s BLOG
contents The Big Spend So figures released this week show that the Middle East will be the number 3 biggest spending IT market in 2014 with a total growth of 7.8% equivalent to around US$32 billion ! Clearly the recent Expo 2020 win for Dubai has helped to boost that number, as has the controversial FIFA World Cup in Qatar but the more interesting factor in this number for me was the number of contributions from so called “Smart Cities”. I remember many years ago seeing a proposal from a large networking vendor in the Region, suggesting the possibility of such a project and also how the original plans for Dubai Marina were much more advanced and complex in terms of using technology to manage your homes. These didn’t deliver as promised and the visions we so often see on the movie screens were thought to be just a sicfi fantasy that may be years yet in the making. Not so ! With the progress being made in Dubai’s “Smart City”, Abu Dhabi already up and running with Masdar and three projects in Qatar on the horizon it seems that we may not be far from the days of turning on your AC or cooker from your watch or smart phone, sending your restocking order to the local supermarket directly from your fridge or monitoring and controlling your carbon footprint with the aid of high speed sophisticated network infrastructure. It may not even be far round the corner until we’re all flying from home to the office in futuristic driverless aero-vehicles …. That would certainly be something I’d enjoy rather than the usual daily gridlock ! Until then I’ll leave you with my best wishes for an enjoyable and profitable end of year and hope you have a prosperous 2014!
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04 John’s Blog 06 Interview: F5 Networks’ Nasser El Abdouli on the company’s business strategies 08 Insight: Dany El Khoury from VCE discusses converged infrastructure 12 Interview: RSA’s Ahmed El Sabbagh shares the effects of changing threat landscape 14 Insight: Ehab Halablab from Sophos on easy-to-deploy and easy-to-use security solutions 18 Interview: Nigel Norris from Gigamon says monitoring the traffic flow is critical 20 Insight: McAfee’s Maya Kreidy expains the company’s go-to-market strategy 22 Updates: The latest news from Computerlinks and its vendor partners
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The Link | December 2013
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interview | F5
Setting the trend Nasser El Abdouli, Channel Sales Manager, F5 Networks shares with the Link, the company’s plans to become a leader with its unique go-to-market strategies
What has been the biggest achievement for F5 in the last few months? We are one of the fastest growing and profitable IT companies in the world, today. And the Middle East is an important, strategic region for us. But having said that, we are also aware that by growing too fast, we would lose the connection with the market on ground. What we want to ensure is that we establish the right channels and the right processes so that the business and growth is healthy. Our biggest achievement in the last few months has been our sustainable growth in the region.
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The Link | December 2013
Could you elaborate on F5 Synthesis, F5’s recently announced architectural vision? F5 Synthesis is a next-generation model for supporting business applications. We have lots in store for everyone in the market. For partners, we have a new licensing model; for customers, we are offering the ability to completely change the way they are addressing their IT infrastructure and allow them to offer Software Defined Application Services, or SDAS. The reason why we are adapting ourselves is that F5 has always been a special technology. It is mainly due to our
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privileged position in the data centre that we are able to grow, because we see everything. All the traffic is going through our solutions, which means we can allow IT organisations to use that intelligence to perform functions such as monitoring the traffic, adding security layers, ensuring traffic gets optimised, understanding what is happening with the equipment in the network and protecting against external attacks. It touches on many things like security, mobility and access but is mainly centralised around applications. The philosophy behind F5 Synthesis is that no
application should be left behind. An IT organisation today might focus only on the mission critical applications and disregard others. And those applications could be vulnerable to threats or could contribute to making your systems slow. We are allowing customers to be ready for the future. If tomorrow they want to externalise a part of their IT into the cloud, and want to use different data centres, they will be ready to do so. What does trends such as data centre consolidation, cost control and security mean for the channel? It means that they need to
programme. These companies are the best of breed; systems integrators, value-added resellers, trusted advisors. And they can consolidate a certain number of solutions that they can provide to our customers.
differentiate themselves. We have noticed that the best of our partners are the ones who are offering a strong value to customers. These are our certified partners, the ones who are a part of the UNITY partner
What would you say is your market differentiator? We are probably the only company today that is able to provide all of those application focused solutions together via a single platform and control point. We can provide the intelligence of what is happening in the network and control to IT organisations because of this strategic position. This allows them to have a robust, comprehensive policy rather than multiple, independent solutions working in silos. We give them flexibility, ease of use, control and also lowers the total cost of ownership. With that, they can implement all the strategic initiatives such as cloud, mobility, security and orchestrate these in a way where it will make sense. Today, the solution that we bring to the market to service providers, to all type of customers are unique, they are not available
When we sit in strategic meetings with our customers, we not only talk about IT but about the vision of the Government of UAE for the next two to five years and how IT is going to enable and allow our customers to reach their goals.
anywhere else in the market. Also, we have created a community of F5 specialists around the world, where there are more than 130.000 members of our DevCentral technical community. This community is talking to each other and exchanging tips and good information on how to use solutions. What are some of the challenges that you see here? The confusion many companies are creating in the market is a challenge. If we talk about general concepts such as cloud, virtualization and security, very often many companies will never admit that they don’t have anything to provide as a solution. They will always say that they do. There is a need of education and knowledge transfer, a technology discussion needs to happen between the F5 community and partners. We engage and have a live relationship with our customers. We encourage user and discussion groups and also input ourselves. How important is the region to F5? It is a growing and emerging region with lots of exciting developments in store. It has always been an important market for us. The Middle East customers are very demanding, people are used to excellence and which is why they have demanding standards. When we look at the level of support contracts that customers choose, they always go for the highest possible levels with us and also with our partners.
Nasser El Abdouli, Channel Sales Manager, F5 Networks
We also have the responsibility to make sure that when customers ask us who our partners are, we have to make sure that they will represent F5 well, and will provide a service that is as good as the one we provide. What does F5 aim to be for its customers? We try to create market trends and not just follow them. We want to be a consultant with the customer and become their trusted advisors. When we sit in strategic meetings with our customers, we not only talk about IT but about the vision of the Government of UAE for the next two to five years. We talk about how IT is going to enable and allow our customers to reach their goals. And what is F5 going to do in that picture? We try to be at the highest possible level of conversation, sometimes without even mentioning F5 name or technology.
www.computerlinks.com
December 2013 | The Link
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Insight | VCE
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A foundation for IT transformation The Link catches up with Dany ElKhoury, Senior vPartner Account Manager, MENA, VCE, to understand how converged infrastructure is transforming the future of IT.
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The Link | December 2013
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VCE, formed just over three years ago by Cisco and EMC with investments from VMware and Intel, is the leader in converged infrastructure. It is expanding its coverage and footprint across the whole region having seen significant levels of growth since its inception. “Aligning IT with the business is a key issue on all of our minds. Typically, organisations we speak
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Insight | VCE
to are integrating components from multiple vendors to create their own systems. Not only does that complicate procurement, but it also means that IT has to manage the change process whenever a vendor introduces a new product or features as well as the updates and coordinating support,” says ElKhoury. He adds that the people structure tends to mirror the component mindset, a set of silos, each with their own view of resources and operations. Any change to a piece of the infrastructure drives a significant amount of planning, testing, stabilisation and optimisation. “As we all know based on analyst reports, the result is the majority of the IT budget is spent on maintaining operations rather than investing in new business capability.” A true converged infrastructure is one that is not only pretested and preconfigured but, more importantly, preintegrated; in other words it ships out as a single product. While VCE use technologies from different vendors, they are best-in-class market leaders and are well established in the enterprise space. VCE’s Vblock
Dany El Khoury, Senior vPartner Account Manager, MENA, VCE
is built, tested, pre-integrated and configured before being delivered. With such a model, support issues are quickly resolved as there is only one support call to make. And this is where VCE sets itself further apart. “Based on a recent study, IDC confirmed VCE dramatically accelerated infrastructure deployments while driving staggering increases in availability through the elimination of most types of data center outages. VCE transforms data center operations to reduce total average annual data center
We are building a risk-free platform that is able to adapt to the new generation of cloud infrastructure – and transform our customers’ IT operations to deliver greater business value.
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The Link | December 2013
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costs by 50 percent,” explains ElKhoury. “We engineer as one, manufacture as one, allow customers to manage as one and be supported as one. That’s the transformational value we are adding – freeing our customers to focus on competitive differentiation instead of running depreciating legacy application infrastructure.” ElKhoury believes increasing understanding about the difference of true converged infrastructure compared to a reference-based architecture is crucial to the region. “Education is one of our key focus areas. We are building a risk-free platform that is able to adapt to the new generation of cloud infrastructure – and transform our customers’ IT operations to deliver greater business value. Our Vblock systems represent the next evolution of IT. VCE is the only vendor to genuinely provide true converged infrastructure - by which I mean we integrate and validate in our factory, accelerating deployment, interoperability and predictable performance and implementation.” By sitting down with customers at the very outset, VCE does all the design, analysis and assessments and even the logical build-up. “We do a physical build and logical build. A logical build is defining the layers and integration with the customer networks and data central, so rather than shipping the components with no configuration, we configure them specifically for the customer’s environment up to the
virtualisation layer. As a result, the customer is taking delivery of a solution that VCE has validated for its environment,” ElKhoury explains. The speed with which the company is able to deliver the Vblock to its customers works to everyone’s advantage. He adds, “In a conventional siloed environment today, at least 120 to 160 days are required, right from the time you start the design, ordering the equipment and implementation; we are able to cut this by over a half, i.e. 45 days. The customer doesn’t have to manage and put things together. We have taken out the complexities and made it very simple. We are racking it, stacking it, building it physically, and building it logically.” The recently launched Vision IO from VCE acts as a mediation layer between Vblock and the customer’s data center management tools, dynamically sharing information. It delivers a single, objective perspective on Vblock Systems alongside any existing toolset. ElKhoury concludes, “VCE has pioneered converged infrastructure, enabling customers to focus on innovation and investment instead of integrating and operating equipment. With Vblock, we enable the fastest time to deployment and simplify ongoing IT operations by ensuring the right system configuration arrives ready to power on and integrate into the target application environment, with predictable performance and availability SLAs.” Ad-Partner-8.5x11-Proof.pdf
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interview | RSA
Differentiate to succeed The Link talks to Ahmed El Sabbagh, Distribution Manager - Turkey, Emerging Africa & Middle East, RSA to get an insight into the changing threat landscape and how this affects the channel.
What has been the business focus for RSA? Accompanying our customers as a trusted advisor through their security journey to ensure that intrusion and compromise do not result in business damage or loss for them and assuring they have definite answers to questions like ‘am I secure?’, ‘am I compliant?’, ‘how do
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The Link | December 2013
I prioritise?’ and ‘am I aligned to the business?’ have always been our business focus and priority. From this, our research and development teams are always working on adopting a more intelligence-driven approach to help our customers increase their security maturity level taking into consideration their ongoing business transformation.
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What’s important for RSA is not only where our customers are today, but also what steps are we taking to improve their security practice and take them to the next level within their security maturity journey. What trends have affected the security space? There are several major trends
that are disrupting how we should practice information security now a days. The adoption of cloudbased IT infrastructures and the pervasive use of mobile devices and mobile applications means that security organisations are being asked to secure what they don’t own, manage, or control.
Could you elaborate further? Just a few years ago, a typical scenario might have been remote access offered to a limited set of employees, using a laptop that was provided by the company, over a VPN connection that allowed access to a limited set of key internal applications such as email and sales force automation. Now, we have almost our entire workforce, using their own tablets and smartphones for business purposes, accessing applications that reside in the cloud, over untrusted wireless networks and the internet. We used to describe the disappearing perimeter as a security concern – today we have almost no boundaries or a perimeter that has effectively been turned inside-out. So, this clearly demands a rethinking of the current security approach. How has the threat landscape changed? The threat landscape and attacker tactics have fundamentally changed, resulting in even more formidable adversaries, and who can’t be stopped effectively using yesterday’s tools and methods. They are not only more sophisticated, but attack methods have also changed. First, they are targeted with a specific objective to seek intellectual property or confidential documents. Advanced threats typically use custom malware that targets an individual or group of employees at a specific organisation. Their entry point into an organisation is the compromise of its user credentials, which they can use to establish a non-suspicious initial foothold.
and advanced attacks, we need a fundamentally different response. We need to spend less time trying to keep attackers out, but focus instead on accelerating our ability to detect and respond to intrusions, and reducing the amount of time they are in the network. In response to all of this, RSA Intelligence Driven Security Approach focus on people, identities, and their behavior, the flow of data and transactions to ensure that intrusion and compromise do not result in business damage or loss for our customers.
Second, once their initial intrusion is successful, advanced attackers are more stealthier. Unlike a ‘smash and grab’ password theft or website defacement, advanced attackers seek to remain hidden inside the organisation, establishing multiple footholds in case their initial access is shut down, and keeping suspicious activity to a minimum as they seek their target. They cover their tracks by erasing logs and other evidence of their activity. What does the changing threat landscape mean for the channel? Different organisations exhibit different security postures, from Threat Defense based companies who do ‘just enough’ to Business Risk oriented businesses who want to sow security into the fabric of their organisation. Realising this early on, we translate it into opportunities for our channel by leveraging our leading and integrated security solutions that play a part at every stage of the market maturity model, which leads to potential new clients and increase account penetration with a richer set of solutions, services and consultancy leading to increased revenue and more business to the channel. In this fast growing region, I have noticed that a lot of VARs want to be everything to everybody. This means you’re not any different than ‘that guy’ down the street. We give our channel the opportunity to be unique and focused through the RSA ‘SecurWorld’ program, which reflects RSA’s broader solution portfolio and the different needs of partners taking different products to market. As a result, partners can specialise in certain areas and
Ahmed El Sabbagh, Distribution Manager - Turkey, Emerging Africa & Middle East, RSA
our channel education framework ‘SecurAcademy’ has been specifically designed to support the needs of all partners that is role based and more solution-centric Finally, we are always looking to align our channel, depending on their skills, characteristics and aspirations, with our solutions and the end user market where their capabilities can be best deployed and there is always an opportunity to partner with RSA across the complete security spectrum whatever the stance of their business or target market. What kind of systems need to be in place to prevent this situation? We need to acknowledge that a model that defends a static perimeter and infrastructure that relies on fixed, signaturebased controls derived from knowledge of prior attacks will be increasingly ineffective in maintaining trust in our IT systems and digital businesses. Against these fundamentally different
What can the channel expect from RSA in 2014? In 2014, the channel can expect a refocused enablement strategy from RSA that will provide partners with content that is more sellable with respect to their specific GTM strategies. This will include increased training around industry trends to bridge the knowledge gap, as well as simplified training offerings that are more closely aligned to RSA’s field reps and SEs. Coupled with these, we are going to offer more aligned trainings with greater field SE support for our partners to foster stronger engagement and joint selling. Additionally, sales enablement tools will encompass more tailored use cases that better fit how our partners sell today. Programmatically, we will be introducing a clear direction on our Managed Security Service strategy in 2014, and as we continue to add new products into the SecurWorld program. There will be a consistent approach to communications, demand generation, and enablement.
www.computerlinks.com
December 2013 | The Link
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insight | sophos
Keep it simple Security solutions are fast becoming a part and parcel of most organisations, especially with the increased number of threats to the IT environment. The Link meets up with Ehab Halablab, Sales Manager, Sophos to understand the importance of easyto-deploy and easy-to-use security solutions.
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The Link | December 2013
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The way companies perceive security has had a complete makeover in the last few years. From being ‘not necessary’, it had evolved to become just an ‘add-on’ and now it is slowly becoming an ‘integral part’ of all organisations’ IT agenda. This change has come about with increasing issues of data loss, network jams and emerging
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Insight | sophos
technologies such as cloud, Big Data, virtualisation and BYOD. Ehab Halablab, Sales Manager, Sophos reinforces the fact that security is vital to every part of the global economy. “It is especially important for the SMB market. Many have viewed security in the past as a cost unit when in fact it is a core business function as data is considered as the new oil or gold today.” With the SMB market growing exponentially, the need for security solutions have grown over time. Today, security solutions are no longer deployed by only the larger organisations but everyone who understands the importance of protecting valuable data and securing themselves against security risks, reaches out to security companies. Sophos aims at being successful in serving SMB markets through their partners. He further says that the increasing cyber and digital security crimes have been a wakeup call for those who thought security solutions was just something good to have. “Security is not a commodity (how much ever some may wish this to be so). Our partners and the channel are and always will be most important to us because a dedicated and welltrained channel can help to stay secure in this dynamic threat landscape. Awareness is
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The Link | December 2013
also a vital part of any security solution and so our partners help in this mission. Simple and easy to deploy security solutions is Sophos’ market differentiator.” Simple solutions has been the key to the company’s success. Security is not only about recognising assets and protecting them but also
solutions, employees can grasp its operation better and faster and this also saves valuable time. Having introduced the UTM 9.1, New SEC Console, added Encryption and Security capabilities to Mobile as well as enhanced security detection on existing products this year, the security solutions
Our partners and the channel are and always will be most important to us because a dedicated and well-trained channel can help to stay secure in this dynamic threat landscape. focusing on gathering real time data that helps to increase security posture and reduce vulnerabilities. “Less complexity makes companies more secure because they focus on what’s important. What good is a point solution that supposedly does everything but is so complex that you miss the important stuff?” says Halablab. Simple and straightforward solutions are the way to go ahead. “We do this by offering security solutions at all levels that are aimed at being simple so our customers and partners can concentrate on what’s important: staying secure and stopping attacks from happening,” he further explains. What is also important to note is that, with simple security
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provider has a lot in store for the coming year. And this is important, Halablab points out, as threats and the way in which these threats attack are always changing. “In terms of products, we are pushing our encryption everywhere. Data and its encryption on the devices (as well as securing those devices) we use each day, are tomorrow’s norm. UTM 9.2, next releases of the Console, SafeGuard Enterprise and Mobile solutions as well as our new quantum jump in Cloud technology will change the way everyone looks at simple security,” he adds. It is critical to be ahead of those who try to penetrate an organisation’s security walls because changing threat landscape
Ehab Halablab, Sales Manager, Sophos
means creating better capable security solutions constantly. Sophos aims at being a “passionate, professional and engaged team” that is dedicated to its partners’ success. Halablab says, “Partners trust us, that’s a big responsibility that we have accepted and respect. When our partners are successful in increasing security awareness and highlighting the value of security, then we all win. Partners are and always will be the key to our success. Our SE and Sales Teams are there to help partners sell the value of Sophos and we take this very seriously. Regardless of where we go on this security journey, we are taking our partners with us.”
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interview | Gigamon
Identifying assets The Link talks to Nigel Norris, Channel Director, Gigamon to better understand the role the ten-year-old company plays in the channel and the importance of monitoring the traffic flow within an organisation’s networks.
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The Link | December 2013
www.computerlinks.com
Do businesses understand the importance of having visibility in the region? The strength of a business is the traffic that flows through the networks. And organisations need to understand that. It’s not the switches, they are just an enabler that allow traffic to flow through the network. The real asset to a business is the actual traffic itself. And once companies
layer to give you the ability to infiltrate the relevant traffic and deliver it back to a central place where it can be monitored as accurately as possible. The organisations, especially the telcos, financial institutions, governments are starting to realise that it is not enough to just bring these monitoring tools into pockets of their networks, what is needed is consistency around their monitoring and that’s what Gigamon can bring.
Nigel Norris, Channel Director, Gigamon
identify that as their assets, the next step is to monitor the traffic effectively. I think organisations, especially government-linked organisations are starting to realise that we need to be able to have visibility and monitor what is happening within our networks. Here is when, they need to have solutions such as that of Gigamon’s, which can proactively infiltrate relevant traffic and allow you to centralise your monitoring and this way, what you are monitoring becomes accurate. What role does Gigamon play here? It is quite simple, if you look at it this way: if you can’t see the traffic then you can’t monitor it, and if you can’t monitor it then you don’t know what is going on. Gigamon adds an agnostic
Is it a challenge to convince your customers? I think it is a matter of taking them on a journey. But if the full picture of the journey is painted in the beginning itself, then it can be confusing for the customer. If we can identify their pain points first and address a specific situation, then take it ahead to other areas of their business, it will be a much better method to work with. Our approach, very much, is to crawl, then to walk and then to run with these customers rather than trying to run from the start. Are you seeing any specific trends in the channel? We see partners understanding what companies like Gigamon can do for them and then they start to build an ecosystem of both infrastructure and monitoring tools around them. It is becoming quite a big business. The need for visibility and monitoring of traffic in the region is becoming more and more apparent. If you look at trends such as
virtualisation, up until recently it was difficult to monitor the virtualisation environment with the existing monetary tools. But now, Gigamon’s GigaVUE-VM, which is a brand new product that sits in the virtualisation environment, allows you to use your existing monitoring tools to monitor your virtual environment. So partners that have sold many products like VMware are now realising that there is an opportunity to monitor that environment. Therefore, the trends are moving towards this as a focused area and this says to a customer, ‘look your asset is your traffic, if you value that asset then you need to be able to monitor it effectively and that is what Gigamon can do.’ What sets Gigamon apart from the competition? We believe in providing any organization with the best insight into the traffic flowing across their network. The traffic in a network once accurately analyzed can provide valuable information from both a control and trending perspective. To achieve this the monitoring tools need to receive the traffic in a format that is accurate but not overwhelming. To this end Gigamon developed a technique called Flow Mapping, which allows us to build a set of rules across the entire network to focus the traffic where required. Many of our competitors are owned by organisations where those products are not the primary focus. This means that they will likely work better with
the monitoring tools provided by that company. Gigamon is totally agnostic and independent so we will treat any tools purchased in the future the same way as we treat existing tools now. Which are some of the emerging markets for you? The Middle East is a massive market opportunity for us. We have had some good success across the region with specific customers but there is a lot more to come. We are seeing movements in places like North Africa and Nigeria, where the companies see a requirement to monitor what happens in their environment more effectively. We are starting to see some success in places like India. A lot of people are starting or wanting to talk to us about monitoring their environments and so it is exciting times for Gigamon. But we really need to have the right partner community and we need to attract the right level of partners to allow us to penetrate these markets effectively. What is your channel expansion plan? In 2014, Gigamon is going to focus on the channel across the region. It is about identifying the right channel and enabling them and giving them the capability to sell a product. We are trying to double the size of the business year on year. We are looking at a 70 percent growth for 2014 and in order to achieve that, we need to work with the channel effectively.
www.computerlinks.com
December 2013 | The Link
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insight | McAfee
For a risk-free tomorrow Maya Kreidy, Regional Channel Manager, GCC, McAfee An Intel company tells The Link how the recently launched Cyber Defense Centre can transform the way the threat landscape is looked at in the region. From all the company’s achievements in the past year, the launch of Cyber Defense Centre (CDC) is the most noteworthy of them all, says Maya Kreidy, Regional Channel Manager, GCC, McAfee. Comprising a Computer Emergency Response Team that has highly qualified experts with over 70 years combined
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The Link | December 2013
experience in the field of incident response, CDC is a first of its kind. The Centre offers incident response support, computer forensics, mobile forensics, contextual threat analysis, strategic services and assessments, advanced malware analysis, and security education to customers across Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) regions.
www.computerlinks.com
Kreidy explains further, “The CDC will provide accurate statistics and figures about electronic threats and attacks in the region. It will also give access to expert consultants who have extensive expertise across incident response handling, IR/SOC/CERT programme development, host and network forensics, threat intelligence, malware analysis
and containment and education services. And also reduce response time in the event of a crisis of any kind (return to normal operations after breach is detected can be achieved in 4-7 days).” According to McAfee, the evolving threat landscape has driven the demand for sophisticated security services with strong skills and experience
in the EMEA market. “Over the last year, a tremendous increase has been detected in malware and attacks targeted at EMEA organisations. In the Middle East, the CDC is monitoring a family of financial-data-stealing malware, which is active in countries such as KSA, UAE and Qatar,” says Kreidy. Over the last few months, McAfee has noted that the breaches that have occurred started with attackers executing a SQL-injection into clients’ websites and databases to enter further into the network. Hacking groups that target industries, governments or other hacker-groups for different motives such as financial gain, hacktivism or stealing intellectual property are also monitored through this centre. The launch of this centre couldn’t have happened at a more appropriate time with increased attacks in the region reported in the last six months. “McAfee has seen an increase on all fronts, especially in March and June, in the Gulf region and Middle-East. The key motivations behind attacks are Cybercrime, Hacktivism, Cyber Espionage and Cyber Warfare,” explains Kreidy. The CDC was opened in
Dubai because of the city’s important strategic location in the Middle East, says Kreidy. “Due to its advanced technological infrastructure, to it being an active technological hub that links McAfee customers in the Middle East, Europe and Africa, and also because of the contributions that Dubai have made in promoting e-service and e-security, we chose Dubai,” she adds on. The company sees a huge demand from the Middle East governments and as companies from financial, oil and gas sectors are increasingly investing in enhancing their database infrastructure as well as looking for the latest solutions in cybercrime protection, it expects the demand to grow even further. But what does this mean for the company? Through the CDC, McAfee now has a significant presence in EMEA enabling it to guide enterprises on the best ways to protect assets and maximise business goals through maintaining a strong security posture. “McAfee’s robust portfolio of strategic services will continue to evolve to respond to the ever-changing threat
We are certainly looking into expanding the business done with our existing partners by penetrating new verticals and fill the gap in the market on all levels of enterprise and SMB.
Maya Kreidy, Regional Channel Manager, GCC, McAfee
landscape to help customers stay ten steps ahead of the ‘bad guys’, which in turn enhances McAfee’s leadership position and solution differentiation in the region,” points out Kreidy. The governments in the region have been investing heavily in new solutions to prevent and minimise the impact of attacks and McAfee’s CDC will be working closely with key stakeholders to look for ways to improve protection. She further explains, “The CDC investment has involved building of the needed infrastructure that involved: forensic lab with all the needed security; mobile kits; contextual threat intelligence system; office space for the team. McAfee has widely invested in a team of forensics and incident response investigators and consultants who comprise the CDC. Many
of them have participated in law enforcement investigations and taught forensics and malware analysis to governments and at globally-known conferences like ‘black hat’.” With the focus on network security areas, the company’s go to market strategy is a two-tier model, which is why it relies on its value added distributors and security specialised partners to drive and develop its business in the market. “We are working closely with our partners to increase McAfee’s share of wallet within their security offerings. We are certainly looking into expanding the business done with our existing partners by penetrating new verticals and fill the gap in the market on all levels of enterprise and SMB,” says Kreidy. The company expects its latest acquisitions for ValidEdge and Stonesoft to show a big growth within its portfolio under the name of MATD and NGFW. The channel can surely expect “more business, more margin, more expertise and knowledge” from McAfee in the coming year.
CDC CDC services include: • Incident Response (24x7x365) • Computer Forensics • Mobile phone/Tablets Forensics • Security Assessments like RISK assessment, Infrastructure/SCADA/Web application pen-testing etc. • Advanced Malware Analysis • Contextual Threat Analysis • DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) Assessment • Training
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December 2013 | The Link
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NEWS updates
Sophos’ security threat report highlights shifting crime tactics
Sophos has released its latest Security Threat Report. The report outlines the significant changes in cybercriminal behavior over the course of last year and a forecast for their preferred methods of attack in 2014. This year cybercriminals continued the theme of professionalisation of their “industry,” offering easy-tobuy-and-use services that amplified the scale of cybercrime to never before seen levels. “While many security experts are aware of the high level trends, few
have recognised their significance,” said James Lyne, Global Head of Security Research at Sophos. “If 2013 has taught us anything, it is that traditional security controls are struggling. These new behaviors are forcing the industry to adapt and change, and widely held best practices must be reconsidered.” The threat report highlights new security concerns ranging from stealthy malware tools that offer dynamic camouflage and provide attackers with long-term persistent access to users’ data, to the proliferation of connected devices that represent new and often ill-protected targets. Many new “Internet of Things” devices are becoming commonplace, offering cybercriminals the potential to impact our daily lives, rather than just the traditional theft of financial information.
“These trends are set to continue in 2014 as threats become even smarter, shadier and stealthier,” said Lyne. In 2014 Sophos predicts greater focus from cybercriminals on high quality and convincing phishing and social engineering to compensate for harder-to-exploit operating systems like Windows 8.1; embedded devices (such as POS systems, medical systems and new “smart” infrastructure) will open old wounds as security mistakes eliminated in the modern PC environment are carelessly reimplemented; attacks on corporate and personal data in the cloud will continue to grow as providers struggle to refine the security strategy in this new computing platform; and malware for mobile is set to become as sophisticated as its PC relatives.
Gigamon looks to build brand profile in the Middle East
Trever Dearing, EMEA Marketing Director, Gigamon
Network visibility vendor Gigamon has taken the last couple of months as an opportunity to explain to customers and resellers exactly why its products are relevant to the Middle Eastern market. While the firm has achieved plenty of recognition outside of this
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region, Gigamon’s focus recently has been about bringing brand recognition to the Middle East, said Trever Dearing, EMEA Marketing Director, Gigamon. “The key reason we’re here is just to tell the story as many have said they’ve never heard of us before, and it really is like that. We’re probably a year ahead in the UK and Germany. We’re now starting to build the brand here and make people aware of the market,” he said. The market in question lies in network visibility. Dearing added that customers were really beginning to see benefits from Gigamon’s products. “As more people are buying these monitoring tools, there’s nowhere for them to plug it into the network,” he said. “What we do is we sit between the network and those tools, and allow people to centralise all of
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them, so they just plug them into us. And then we collect the data from around the network. And we can apply some rules and do some clever stuff like deduplication and time-stamping.” Although it has large customers in the Middle East, Gigamon was looking to reach out to far more customers in the coming year. The problem, Dearing said, was convincing people that Gigamon’s solutions really do help businesses. “A lot of the time, if you’re entering a new market with a new product, what you have to do is create the problem. It’s like the first person to invent glasses. They’d go up to someone and say, ‘Look, I can make your sight better.’ But they thought they didn’t have a problem. It’s a bit like that – we’re having to educate people on the problem they’ve got,” he explained.
F5 delivers comprehensive DDoS protection F5 Networks has introduced the industry’s most comprehensive on-premises DDoS solution available in a single product. The new solution delivers the widest ranging suite of protections against DDoS attacks that target business applications, the network, SSL, and DNS infrastructures. Fully leveraging the advanced hardware-acceleration capabilities built into the latest F5 BIG-IP platform offerings, the new solution mitigates as many as 25 DDoS attack vectors in hardware to deliver superior performance and scalability. Now, customers of all sizes can ensure that their business critical applications are protected and available under the most demanding conditions. “Our new solution makes DDoS mitigation affordable for companies of any size. It provides superior performance results across 25 hardware-accelerated attack vectors, and frees up resources that can be dedicated to providing other security services. Software-only solutions are an excellent choice for certain types of network needs, but when it comes to averting volumetric DDoS attacks, there’s no disputing the benefits of a hardwareaccelerated solution,” said Mark Vondemkamp, VP of Security Product Management, F5 The DDoS protection solution is one of several reference architectures connected to F5 Synthesis, the company’s new architectural vision. It comprises a catalog of software defined application services (SDAS) and solutions that enable customers to deliver device, network, and application services without constraints across data centre, cloud, and hybrid environments.
BECAUSE THE BAD GUYS NEVER SLEEP, WE NEVER SLEEP. Ah, the thrill of the hunt. Eradicating the dangers before they get dangerous. Inventing new security measures before they become necessary. At McAfee, we live and breathe digital security. Our job is to stay one step ahead of the bad guys. It’s because we never sleep, that you can sleep better.
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