“Faster, Cheaper, and Better is the Premise of Modern Tech”

“Faster, Cheaper, and Better is the Premise of Modern Tech”

Nabil Abbas, the Principal at Booz Allen Hamilton MENA, speaks about how tech is driving our economic recovery

How do you think technology today helps businesses grow?

Advanced technology is transforming the way organizations do business turning almost every business into a tech business. Take grocery stores for example, which now have to compete with the likes of Amazon for business. The increasing adoption of 4.0 technologies such as AI and IoT makes it possible for businesses to reconfigure their value chains and achieve new levels of value creation. Innovative platform-based business models, such as Careem, LinkedIn Learning, and Fiverr, enable scale and efficient matching of supply and demand, creating new sources of revenue and expanding market reach.

Emerging technologies such as AI can be used to enable predictive services delivery and deep personalization of customer experience. Digital technologies offer multiple new paths to value and growth in every industry, and agility, experimentation, and resilient execution will separate winners from the crowd.

How is tech driving our economic recovery?

Faster, cheaper, and better is the premise of modern technology, which is contributing to economic recovery through productivity gains, efficiency, and the creation of new jobs. The acceleration of digital transformation due to COVID-19 has made the case for digital-first—and in many cases, digital-only—interactions.

During the pandemic, physical outlets, branches, and offices were rightsized. While they are unlikely to disappear in the near future, their role will definitely change. Banks may operate just as efficiently without as many physical branches and Governments can boost public value with a few in-person service centers, supported by more robust digital offerings. The resulting savings will free resources that can be deployed elsewhere for better returns.

The digitalization of the workplace is making way for new and more productive ways of work characterized by rich collaboration and data-driven decision making, and new jobs are being created at a rate that will outpace jobs lost to disruption. This rapid transformation, known as the fourth industrial revolution, will require attention to human capital development and social inclusion, but will eventually shape a bright future for the global economy.

How is tech shaping the infrastructure of tomorrow?

Industry 4.0 technologies specifically cloud computing, IoT, 5G, and AI are rapidly transforming infrastructure into a smart, connected, and efficiently scalable ecosystem of services. Today, for example, cloud computing enables on-demand access to cutting-edge computing and storage resources not only at a fraction of the cost of setting up and operating traditional data centers but also with the potential for rapid scaling with fewer constraints.

Using cloud computing, businesses can set up data centers virtually and replicate them around the world with little capital investments. This means barriers to entry to large-scale computing have diminished significantly for businesses, making way for more innovation and disruption. In cities, buildings, utility meters, and traffic lights communicate within and among each other, thanks to IoT technologies, generating vast amounts of data that feed AI and Machine Learning optimization and prediction algorithms that can transform urban planning, consumption patterns, and traffic management.

The integration of these technologies makes it possible to have autonomous vehicles, which promise to revolutionize mobility and transport and consequently society at large. These are just a few examples of how modern technology is transforming infrastructure. As infrastructure becomes increasingly interconnected and dependent on technology and data, cyber threats will continue to rise in frequency, scale, and impact bringing to bear the mission-critical significance of effective cybersecurity defense mechanisms.

How according to you, are women powering the tech industry?

It’s incumbent upon all of us to help bring more inclusivity and diversity into the workplace, and for women to also lead the industry as the demand for technology grows across all of our services and operations. Women are increasingly choosing STEM majors and taking the lead on significant R&D initiatives. Engineer and computer scientist Katie Bouman, for example, was instrumental in the creation of the first viable algorithm for photographing black holes.

They are creating their own tech startups and making major contributions to the technology industry – VMWare, for example, was started by Diane Greene in 1998 and is now one of the world’s biggest technology companies. These are just two of the countless examples of how women are impacting and improving the future of the tech industry.

Women are also helping to build and empower the next generation of female technologists. The TechWomen program, for example, is a global community of more than 600 women fellows and 800 women mentors who help each other progress their careers and achieve their full potential in technology.

SECAAS - THE ANSWER TO ESCALATING CYBERTHREATS, GROWING IT COMPLEXITY, AND SKILLS GAPS

Written by Giuseppe Brizio, EMEA CISO, Qualys

While regional IT chiefs face mounting pressure on issues like application performance and customer experience, they must also contend with an escalation in threats from those who are simply looking to steal, damage, disrupt, or embarrass. In December 2020, the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) cybersecurity head flagged a 250% increase in cyberattacks during the pandemic. And UAE telecom giant Etisalat’s digital-security arm Help AG this year warned of a 183% uptick in DDoS campaigns.

Whether an enterprise has a separate CISO or looks to the CIO on security issues, regional firms still must find ways of fulfilling their compliance obligations amid a sea of complexity brought about by COVID migration. Thousands of employees working on home devices of unknown pedigree present a risk, as does the presence of multiple domains through which sensitive data travels, enroute from the datacenter to the unvetted endpoint and back again. IT leaders and business stakeholders are confronted with costly paths to adequate security, with no guarantees that they have the inhouse skills to manage these solutions.

Enter Security-as-a-Service (SECaaS) — the increasingly popular solution to modern resilience. Businesses can outsource the security function to a trusted partner while retaining granular control of IT policy and business operations. And for a region with economies that are majority-SME, the SECaaS proposition is particularly alluring. Even before COVID struck, smaller businesses were continually looking for ways to streamline their business models for cost effectiveness and operational efficiency. I would however be remiss if I didn’t point out that while a business can outsource responsibility to a third party for carrying out cybersecurity activities, it cannot, and should not, outsource the related accountability.

A ready-skilled team

There is so much to think about for the IT team that looks after Web and mobile platforms; remote workers and their unpatched devices; multiple network environments, many of which they do not own; and possibly DevOps workflows, with all their attendant code changes and cloud-native requirements. Add to that, the skills shortage — this year, an estimated 3.5 million cybersecurity jobs around the world will be unfilled.

SECaaS delivers not only the right technology but a ready-skilled team of professional threat hunters that are well-versed in the issues surrounding the protection of data, networks, endpoints, and applications. In addition, they have spent decades studying the behavior of bad actors and have a keen sense for how they think and what they will target.

SECaaS is cost-effective; it allows customers to subscribe to a service that is continually improving — through the latest tools and intelligence — rather than buying an asset that requires time-consuming maintenance and eventual replacement. With SECaaS, third-party experts are active on Day One and in-house security teams’ workloads are diminished and rationalized. By outsourcing humdrum tasks such as monitoring, vulnerability management, threat detection, remediation, detection, and response to external teams equipped with the industry’s most advanced tools, inhouse specialists can devote their time to chasing down the most advanced threats. The white noise of multivendor telemetry and the flood of alerts that end up amounting to nothing are now things of the past — eliminated by the SECaaS provider.

Scalability, visibility, and confidence

SECaaS is also scalable, allowing instantaneous protection of new applications, databases, and workloads. It provides peerless visibility through rich dashboards, delivering confidence to CISOs that their security partner is operating effectively. And the partner will also raise non-trivial alerts in real time for inhouse teams to action.

In addition, SECaaS providers offer continuous assessment of threat postures, suggesting alternative best practices, tools, and policies as new intelligence arises. From endpoint protection, detection and response to security information and event management (SIEM), SECaaS providers integrate themselves, benignly, into a customer’s operations, advising on the best course of action regarding every aspect of security, from prevention to business continuity.

Because the partner is such a core component of business resilience, the importance of due diligence in their selection cannot be overstated. They must demonstrate their willingness to work within the confines of an SLA and acknowledge that they will be available around the clock, throughout the year, in terms of consultancy and platform uptime.

Best practices for selecting SECaaS provider

The provider’s disaster recovery plans — from cyber incidents to natural phenomena — should be subject to thorough scrutiny, as should its vendor partners. Organizations considering SECaaS should also ensure that the provider and their vendor partners are able to package their offerings in a way that delivers the flexibility and futureproofing that the customer seeks. Such offerings should also compare favorably with others in the market when it comes to cost of ownership.

And everyone needs to be on the same page when it comes to best practices. Encryption should be applied to data at rest and in transit, and keys should be customer-specific and renewed regularly. Data retention policies should be well-defined, as should those on identity and access management, passwords, multi-factor authentication, back-up, alerting systems, and threat response.

SECaaS migration has been gaining momentum in the region because business and IT stakeholders are starting to recognize its benefits. In the wake of COVID, as enterprises contemplate resilience in the context of continuing compliance, the model will make more and more sense. In the face of overwhelming threat escalation, growing IT complexity, and persistent skills gaps, SECaaS is, quite simply, a smart way forward for most organizations.

Companies retooling for today’s changing world worry about successfully recruiting and retaining the right talent. Close to 75% of executives surveyed by Bain & Company expect that the skills and capabilities required for their businesses to succeed will change over the next 5 to 10 years. Yet, they estimate that less than half of their best talent possess the critical capabilities their most important roles will require.

Our research has found, however, that most companies do not actually require a massive influx of new “A” talent to succeed, and that top performing companies typically have no more A-level talent than their competitors. What sets these top companies apart is how they deploy that talent. They are much more likely than competitors to have their A talent in their business-critical roles.

‘Business-critical’ describes the roles that are disproportionately important to executing a company’s strategy and to delivering executives’ agenda for creating value. On average, executives categorize approximately 40% of their roles as business critical, but our research finds that only roughly 5% of roles in a typical organization are truly business critical.

Though limited in number, these business-critical roles can exist at every level of an organization: in the C-suite, on every managerial level, and across teams deep into the organization. Take the example of one global multinational consumer products company that recently began planning a global expansion. During the process, executives recognized that they needed to focus on different levels in the organization.

Some of the roles determined to be critical to the expansion’s success include its global head of marketing, a C-suite position; several local country general managers who sit a few management levels down on the organizational chart; and sales teams on the ground. Now

THE RIGHT TALENT IS KEY TO OUTPERFORM COMPETITORS

Written by Tom De Waele, Managing Partner, Bain & Company Middle East

that the company has identified these key roles, business leaders working with their HR partners can focus on ensuring the best possible talent fills them.

Executives intuitively understand the need to place top talent into business-critical roles, but we find they often face three primary impediments to doing so. First, they don’t know which roles are business critical—or, as noted above, they think too many of them are. Second, they lack a clear understanding of what is required to succeed in those roles. Third, the organization doesn’t have consistent processes and approaches for matching the right talent to these roles.

To overcome these challenges, the best performing companies typically do four things right:

• Take a “strategy back” approach to defining business-critical roles.

Rather than simply deciding that a position responsible for a certain size of P&L, head count, or some other metric fits that

“critical” description, they look closely at the individual elements of their strategy and ask what is required to deliver on it. • Create profiles of what success in this role would look like. These profiles detail the ideal experience of any candidate as well as their motivations and capabilities—competencies plus potential—and whether they fit well into the organization’s culture. • Rigorously evaluate talent currently serving in these roles and compare them with the role profiles in order to establish the size and nature of any gaps. Then do the same for any other potential internal candidates. • Address their talent gaps with a thoughtful mix of talent development, deployment and redeployment, and, when appropriate and on a targeted basis, with new talent acquisition. • Talent is critical in every organization, and private equity (PE) firms that invest in many different industries are particularly attuned to the critical role of talent management in deal success. Even so, many lack a consistent, repeatable process for swiftly making talent decisions. The PE firms that have been able to outpace their competition on this dimension have done so by thoughtfully connecting their talent strategy to their overall value creation plan (VCP) for each portfolio company. This involves using specific value-creation levers and key initiatives to first define their business-critical roles and then create detailed “success profiles” for each. This is clearly linked to their desired investment outcomes.

Current and prospective talent can then be evaluated for each role using a broad set of interview, assessment, and reference techniques that evaluate professional experience, track record—and context—of results, as well as capabilities and motivations. Key questions include: How do they perform their roles? How do they lead? What motivates them? Will they be a good cultural fit? For companies embracing a more distributed working model, this evaluation can be applied to a broader talent pool.

To summarize, deliberately deploying great talent into the roles that matter most is an ever-evolving and continual responsibility. As strategy shifts and the talent pool evolves, companies with a thoughtful, rigorous approach will enjoy a sustained advantage over the competition.

FIVE TIPS TO IMPROVE THREAT REPORT ANALYSIS AND ACTION

Written by Yann Le Borgne, Technical Director for ThreatQuotient

Most organizations have more threat intelligence than they know what to do with, from a variety of sources – commercial, open source, government, industry sharing groups and security vendors. Bombarded by millions of threat datapoints every day, it can seem impossible to appreciate or realize the full value of third-party data. In a recent CyberSocial webcast, industry experts David Grout, CTO EMEA for FireEye and Yann LeBorgne, Technical Director for ThreatQuotient, helped listeners tackle this challenge. Using threat reports as an example of one type of published threat information, they responded to real-time polling results as they provided advice on how to analyze a threat report and make it actionable.

Here are five tips they shared.

Select the right sources of threat data for your organization.

When polled, the audience reported using a well-balanced combination of sources of threat intelligence. They are on the right track, but David explains that it is also important to identify the right sources for your organization and collect threat reports from several different sources as they provide different levels of content – strategic, operational and tactical. Figure out the who, what and when for consumption and use that for your metric for success when looking at acquisition.

Yann adds that open-source intelligence (OSINT) is free and easy to access, most organizations use it extensively. But organizations must also consider the trust and reliability of sources. a classical hierarchy, the highest level of trust comes from the intelligence you generate and receive from your close network and peers, and OSINT information is placed at the lowest level. David recommends using trust models such as the Admiralty System or NATO System which classifies information from A to F for reliability and from 1 to 6 for credibility, particularly for new sources that surface during times of crises or outbreaks.

Determine who will acquire the data.

In response to the next poll question, 25% of respondents said all groups have access to all threat intelligence sources. David explained that while it may be good to provide access to a broad audience, it is probably even better to have one team responsible for acquiring and analyzing threat reports and only delivering information that is actionable. Not every stakeholder needs every level of intelligence.

Using the report on the Ryuk ransomware from the French National Agency for the Security of Information Systems (ANSSI) as an example, Yann explained that to do this you need to determine how the same report will impact and be used by various teams across the organization. Different teams may use different aspects of the same report in different ways to achieve their desired outcomes, for example modifying policy (strategic), launching hunting campaigns (operational) or disseminating technical indicators (tactical).

Structure the data for analysis.

Yann explained that the three steps for analysis include: understanding the context of report, the relevance of the report, and relating the report to any prior reports, intelligence and incidents. This process allows you to contextualize and prioritize intelligence but requires that the data be structured uniformly. Threat data comes in various formats (e.g., STIX, MITRE ATT&CK techniques, news articles, blogs, tweets, security industry reports, indicators of compromise (IoCs) from threat feeds, GitHub repositories, Yara rules and Snort signatures.) and needs to be normalized. into a machine-readable format link it to other related reports and sources of information.

David adds that it isn’t just about format. The volume of information across the threat intel landscape is high and different groups use different names to refer to the same thing. Normalization compensates for this and enables you to aggregate and organize information quickly.

Use tools to help with analysis.

Yann explains that the tools you use need to support your desired outcome. According to the poll, 67% of attendees using technical ingestion (SIEM) which indicates that desired outcomes are more technical. And 15% are still handling the acquisition and analysis process manually. This is quite a challenge, particularly during a big event.

It is also important that the tool you select works well with frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK. David shared that MITRE is the most used framework to organize the analysis process. Customers are identifying their crown jewels and mapping to MITRE to understand which adversaries might target them, the tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) to concentrate on, and what actions to take.

Select the right tools to help make data actionable.

Analysis enables prioritization so you can determine the appropriate actions to take. There are a variety of tools to help make threat reports and other elements of your threat intelligence program actionable and achieve desired outcomes at the strategic level (executive reporting), operational level (changes in security posture) and tactical level (updating rules and signatures).

In the final polling question, 45% of respondents said they are using a TIP to make the data actionable for detection and protection, but few are using a TIP for forensics. Yann and David agree this is a missed opportunity and a capability teams should explore as their capabilities continue to mature. From a forensics standpoint, MITRE is an important tool to enable analysis of past incidents so organizations can learn and improve.

In closing, our experts recommend that before you start thinking about threat intelligence sources, analysis and actions, you need to understand the desired outcomes and deliverables for each of your constituents. It’s a journey that typically starts at the tactical level and, with maturity, evolves to include operational and strategic intelligence to deliver additional value. When shared the right way with each part of the organization, key stakeholders will see threat intelligence for the business enabler that it is, and the threat intelligence program will gain support and the budget to grow.

TRAIN THE HYBRID MIND

Written by Anna Collard, SVP Content Strategy & Evangelist at KnowBe4 AFRICA

More than 50% of IT teams believe that employees have bad security habits. Habits they’ve developed since moving their offices into the home and that put their information, systems and employers at risk. The statistic comes from the Tessian Back to Work Security Behaviors Report that also found an age discrepancy when it came to who practiced the best security from home.

Around 51% of 16–24-year-olds and 46% of 25–34-year-olds reported that they used security workarounds, while two in five people said that the security behaviours they adopted at home were very different from those they used in the office. This draws a thick red marker around the need to ensure that people and security training remain a priority while offices continue with hybrid ways of working.

People adopt different behaviours at home as a rule. It is home, after all. There has to be a solid mental shift now that the home has become the office, and this shift involves making sure that the same security check boxes that were ticked at the office are also ticked at home. This is even more important because cyber criminals are taking advantage of system and employee vulnerabilities right now, and really going in on the offensive.

Now is the right time to implement policies and approaches that take hybrid workplaces and requirements into account. The survey mentioned above also found that 67% of IT decision makers believe that phishing emails will increase as people move back to the office. And there is a discrepancy between how IT sees security when office work returns and how employees see it. Only 57% of employees think that they will follow security protocols once back in the office compared with 70% of IT professionals.

Cybercriminals have cottoned on to the fact that people will move back into the office with a slightly less than robust approach to security. They will forget to report mistakes, potentially open up new avenues of risk to the business or get caught by the tide of phishing emails that have become rampant over the past few months.

People are people. The pandemic has been punishing. Implementing further punishments for making simple cyber security mistakes will only make things worse. What’s needed is a focus on training and positive reinforcement that reminds people of why security is important, and how to keep their side clean.

Training that puts them in front of simulated ransomware or phishing emails and that teaches them security best practice, and rewards those who do well. This should be done consistently and in a way that engages with people in the limited time they have.

By giving your people the tools they need to combat security threats and recognise risks, you are empowering them and adding that extra layer of security to your business. Methodical and repeated simulations combined with training allows for IT teams to trust in their people, and for employees to remain aware of the threat actors that wait for them to make the simplest of mistakes. This is the best way to help your business remain ahead of security best practice and for your people to thwart social engineering attacks.

3.5/5

$1340 + VAT

Dynabook Portege X30W-J

Dynabook is the new name for Toshiba branded laptops. The company has been launching one laptop model after the other quite regularly and the latest to come out of its assembly line is the new Portege X30W-J.

This ultraportable and convertible laptop is built around the Intel Evo platform and comes packed with 28W 11th generation Intel Core processors, powerful Intel Xe graphics, and 16-hours of battery life.

The Portege X30W-J is quite lightweight, weighing less than 1kg, and measures just 17.9mm in thickness. The chassis of the laptop feels surprisingly strong for such a light body. This is because the company has used magnesium alloy for the chassis, which combined with a Corning Gorilla Glass for the matte screen makes it not only light but very strong, passing MIL-STD-810-G tests for drop, dust, humidity, temperature, and shock.

Inside the box, you get the Dynabook Portege X30W-J convertible laptop along with Dynabook Trupen, the power adaptor with two types of power plugs, the warranty info, and the quick start guide. The Dynabook Trupen runs on one AAAA-type battery, which is also included inside the box.

As soon as you open the lid that says Dynabook on the center, you come face to face with a 13.3-inch Sharp IGZO Full HD matte anti-glare touchscreen. This display offers a resolution of 1920-by-1080 pixels. The display, as mentioned before, is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass. It is also quite vibrant and provides excellent horizontal and vertical viewing angles, which is just what you need for a laptop that can also be used as a tablet.

Under the hood, the Dynabook Portege X30W-J comes with an 11th Gen Intel Core i5 1135G7 processor running at a clock speed of 2.42-GHz. This is coupled with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD storage.

In terms of connectivity, you get two USB 3.1 Type-C Gen 2 Thunderbolt 4 ports that support data transfer, power delivery, and Display Port; one USB 3.1 port that supports USB Sleep-and-Charge; one HDMI-out which with 4K support; two built-in microphones that can pick up sounds from 4 meters away; one micro SD card slot; and one 3.5mm combo audio jack. You also get Harman Kardon stereo speakers for all your audio requirements.

In terms of performance, the Dynabook Portege X30W-J works wonders. The infrared-based camera is particularly fast at login and you can easily enroll your face through the Windows Settings Login options. And for those of you that really worry about it, a builtin physical camera cover is there to make sure that even if the camera is activated nothing can be recorded. Even though the Dynabook Portege X30W-J is slim and light, it does not cut corners when it comes to its performance. The laptop was able to handle everything we threw at it with aplomb. Day-to-day computing needs felt like a walk in the park and the laptop was even able to handle video rendering sessions with ease.

The bundled Dynabook TruPen also worked like a charm. The pen has a quick response time, so you actually feel like writing on the screen and you can even apply pressure – with support for up to 2048 levels of pressure sensitivity you can use it to put emphasis on some text or work the brush strokes on a digital image.

The Dynabook Portege X30W-J comes in at a price point starting at $1340 + VAT, which translated to approximately AED 4,921 + VAT. At this price point, the Portégé X30W-J comes across as value for money since it is an impressively lightweight convertible 13.3-inch laptop, with slim bezels giving it a decent screen-to-body ratio (81.3%).

If you are a road warrior looking for a performance-based laptop that offers good battery life and fast charge capability, the Dynabook Portege X30W-J could be one of the options you could consider.

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3.5/5

Acer Chromebook 514

According to market research by IDC, 2020 was the year when Chromebooks outsold Macs posting impressive market share gains.

It may come across as a surprise to many, but Chromebooks, which were originally aimed at students and the education sector, gained market share amidst pandemic when most learning sessions moved from classrooms to the secured confines of homes. No wonder many companies have been continuously innovating in the Chromebooks arena, one of which is Acer.

The company recently announced a range of new Chromebooks last month and one of them – the Chromebook 514 – was sent to us for a test drive. Now, this new variant comes packed with an 11th Gen Intel Core i5 processor running the ChromeOS.

The Acer Chromebook 514 also features an aluminum top cover that offers a sturdy look and feels and it accompanies a wide range of features such as conferencing ability, secure cloud technology, and lots more, which makes it ideal for both students and corporate users.

The device offers a display size of 14-inches which also makes it easy to carry around. The display offers a Full HD resolution of 1920-by-1080 pixels, with the touchscreen being optional.

The laptop itself comes with a metal frame, a Gorilla Glass-topped touchpad, and backlit keys. While the Chromebook 514 is quite slim and light, it has also been drop-tested and earns military-grade approval for the MIL-STD-810H durability standard.

In terms of connectivity, you get plenty. On the left edge of the laptop, you get two USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 4, an HDMI port, and a 3.5mm audio jack. On the right edge, you get a microSD card slot, a USB 3.0 port, and a Kensington lock.

You also get an embedded fingerprint reader located next to the keyboard, which is a quick and secure way for users to unlock and verify their identity without a password. Since the fingerprint’s details are stored directly on the Chromebook itself and not in the cloud, the user’s fingerprints are kept safe.

Under the hood, the Acer Chromebook 514 runs on the 11th Gen Intel Core i5 1135G7 processor, running at a clock speed of 2.4GHz. You also get up to 4GB of RAM and up to 64GB of storage space. The Chromebook also supports Intel WiFi 6 (Gig+).

Performance on the Acer Chromebook 514 was quite good. For the most part

AED 2378

of your computing needs, such as typing away on Google Docs, filling in spreadsheets, shopping on the net, watching YouTube videos, and so on, the Chromebook 514 should feel absolutely fine.

Acer promises around 12 hours of battery life on a single charge – in our tests, we clocked around 7 hours of use, before the Chromebook 514 gave up the ghost.

If you are a student, or someone who requires a laptop for day-to-day computing needs, and does not mind using ChromeOS as their operating system of choice, the Acer Chromebook 514 might appeal to you.

For a price of AED 2378, you get a device that offers excellent build quality and good battery life. Since the Acer Chromebook 514 also comes packed with an 11th Gen Intel Core i5 processor coupled with up to 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, it is safe to say that its performance will not disappoint.

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3.5/5

HP Reverb G2 VR Headset

AED 2499

HP’s new Reverb G2 VR Headset has been designed by HP with support from Valve and Microsoft. The company sent us a unit for a test drive and we came away impressed by its overall performance.

The G2 improves upon the original Reverb in almost every way, even though it still features a sleek, all-black exterior like the original Reverb. However, in terms of build quality, the G2 uses an all-plastic front plate.

The cable port has also been moved to the top of the headset behind the mask. While this may sound inconvenient, the G2 features an easy-to-remove magnetic face mask, making it a breeze to swap masks and adjust the cable on the fly.

I was a bit skeptical about how secure the magnetic facemask will be especially during active sessions. However, the headset proved me wrong by staying as snug as possible during my gaming sessions.

The Reverb G2 also still offers a resolution of 2160-by-2160 per eye, which puts it ahead of similar headsets out there on the market. You also get a refresh rate of 90Hz. The headset also offers a cable that is 6m in length – so tethering it to a VRready PC and playing games is super-convenient. impressive – it offers one the very best virtual reality picture quality. Virtual walks through natural environments felt quite nice and videogame sessions also felt interesting.

The 2160-by-2160 per-eye resolution removes the screen-door effect, thus offering crystal clear visuals. In fact, every ingame texture and minor detail on objects in SteamVR games such as Half-Life: Alyx and The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners looked really good. Audio performance is also commendable, thanks to Spatial Audio earphones that offer good volume, clarity, and bass. The audio is directional, and hence it allows you to play and enjoy a game, without bothering other people in the room.

For a price of AED 2499, the HP Reverb G2 VR Headset comes across as a pocket-friendly VR solution that delivers a big bang for your buck. The incredible display, razor-sharp audio, and cozy design make it a truly worthwhile investment.