CXO Insight Middle East - A culture of resilience - November 2020

ISSUE 25 \ NOVEMBER 2020

A CULTURE OF RESILIENCE How Electronic Government Authority of Ras Al Khaimah allowed its employees to work remotely and securely during the pandemic

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CONTENTS

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PRODUCTS

HOW ELECTRONIC GOVERNMENT AUTHORITY OF RAS AL KHAIMAH ALLOWED ITS EMPLOYEES TO WORK REMOTELY AND SECURELY DURING THE PANDEMIC

A CULTURE OF RESILIENCE

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16 REIMAGINING THE WORKPLACE 20 THE FUTURE OF

SECURING THE 30

NEW NORMAL

WINNING 22

AT TWINNING

FOR LEADING A TECH 34 TIPS COMPANY THROUGH COVID-19

NETWORKING

NEW ROLE FOR THE 32 ACYBERSECURITY INDUSTRY

WHY DATA TAP THE POWER OF 26 MODERNISATION MATTERS 36 COLLABORATION

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IS YOUR ORGANISATION A FIT OR A FRAGILE ONE?

PUBLISHED BY INSIGHT MEDIA & PUBLISHING LLC

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BRIDGING THE CYBERSECURITY SKILLS GAP

6

NEWS

HUAWEI PARTNERS WITH MORO HUB TO LAUNCH OPEN CLOUD VMWARE ANNOUNCES NEW INNOVATIONS TO DELIVER INTRINSIC SECURITY AVEVA TO DRIVE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION STRATEGY AT SHELL

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EDITORIAL

BUSINESS AS USUAL

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n the GCC, large sections of the economy have re-opened, and employees have started going back to offices, especially in governments and traditional industries such as oil and gas. Be that as it may, many employees in the private sector have not gone back to their everyday workplaces, and it looks almost certain that the work from home trend is here to stay with companies looking at a hybrid model in the post-pandemic future. A recent survey from the global recruitment agency Robert Half reveals that most people in the UAE want to work from home, in at least a partial capacity, if full-time is not entirely possible. This is pretty much in line with the trends we see in the rest of the world, and employees expect flexibility from employers. This has enormous implications for IT organisations, which were tasked with switching the workforce into remote work model almost overnight when the whole world went into lockdown.

No doubt, remote work has become a catalyst for digital transformation in many organisations,

with investments in cloud-based applications and collaboration tools becoming a top priority. Now, the onus is on IT to figure out how to manage the post-pandemic reality of a hybrid workforce. It is becoming increasingly evident that to manage both staff coming to the office and off-site workers, companies will have to invest in new tools and processes. The number one priority should be cybersecurity, given the alarming increase in phishing attacks targeted at remote workers. Besides new models of application and data security models, organisations will also have to increase their technology budgets to invest in productivity and time management apps, new workforce solutions, and network performance management tools. For business leaders, the task is cut out – they will have to rethink company culture and find a way to empower virtual teams and remote workers in a collaborative manner without compromising their businesses’ core values. I think the new normal is not going to be so normal for all of us.

Published by

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

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

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

Publication licensed by Sharjah Media City @Copyright 2020 Insight Media and Publishing

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

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

Designer Anup Sathyan

While the publisher has made all efforts to ensure the accuracy of information in this magazine, they will not be held responsible for any errors

NOVEMBER 2020

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NEWS

HUAWEI PARTNERS WITH MORO HUB TO LAUNCH OPEN CLOUD

is Excellency Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & CEO of Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA), witnessed the signing of a collaboration agreement between Moro Hub (Data Hub Integrated Solutions), a whollyowned subsidiary of DEWA, and Huawei, a multinational technology company, to launch the multi-tenant Huawei Cloud Stack hosted in the UAE at Moro’s Green Data Centre, the first of its kind in the Middle East.

The newest developer-friendly, secure, and resilient Cloud Platform provides a range of futuristic managed cloud services with multi-availability zones while contributing to the sustainability objectives of governments and Enterprises. The agreement was signed by Eng. Marwan Bin Haidar, Vice Chairman of Moro Hub, and Jiawei Liu, CEO of Huawei UAE. The latest announcement is in sync with Moro Hub’s launch of Green Data Centre to invest its efforts in offering the latest

technologies and services to its clients yet be a responsible corporate citizen to the environment and its community.

The new cloud offering reflects the share vision of both Moro Hub and Huawei to reduce carbon emissions and enhance environmental sustainability.

HE Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer said, “At Moro Hub, we are committed to the vision and directives of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, to make the UAE the world’s leading nation, and the Dubai 10X initiative, which mandates the Government of Dubai to Position Dubai 10 years ahead of all other cities. Moro Hub’s vision is to be the digital transformation hub of choice. Therefore, its latest Cloud Platform with Huawei provides a full suite of modern, highly scalable and flexible infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) system capable of addressing the needs of prospective clients. CIOs are now seeking to extend their application capabilities by leveraging cloud-native and developer-friendly features with such unique platforms.”

VMWARE ANNOUNCES NEW INNOVATIONS TO DELIVER INTRINSIC SECURITY

adoption to build resilient, future ready digital infrastructure.

“Amid global disruption, the key to survival for many companies has meant an accelerated shift to the cloud and ultimately, bolting on security products in their data centres,” said Sanjay Poonen, Chief Operating Officer, Customer Operations, VMware.

“But legacy security systems are no longer sufficient for organisations that are using the cloud as part of their computing infrastructure. It’s time to rethink security for the cloud, organisations need protection at the workload level, not just at the endpoint.

The future of cloud must be met with a better way to secure data and applications.”

As organisations continue their journey towards cloud transformation and application modernisation, they require modern security solutions that are both powerful and easy to

operationalise. Unveiled at VMworld 2020, VMware Carbon Black Cloud Workload, delivers advanced protection purpose-built for better securing modern workloads to reduce the attack surface and strengthen security posture. This innovative solution combines prioritised vulnerability reporting and foundational workload hardening with industry-leading prevention, detection and response capabilities to protect workloads running in virtualised, private and hybrid cloud environments.

The solution combines Carbon Black’s security expertise with VMware’s deep knowledge of data centres to build security into workloads. VMware customers can experience the advanced new solution with a six-month unlimited free trial of VMware Carbon Black Cloud Workload Essentials, available for all current vSphere 6.5 and VMware Cloud Foundation 4.0 customers.

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VMware has unveiled new innovations to deliver intrinsic security to the world’s digital infrastructure. The solutions are designed to advance security for the public and private clouds, security operations and distributed workforces as organisations accelerate cloud 6

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AVEVA TO DRIVE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION STRATEGY AT SHELL

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VEVA has signed an agreement to help accelerate Shell Global Solutions International B.V’s digital transformational strategy by deploying AVEVA’s cloud software solutions.

AVEVA will provide Shell with its Engineering Data Warehouse technology, which is one of the building blocks of the digital twin. This will enable a common digital thread across Engineering, Operations and Maintenance and the ability to securely deliver information in context from a single source to decision makers across these critical functions.

AVEVA’s Engineering Data Warehouse will enable Shell through its Digital Twin to drive asset reliability, enhance efficiency and reduce unplanned

downtime. The solution will also support in providing actionable insights right from the site operator to the Asset Leadership Team.

Ravi Gopinath, Chief Cloud Officer and Chief Product Officer, AVEVA

AVEVA’s solution supports Shell’s ambition to empower staff across Shell’s manufacturing sites and to keep frontline industrial workers safe while ensuring business continuity and operational resilience.

“We are delighted that Shell has chosen to extend its long and robust existing strategic partnership with AVEVA to support in enabling the digital twin cloud-based services,” said Ravi Gopinath, Chief Cloud Officer and Chief Product Officer, AVEVA. “This deployment is part of Shell’s recently announced strategy to deploy digital twin technology across its manufacturing sites. Implementing new technologies like IIoT, extended reality, and artificial intelligence has huge advantages with the digital twin of an operating environment and this cutting-edge technology is guaranteed to deliver immediate improvements for Shell’s operations.”

HUMAN FACTOR CONTINUES TO BE A KEY ELEMENT IN DX: IFS

The human factor is widely recognised as an essential component to digital transformation success. In fact, over a quarter (27 percent) of companies acknowledge that despite being key, people are often overlooked when planning and executing transformative projects, according to a research study from global enterprise applications company IFS.

The study goes on to identify poor change management as one of the key reasons digital transformation projects fail. When implementing new digital transformation projects, businesses are focused on implementing the key technology and solutions but aren’t considering the importance of staff buy-in and acceptance of the project, which is intrinsically linked to its overall success.

When asked about the reasons for failure in past projects, businesses also cited lack of employee engagement among the top four reasons. In addition, respondents named past experiences of low employee buyin as one of the top two reasons

for hesitating to launch new digital transformation projects. This can potentially have a great impact on the overall development of a business, as in times of downturn many believe innovation is the key to business resilience.

“Through continuous dialog with our customers as well as first-hand experiences from our own digital transformation, we have always known that people can act as both an enabler and a barrier in transformation projects,” IFS Chief Human Resources Officer Jane Keith said. “This report drives home the point that if digital transformation is kept human centric and if change management is handled effectively and employees are aware and inspired to support the transformation, the business is much more likely to reap success.

Staff involvement should not be seen as a just a tick-box exercise but as the secret sauce that will ultimately determine the outcome.”

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NEWS

FINESSE TEAMS UP WITH CAPILLARY TECHNOLOGIES

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inesse has joined hands with Capillary Technologies, a cloud-based Loyalty platform, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Omnichannel Customer Engagement solution for retail and consumer brands. Capillary Technologies will power Finesse’s clients with an engagement-based loyalty platform. The platform increases brand recall and repeat sales by incentivising customers in real

time for their transactional and nontransactional (likes, shares, reviews, and more) brand interactions.

Capillary’s platform leverages AI and Machine Learning to automatically create high-conversion campaigns.

This even allows brands to customise engagement for different segments of customers, and offer personalised rewards to ensure premium customers keep coming back.

Gaurav Mehta, VP & Global Head of Alliances & Ecosystem, Capillary Technologies, said, “Since a few quarters back, when Capillary embarked upon strengthening our strategic alliances, we have been on the lookout for partners who recognise Digital Transformation as a core approach to their future growth and are hungry for more, Finesse came in as a natural choice for us. Finesse is a leading Technology Solutions and Services company at the forefront

FINTECH FIRM RIPPLE SETS UP REGIONAL HEADQUARTERS AT DIFC

Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), the global financial centre in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia (MEASA) region, announced that Ripple, the enterprise blockchain solution for global payments, has established its regional headquarters in the Centre.

Ripple has chosen DIFC for its innovative regulations, expansive 8

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network and reputation as a leading global financial centre. Ripple and DIFC are aligned in their vision to shape the future of finance.

Established in 2012, Ripple builds financial solutions and services to move money at the same speed and standard that information moves today. By joining Ripple’s global financial network, RippleNet, customers can process their payments instantly, reliably, cost-effectively and with end-to-end visibility anywhere in the world. Hundreds of financial institutions already use RippleNet in more than 45 countries, making it one of the leading providers of blockchain for payments.

of providing innovative business and technology solutions in the GCC, APAC region and beyond. We are happy to associate with Finesse as one of our strategic partners in the region, and I’m confident that clients will benefit from the deep domain and product expertise of Capillary and the strong regional presence of Finesse.”

Eljo J P, Director & Chief Business Officer, Finesse Global, said, “Capillary Technologies enables us to offer full-stack personalised customer engagement, omnichannel loyalty marketing and consumer analytics solutions that help our Clients understand their consumers at a granular level. Today, with global customers using both digital and physical channels, Capillary will help our clients improve marketing effectiveness and ROI by enabling a unified connected customer engagement strategy.”

Arif Amiri, Chief Executive Officer of DIFC Authority said, “Leveraging DIFC’s world class platform, laws and regulations, our FinTech firms are able to work with other DIFC’s clients, who form part of the region’s largest financial ecosystem, to contribute to the development of the global, regional and local finance industry. During this postpandemic recovery period, we recognise how digital agendas are being prioritised.

Ripple and the other 230+ FinTech related companies in the Centre are key to driving the future of finance.”

Navin Gupta, Managing Director for South Asia and MENA at Ripple said, “Ripple already has a significant client base in the MENA region and the opportunity to co-locate with our customers made DIFC a natural choice. Our regional office will serve as a springboard to introduce our blockchain based solutions and deepen our ties with even more Financial Institutions in the region. We feel very welcome in our new regional home at DIFC.”

COGNIZANT TO ACQUIRE BRIGHT WOLF

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ognizant has announced it has agreed to acquire Bright Wolf, a privately-held technology services provider specializing in custom Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) solutions for Fortune 1000 companies. Bright Wolf is certified by all major cloud providers and acknowledged as an expert in IoT. The company is a Microsoft Gold Partner and has been named an Amazon Web Services Advanced Technology Partner, IoT Competency.

With the close of the acquisition, Cognizant will establish its newest IoT innovation lab in the Raleigh-Durham, N.C., Research Triangle, with the Bright Wolf team as its core.

“Combining Bright Wolf’s experience in production-class IIoT deployments with Cognizant’s expertise in foundational IIoT technologies will

increase our clients’ resiliency, operational efficiency, and competitive advantage,” said Malcolm Frank, President, Digital Business, Cognizant.

“Companies are increasingly embracing IIoT, and Bright Wolf’s team of senior IIoT architects have delivered the business value others have struggled to achieve. We look forward to this talented team joining Cognizant.”

“IIoT transformation can be a complex, high-stakes undertaking for any business,” said Peter Bourne, Chief Executive Officer, Bright Wolf.

“Bright Wolf has helped leading companies across industries realize their IIoT vision through our Zero Waste Engineering approach. We help ensure clients make the right investments at the right time and have the ability to scale as dictated

by business and market needs. Our unique capabilities, together with Cognizant’s deep vertical industry knowledge, scale, and expertise in predictive analytics, AI, cloud, and IoT, will provide clients with an unparalleled partner on their IIoT journey.”

Bright Wolf will enrich Cognizant’s smart products offering and expertise in architecting and implementing IIoT solutions. Bright Wolf delivers design consulting, development, and digital transformation services for clients such as Caterpillar and ITW Hartness in manufacturing, energy, transportation, water, healthcare, and agriculture, among other industries. For example, Bright Wolf recently introduced a solution for automation of cold chain transportation and refrigeration assets for one of the world’s largest logistics companies.

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NEWS

HELP AG PARTNERS WITH AVIATRIX

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s enterprise cloud adoption accelerates in the face of COVID-19, Help AG, the cybersecurity arm of Etisalat Digital, has announced its partnership with Aviatrix, the cloud network platform, to help better enable secure adoption and usage of cloud services for businesses in a simplified manner.

Help AG’s partnership with Aviatrix enables both large enterprises and small businesses to easily integrate security tools in a public cloud environment such as the creation of encrypted tunnels between cloud services. Aviatrix also helps to efficiently connect legacy data centres to cloud while ensuring muchneeded infrastructure, operational visibility across deployment processes and networking technologies spanning different cloud providers and services.

Stephan Berner, Chief Executive Officer at Help AG, said, “Rapid digital transformation has been crucial to survival for businesses during the

pandemic. But as more enterprises tend to shift to the cloud, the challenges around securely managing these environments and avoiding potential disruptions continue to grow. Cloud does not change the requirement for security, but it changes how we deploy cyber security fundamentally.

“When public cloud infrastructure was designed and built, it was done by technical experts who were looking for minimal acceptable functionality. However, enterprises have very specific requirements for infrastructure and Aviatrix fixes a set of unique problems especially when running multi-cloud environments or connecting to legacy data centres.

Together, we help better enable secure adoption and usage of cloud services through the use of innovative solutions that address confidentiality and control of data, control of identity and mitigation of threats.”

SAUDI AIMS TO BE A WORLD LEADER IN AI BY 2030

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audi Arabia has revealed its new National Strategy for Data & AI (NSDAI) which will make the country a global leader in Artificial Intelligence by 2030.

Saudi Arabia’s National Strategy for Data & AI intends to put AI at the heart of the country’s development and growth. By 2030, Saudi Arabia’s vision is to become the place where the best of Data and AI is made reality.

The NSDAI, which will be led by the Saudi Data and AI Authority (SDAIA), was officially launched today at the Global AI Summit in Riyadh. Under the strategy, Saudi Arabia will implement a multi-phase, multi-faceted plan that includes skills, policy and regulation, investment, research and innovation,

and ecosystem development. This will enable the country to become a global hub for data and Artificial Intelligence, and to rank among the top data-driven economies in the world.

HE Dr. Abdullah Bin Sharaf Alghamdi, President of SDAIA, said, “The National Strategy for Data and AI sets the direction and foundations upon which we will unlock the potential of data and AI to fulfil our national transformation priorities and establish Saudi Arabia as a global hub for data and AI.” Saudi Arabia has a strong foundation for its Artificial Intelligence ambitions, based on the country’s unique scale in critical industries, and its position as an investment powerhouse with a focus on technology. The Kingdom also

has a young population and a desire for large scale transformative programs such as Vision 2030. Upcoming Saudi mega projects including NEOM smart city, Qiddiya entertainment and leisure capital, and National Industrial Development and Logistics Program, will provide testbeds and living laboratories for advanced AI and datadriven concepts and applications.

The Kingdom has already implemented a unique data infrastructure with a centralised ecosystem of resources to support government agencies to successfully complete their AI initiatives, including a National Data Bank, G-Cloud, and a whole-government analytics and Artificial Intelligence platform.

Saudi Arabia also aspires to play an active role in the global dialogue on the use of AI to support economic and social development. The Global AI Summit has been inaugurated as an international platform to connect thought leaders and high-level decision makers in AI, and to host discussions on the most important issues related to this emerging technology.

SDAIA has been established to lead the National Strategy for Data & AI, to guide and support its implementation across key government agencies and entities, and to facilitate the deployment of the plan. SDAIA is also directly responsible for initiatives such as data consolidation, and creation and enforcement of AI policies.

The implementation of the NSDAI will follow a multi-phase approach, which will focus on addressing the immediate national requirements for Saudi Arabia until 2025, particularly the development of data and AI programs to support the Vision 2030 strategic development goals. From 2025 until 2030, Saudi Arabia will shift focus to establishing the foundations of a competitive international AI ecosystem, by developing specialisms in specific areas of AI, to become one of the leading AI and data-driven economies by 2030.

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COVER STORY

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A CULTURE OF RESILIENCE ALIA ALKINDY, HEAD OF DEPARTMENT, IT INFRASTRUCTURE AND TECHNICAL OPERATION DEPARTMENT, ELECTRONIC GOVERNMENT AUTHORITY OF RAS AL KHAIMAH (EGA RAK), EXPLAINS HOW THE ORGANISATION ACHIEVED A SECURE REMOTE WORKING ENVIRONMENT WITH MANAGEENGINE’S UNIFIED ENDPOINT MANAGEMENT SOLUTION DESKTOP CENTRAL.

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he Electronic Government Authority of Ras Al Khaimah (EGA RAK) was established in 2004 as a result of Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Ras Al Khaimah H.H. Sheikh Saud bin Saqr al-Qassimi’s aspiration to transform the emirate into an online community. The company has spent the better part of the past two decades gradually digitizing all aspects of RAK society by applying the latest technologies, integrated solutions, and comprehensive systems. EGA’s goal is to continue automating processes and systems at government IT and telecommunication departments, creating necessary technical infrastructure, and be recognized as a leader in e-government, including areas such as IT, telecommunication, services, and geography.

As a technology-driven organisation, EGA RAK was wellprepared when the global pandemic compelled businesses to move work models online earlier this year.

WHILE THE SOLUTION IMPROVED ALL FUNCTIONS, WE WERE ESPECIALLY IMPRESSED WITH HOW SEAMLESS AND QUICK THESE THREE TASKS BECAME – REMOTE AND DESKTOP SHARING OVER INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL NETWORKS, SOFTWARE INVENTORY AND SOFTWARE DEPLOYMENT, DASHBOARDS AND REPORTS.

Alia Alkindy, HOD, IT Infrastructure and Technical Operation Department at Electronic Government Authority of Ras Al Khaimah (EGA RAK), says, “During the pandemic lockdown, we were able to make the required changes quickly, thanks to the inherent management philosophy we follow at EGA. As a company, we have always pushed for developing new services and adopting agile IT models.

With every new service we offer, we also consider how the support can be effective and flexible. It is challenging to test new approaches continuously, but eventually, these new ways of functioning enhance our overall performance and also helps us not to rest on our laurels.”

As a company that made it a priority to stay ahead of the curve, EGA RAK recently deployed enterprise IT management software leader ManageEngine’s unified endpoint management solution – Desktop Central – further enabling the firm to cope with any unexpected circumstance that the pandemic brought on.

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COVER STORY

WE WERE ALSO EXCITED WITH THE SOLUTION’S DASHBOARD AND REPORTING FEATURE, WHICH OFFERED A COMPREHENSIVE VIEW TO OUR MANAGEMENT. WE WERE NOW ABLE TO SEE OUR VULNERABILITY AREAS AND ACCORDINGLY ADDRESS IT. Alkindy explains, “Few months before the COVID-19 pandemic, EGA’s technical teams were researching and testing solutions to expand its reachability to support users outside RAKGOV network such as users on travel, users at home, and even users working on restricted and limited access networks. We approached ManageEngine and after seeing the many benefits of the offering in a detailed PoC, we were convinced that their Desktop Central was the perfect solution suiting to our requirements.”

The ManageEngine team was given

HOW EGA RAK ACHIEVED A SECURE REMOTE WORKING ENVIRONMENT WITH MANAGEENGINE’S DESKTOP CENTRAL • ManageEngine’s Desktop Central supported secure communication over HTTPS and SSL, rolebased access and multi-level authentication, encryption and checksum.

• EGA engineers were also able to enforce a high level of security for network and servers, without compromising on the product features.

• All these security layers helped to ensure safe and secure working environment.

• Smart buildings IoT solution • Veeam Backups for servers/ Office 365

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the green light to immediately start working on EGA’s system architecture and project implementation. The solution addressed all the core requirements that EGA RAK had, enabling the firm to deploy a secure remote working environment for all types of users.

The solution supported secure communication over HTTPS and SSL, role-based access and multilevel authentication, encryption and checksum. EGA engineers were also able to enforce a high level of security for network and servers, without compromising on the product features.

EGA RAK’s primary objective was to reach and serve users outside of its managed network securely.

The Desktop Central’s Remote and Desktop sharing feature over internal and external networks, addressed this requirement. Another major challenge the customer faced was the overhead of conducting the inventory for thousands of computers manually.

“This not only cost time but also the efforts of a large number of personnel,” explains Alkindy.

Automating this task through ManageEngine’s solution made EGA RAK’s operations much more efficient.

“We were also excited about the solution’s Dashboard and Reporting feature, which offered a comprehensive view to our management. We were now able to see our vulnerability areas and accordingly address it.”

Post the implementation, EGA RAK was able to significantly reduce

MANAGEENGINE’S DESKTOP CENTRAL OFFERED EGA RAK BENEFITS SUCH AS: • Reduced overhead on IT teams • Automatic inventory reporting and monitoring • Remote software installation

the overhead on IT teams, automate inventory reporting and monitoring and achieve remote software installation, among other benefits.

“All these security layers helped to ensure safe and secure working environment for us,” adds Alkindy.

“While the solution improved all functions, we were especially impressed with how seamless and quick these three tasks became – Remote and Desktop sharing over internal and external networks, Software Inventory and Software, Dashboards and Reports.”

According to Alkindy, the ManageEngine team went the extra mile to ensure they delivered support services beyond the managed environment. “We had a great experience with ManageEngine. Right from understanding our needs to post-deployment support, the team was efficient and highly skilled. The solution also featured an easy and friendly user interface and minimised the out-of-reach device situations and the need for relying on multiple thirdparty tools.”

Speaking about future plans, Alkindy concludes, “At EGA RAK, we are in constant pursuit of new technologies that can enhance our services. Our IT budgets and investments have been on a steady increase. In fact, we have begun to explore emerging IT innovations and industry trends to future proof our operations, ensure business continuity and most of all to be able to offer excellent digital customer services.”

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FEATURE

REIMAGINING THE WORKPLACE HOW COVID-19 CRISIS COULD CHANGE THE FUTURE OF WORK

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ven though many Middle East organisations have redoubled their efforts to bring employees back in the office, remote working has become a new reality. The pandemic and ensued lockdown left companies with no choice but to switch to remote work, which is now poised to become the new normal. Many surveys suggest that more than 50 percent of the global workforce continue to work from home, and a staggering 90 percent prefer the flexibility of continuing WFH in a postpandemic world.

With virtual teams and distributed workforces, what will be the future of work in 2021? Will this lead to a shift in IT investment priorities? What unique challenges will CIOs face within a hybrid model that combines both on-site and remote work?

There is no doubt that the workplace’s future will be different after 2020, says Stephen Gill, Academic Head of the School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences, Heriot-Watt University Dubai. “Although prior to COVID-19, a few companies had already embraced remote working, the sudden impact of the pandemic has certainly accelerated 16

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the switch to virtual workspaces. It has not only disrupted our jobs and our work environment; it has also prompted us to re-evaluate our roles as employers and employees, our objectives, our values, and how we achieve work-life balance.”

While certain industries such as healthcare and logistics would need most of their employees to be on-site, organisations in other industries might consider going fully remote or hybrid.

“A hybrid model will offer employees more autonomy to fit work around the rest of their lives, rather than organising their home-based routines

Stephen Gill

in around their workhours,” says Gill.

As we approach the end of 2020, it is becoming evident that the so-called new normal is set to be just normal, says Mena Migally, Regional Vice President, META at Riverbed. Consequently, companies are preparing for a largescale, long-term shift to remote work, where increasingly employees will ‘work from anywhere.’

Whilst the pandemic has demonstrated that many businesses could continue to operate outside of the traditional office space exclusively, an office environment does provide employees with invaluable human interaction and collaboration. Many organisations, including Riverbed, are shifting toward a hybrid and flexible workplace environment, in which many employees split their time between the office and working remote, he says.

Fadi Kanafani, Managing Director – Middle East at NetApp, also believes a hybrid workplace will be a reality for the foreseeable future as for many businesses not all employees will be required to work remotely – based on their role and responsibilities. “I believe more and more businesses will have to offer employees the flexibility to work.

Mena Migally

We also see a stronger adoption of cloud technologies to allow organisations to maintain business continuity.”

Chris Pope, VP Innovation, ServiceNow, says the future of work is now. In his opinion, COVID-19 has created the perfect environment for innovation. “Practically overnight, the business world shifted to nearuniversal remote work — which we would have not previously thought possible — unleashing a new period of experimentation and innovation at work. At a time of great pressure, organisations have demonstrated that it’s possible to challenge established working practices and move quickly to adapt to new ways of working.”

Industry experts expect a growing number of employees to work outside the traditional office environment beyond 2021 as well. The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly sped up digital transformation plans of most organisations and they have in a short span of time been able to implement technologies that have enabled remote working.

The recently released Riverbed Future of Work Global Survey 2020 paints a clear picture of where companies are, and where they intend to go. It is not surprising that globally, businesses expect a nearly 50% increase in employees working remotely post COVID-19.

In the UAE and Saudi, 95% of business leaders who we surveyed stated that they are comfortable – but

Fadi Kanafani

not fully prepared – for the shift to remote work, and that they expect, on average, 28% of their teams to work remotely after the pandemic.

“I believe remote working is definitely here to stay considering the number of advantages, including lower overhead expenses and higher productivity as a result of less commute time and workplace distractions. Organisations also have the flexibility to create teams where skills are preferred over employees’ geographical location.

Today’s UC applications have also made collaboration easier,” says Ehab Halablab, Regional Sales Director for Gulf, Levant & Egypt at A10 Networks.

Tackling the WFH dilemma Remote work is here to stay. So now the question is, how do you manage your remote workforce? What tools and processes should you invest in?

“Firstly, companies must ensure that their access control policies ensure that all business-critical users and devices have access to the resources they need to perform their jobs. From there, businesses must also validate that these users and devices are secure. There are a number of security aspects that will only be magnified due to the sudden influx of devices connecting remotely to the network,” says Alain Penel, Regional Vice President – Middle East at Fortinet.

According to the Fortinet 2020 Remote Workforce Cybersecurity Report, nearly 60% of organisations

Chris Pope

revealed an increase in cybersecurity breach attempts following the transition to remote work, while 34% reported actual breaches in their networks.

To underpin improved and more efficient ways of remote working, IT and HR must consider adopting both technology and working culture, according to Taj El-khayat, Regional Director Middle East & North Africa, Citrix “Work needs to be designed around an employee experience that removes friction stemming from clunky technology and empowers people to work the way they want – wherever work needs to get done.

Savvy companies are using this time to embrace new, flexible work models and simplify the work experience so employees can access the resources they need to perform at their best whether working in the office, on the road, or at home,” he says.

While the shift to remote work is a challenge, it is also an opportunity for companies to build smart strategies to improve business continuity, employee retention, and overall growth, according to Kanafani from NetApp. Businesses must provide remote employees with the right technology to conduct business activity and collaborate in a secure environment. In today’s business environment, remote working, resilience, and business continuity plans aren’t just the key to success, but the key to survival.

Businesses must re-evaluate their IT

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FEATURE

Ehab Halablab

Alain Penel

Hisham Darwish

infrastructure management, operations, and approach to automation, while accelerating their use of managed and cloud services – this provides not just the capability to effectively monitor and manage how employees access data, but they can also do it securely, he says.

Migally from Riverbed says in remote working scenarios, performance of applications can be impacted by several factors such as the reliability and bandwidth of employee’s home Internet connections, the need to utilise additional security related technologies such as VPNs, or even latency that could be introduced by having to backhaul all SaaS traffic through a central data centre. “It is imperative for organisations to address the performance of critical SaaS applications. In doing so, they will set themselves up for long-term success with the ability to radically accelerate time to market, increase competitiveness and drive revenue growth,” he says.

on how people work and will continue to do so in the years to come. AI-driven tools are already executing some of the tasks that are usually performed by people and are also carrying out a few tasks that go beyond what people can do,” says Gill.

Pope from ServiceNow says AI can be used and adopted in many areas of an organisation but with a new workforce model and structure, the traditional boundaries and support mechanisms are challenged beyond their limits.

“As a consequence, improving employee experience, agent/work productivity, and ensuring service excellence, all become major candidates for driving outcomes for the digital worker. AI can therefore be used to empower and drive virtual agents and bots, deliver insightful and meaningful analytics, and drive continual improvement and measurement across services and processes,” he adds.

El-khayat from Citrix says we’re entering an age where artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming a serious proposition, preparing us for a future where humans and machines can work together, cooperatively and harmoniously. “It is too early to know the precise impact AI will have on organisations. Robots will not replace humans, but they will make us smarter and more efficient by speeding up the decision-making process.

Consequently, as technology and AI takes over time-consuming, mundane

tasks, work will become more strategic and employees more engaged.”

Artificial intelligence will change how every job is performed, eliminating work related to repetitive tasks but increasing the need for creative thinkers, according to Hisham Darwish, HR leader, IBM Middle East and Pakistan. In fact, IBM believes that 100% of jobs will eventually change due to artificial intelligence, and according to empirical research from the MITIBM Watson AI Lab, across more than 18,500 tasks, for each occupation, on average, workers were asked to perform 3.7 fewer tasks overall in 2017 than seven years earlier.

“We’re already seeing the impact of AI on enterprise level decisionmaking and operations. Let’s take HR and talent acquisition as an example.

From a talent acquisition perspective, organisations are building assessments on potential future employees with a holistic structured overview derived from AI collation of an employee’s skills, experiences, previous performance, digital footprint as well as a prediction of best roles fit and future success.

This on one-hand removes unconscious biases based, for example, on gender or politics and allows the recruitment process to focus on competencies and skills. The human aspect from a recruitment perspective requires decision-making based on a much fuller picture than previous provided by traditional means,” says Darwish.

What will AI mean for the future of work?

AI and ML are already automating many repetitive and manual tasks and have enormous implications for the future of work.

“Although Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not entirely new, rapid technological advancement is definitely pushing the boundaries of what AI can do. AI has already begun to have a major impact 18

CXO INSIGHT ME

NOVEMBER 2020

Automation: Hype or Reality Automated Security Testing in Software Development

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INTERVIEW

THE FUTURE OF NETWORKING ALEXANDRE GIBOUIN, HEAD OF CONNECTIVITY DOMAIN, IMEA, ORANGE BUSINESS SERVICES, TALKS ABOUT WHY YOUR ORGANISATION NEEDS SD-WAN TO REDUCE THE COST OF CONNECTIVITY IN A CLOUD-CENTRIC WORLD.

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hat is driving SDWAN adoption in the Middle East?

SD-WAN adoption is increasing in the Middle East. Based on our experience of working with enterprise customers across the Middle East, we see two main drivers of the adoption of SD-WAN in the region – both are related to the impact of the pandemic.

First, the acceleration of digital transformation and the shift to the ‘digital enterprise’, for which companies need to prepare their network infrastructure ready for cloud transformation (the pandemic has accelerated this trend). Second, the need for companies to optimise the connectivity budget in order to hit cost savings targets in 2021 (an even more vital objective due to the impact of the pandemic).

We see these trends playing out with our customers operating in a range of industries, including banking and finance, manufacturing, transport and logistics, and retail. Cloud migration is driving SD-WAN transformation among our customers and when migrating, they need robust and manageable communications infrastructures to support the cloud resources on which their business processes rely.

In fact, SD-WAN is becoming an essential tool for IT departments which are increasingly becoming service brokers for a variety of SaaS

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applications. By using SD-WAN to manage multiple applications across different service providers, the IT department can offer a diverse portfolio of applications while managing end to end visibility and service quality over the supporting network.

Can SD-WAN replace MPLS? In any situation, SD-WAN can help companies benefit from increased visibility, agility and resilience, while transforming their IT to a cloudbased model. The key to a successful transformation journey is the expert support and services to offer companies end to end orchestration of the edge and cloud connectivity, as well as the security and cloud services up to the application layer.

What are the SD-WAN requirements for a multi-cloud environment?

Most of our enterprise customers in the region who are moving towards the digital enterprise model have already implemented or are on the way to implementing a multi-cloud strategy.

It’s easy to see why. Enterprises across the region are facing increasing ICT challenges due to the opportunities and challenges of digital transformation, and the disruption and complexity of ‘tech sprawl’. Digital transformation also disrupts IT departments, as technologies and vendors multiply and complexity increases. Enterprises increasingly want more data and so seek more technology,

adding even more services, vendors and contracts and this will increase as cloud and digital services grow.

Of course, it’s not a uniform shift to the cloud and companies are migrating at different rates mirroring the local country regulatory developments - but the major cloud service providers are now in the region and regulators are increasingly looking at the opportunities and advantages of cloud as a driver of digital business transformation, placing data at the heart of the business.

Companies which have already moved to the cloud expect the communication infrastructure to deliver best-in-class user experience through efficient solutions, which are more agile and responsive to business demands. Because a significant part of the traffic is transported over the internet, security is also a key factor.

We can see the sectors that are transforming at the fastest rates and not surprisingly, these include retail, retail banking, transport & logistics, all of which are very active. In the banking sector for example, cloud migration and digital transformation starts at the first level which covers the non-banking applications and offers flexible costs and a basis for unified communications services in the cloud. Beyond this, the next level involves a shift of the datacenter to the public cloud and moves the network from Software-as-a-Service to Platform-as-a-Service.

But the concern we hear regularly is that when moving applications to the

cloud, there may be a corresponding loss of visibility and control.

This is where the benefits of SD-WAN transformation really start to kick-in.

These include additional flexibility, agility and scalability. The value proposition for SD-WAN is taking back control and even if the transformation process is underway, SD-WAN can be retrofitted to ensure you can monitor performance and accelerate your network transformation.

Orange Business Services has deployed a global Software Defined Platform, called NextGen Hub available in 24 locations (including three locations in the Middle East & Africa region). This facilitates the move to a multi-cloud strategy by combining direct connectivity to 40 major cloud service providers (including Microsoft, Amazon, SAP, Salesforce, Google, Oracle) , using our Galerie platform and the power of SD-WAN and

SDN technology for optimised Edge to cloud connectivity, using our Flexible SDWAN platform.

Many of our customers are considering SD-WAN technology as a key enabler to achieving their goals and are already assessing or have selected an SD-WAN technology solution.

We also provide a vendor agnostic multi-cloud connectivity fabric, fully secure, resilient and scalable, combined with an intelligent application-centric edge to the cloud platform, to optimise the ‘user to Apps’ experience, with applications distributed in multiple clouds and locations and with users more connected over the internet, whether they are working from the office or from home.

What some of the key SD-WAN trends to watch for in 2021?

We believe SD WAN is one of the most

exciting and fastest growing network technologies with the potential to revolutionise business. Gartner predicts 59 percent compound annual growth rate for SD WAN through 2021, creating a $1.3 billion market. It also predicts a 6.3 percent annual decline in branch office routers, and a 28.1 percent annual reduction in legacy routers through 2020.

A recent study conducted by IDC for Riverbed, ‘Middle East Network Transformation Survey 2020’, mentions that organisations in the UAE and Saudi Arabia are investing in upgrading their networks and currently over half (52%) are undergoing network transformation.

2021 is set to be a big year for SD-WAN as the technology continues to mature.

We anticipate that the main evolution next year will be around the convergence of SD-WAN and security services, in a cloud delivery model. Our own response to this has been to align our service portfolio with the so-called Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) framework, defined with Gartner.

While enterprise users are moving out of the office and moving applications to the public cloud, our customers are looking for integrated and orchestrated SD-WAN and security solutions end to end, to connect and protect the end user, as well as the applications.

Edge transformation is another important trend that we expect to continue in 2021, combining SD-WAN, SD-LAN and Edge computing solutions to support IoT transformation use cases such as Smart Retail, Smart Building and Industry 4.0. Large enterprise customers are making this digital integration journey with a co-innovation approach and are actively looking for partners with the experience of successful implementations in different vertical industries.

So, it’s clear – the world really is moving towards a more software defined future. As cloud adoption continues to accelerate in the region, softwaredefined networking simplifies the management and operation of global infrastructure and improves cost, reliability and security.

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FEATURE

WINNING AT TWINNING WHY DIGITAL TWINNING IS AN ATTRACTIVE PROPOSITION FOR BUSINESSES TRYING TO SQUEEZE MORE VALUE OUT OF THEIR PHYSICAL ASSETS AND PROCESSES.

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ut simply, a digital twin is a virtual replica of physical assets that allows users to leverage real-world data to create simulations to predict how a system or process will perform. The increasing use of IoT is fueling the adoption of digital twin technology, and Gartner estimates that over two-thirds of companies that have implemented IoT would have deployed at least one digital twin in production by 2022.

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of service for one to two days. Is that upgrade worth the loss of the engine service for two days? A digital twin would help you to make an informed choice. GE estimates that 6000 plus industrial assets have saved more than $1.6 billion for customers, on hardware assets worth $9.5 billion using Digital Twin technology.

“The most agile companies today are pursuing digital twins to rapidly assimilate digitalisation into their operations and capture value in the short term. The digital twin provides a practical approach which can unlock the potential of the massive data

mountain in each company. Digital twins are most commonly thought of in terms of engineering simulations of process operations and can be focused on a single asset, across a plant or system-wide to optimise operations and production more generally,” says Ron Beck, Marketing Strategy Director, AspenTech.

“Digital twins provide the ability to create a virtual replica of potential and actual physical assets, processes, people, places, systems, and devices that can be used for various purposes,” says Dr. Tariq Aslam, Head of MEA, AVEVA. “Organisations use the

technology for many reasons including testing new assets or procedures before launching them in the real world, where it becomes more expensive and complicated to fix any issues, the improvement of ongoing operations or training employees. In practical terms, this type of technology can help improve the safety on an oil rig, improve the efficiency of a production plant, or ensuring buildings meet sustainability, efficiency or regulatory requirements.”

Mejdi El-Khater, Country Manager of IBM Qatar, says the concept of the digital twin, where we take the physical elements into a digital virtual world has powerful implications to any product’s lifecycle from design (by improving quality and decreasing development time), build (sustainability and lowering costs) and operations (reducing unplanned downtime and improved asset utilisation). “The ability to remotely control assets and perform tasks from around the globe is even

Dr. Tariq Aslam

Mejdi El-Khater

more amplified given the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact globally.”

He says the benefits of the digital twin concept are evolutionary and attained in phases. It can be applied to just about anything we can measure, provided the access to data and reliable communications are in place.

It also serves to digitise the business end-to-end in a transformative way with a lens to see the future by answering the question of “what if?” without impacting ongoing operations.

Mehmood Khan, IFS Managing Director, Middle East, adds the key benefit of using digital twin technology is that it can represent your whole organisation in digital form in near real time, capturing the strategic, tactical and operational relationships between different divisions, assets and personnel roles to allow more automated decision making. “This can lead to more efficient processes, reduced risk and maintenance costs across systems and the potential for new business opportunities through simulation modeling.”

compose a digital twin initiative.

IBM’s own experience has a focused approach to building the right strategy for clients’ adoption and success in a co-creative manner. There is no single package or solution that provides a digital twin out of the box, yet there are elements and models that can be re-used and acquired (accelerating the time to deploy and attain results),” says El-Khater from IBM. He stresses that essential steps in creating a digital twin strategy should start with defining the context and scope, zooming in on the parts of the process that would provide the quickest benefits and impact. “Once the business objectives and scope are defined, we move onwards with the technological aspects and architecture elements. Several criteria for success are evaluated and then only do we move to an implementation plan.

Re-usable assets can be brought in to complete digital twin projects, yet custom integration and data readiness tracks will be essential and inevitable.

In summary, there is no “one size fits all”, but there are processes to follow to ensure successful implementations and these are wellproven methods, he says.

Beck from AspenTech adds step one is to define a bounded scope tied to business value; while creating a

How to create a digital twin strategy A digital twin initiative is a transformative digital concept and will shape to change the way an organisation operates. “Multiple disruptive technological solutions

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FEATURE

hacked, it can ask the other turbines for guidance, or it can issue a warning.

This ‘closed loop’ can happen in microseconds, reducing the risk of failure.

Mehmood Khan

roadmap to move from simpler digital twin projects, which creates early wins and measurable value, to a scaled approach. “Your roadmap should follow your key business initiatives: What are your most critical business pains today? Which will yield faster to a data-driven digital twin approach? Can you map the digital twin to the value tied to your business initiative?”

Aslam from Aveva says companies should create a digital twin model that uses accurate data feeds to help understand product or operations performance and adjust critical control points to deliver short- and long-term value. “Identify where digital twin simulations and predictive maintenance can deliver the best value and build a digital twin architectural roadmap that enables program and project planning for digital transformation.”

According to GE, critical to your strategy will be protecting your assets by mitigating cybersecurity threats with real-time, active cyber defense solutions, such as digital ghost.

Once your foundations are in place, your twins should learn to talk. GE has developed an emergent language between wind turbines, for instance.

If one has a creaky bearing or gets

Key challenges to success Digital twin technology comes with its own set of challenges. “The increase in connectivity needed to run such a framework opens up vulnerabilities where the actual and digital systems meet, necessitating a strong focus on security. In addition, an increase in automation will change business practices within an organisation and processes that still require a human “in the loop” to ratify decisions will require transparency and trust. The visualisation capabilities of a digital twin framework can help in this regard, but it is important to make sure that underlying AI-based decisions are as explainable as possible as well,” says Khan from IFS. EL-Khater lists some other critical roadblocks: “There are several challenges, but at the heart of these would be data readiness. Without the right data, we can have a nice schematic that has little value to properly demonstrate the physical world it represents. I would state that attaining the right sensory data and its quality for consumption as the number one challenge. The data needs to be trusted, accurate and governed.”

Skills availability to lead these programs is another challenge, these initiatives are continuous journeys, clients are demanding skills to be inhouse rather than sole dependence on suppliers. It is a digitally transformative program with clear differentiators to early adopters in any industry, he adds.

Another issue is the lack of industry standards as not all digital twins are created equal. Bodies like the Digital Twin Consortium will play an important role in driving standards across industries so that digital twins from a range of vendors can work together to lower barriers to entry for industrial companies that want to

benefit from the technology. More than 150 companies now hold membership in the consortium, which seeks to reduce the risk of implementing digital twin technology and improve interoperability, develop best practices, and influence requirements for digital twin standards.

Now the question is whether this technology has any use cases beyond manufacturing and supply chain industries? Digital twins were originally created for the space industry but now are increasingly common across many industries, including power generation and oil & gas industries.

“Gartner estimates that by 2021 there will be over 25 billion Internet of Things (IoT) endpoints and digital twins will exist for potentially billions of scenarios. Benefits will include asset optimisation, competitive differentiation and improved user experience. Digital twinning is fast becoming essential to IoT deployment as many more IoT platform providers and analytics companies are investing in digital twin technology. These cover functions from initial ideas, through to design, development and construction,” says Aslam.

El-Khater says there are other interesting use cases, from F1 racing teams to cities (that are in their own-right an intricate set of connected devices, people and assets) being replicated in a digital world. Agriculture is another domain that has started to use the concept in improving yield and decreasing environmental impact to the soil.

“Other sectors like public safety, security, health and pandemic disease management recently gaining priority given the global COVID-19 spread. Our world delivers us the scenarios and the possibilities are abound. Today we recognise how technology can enable this digital world to run near real-life simulations even from a single process flow level on a plant floor to a complex representation of a densely populated city undergoing an emergency response,” he sums up.

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INTERVIEW

WHY DATA MODERNISATION MATTERS NEERAJ SRIVASTAVA, VP AND HEAD OF ME, COGNIZANT, EXPLAINS WHY DATA MODERNISATION IS ESSENTIAL TO BUILDING A DIGITAL BUSINESS.

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ow can businesses extract more value from their existing data?

Some businesses might think they already extract great value from data. However, for most, this isn’t true. Data should be instrumental in how every business operates. Being a modern enterprise is about becoming data-native, monetising data assets, and looking ahead with intelligence guiding every step. If this isn’t the case, there is room for businesses to get more from their data. Start by creating an environment where data can thrive. Data modernisation builds an information architecture that breaks down traditional siloes, allowing data to flow to all corners of the business and forming the kind of data-driven environment that empowers the C-Suite with actionable intelligence.

Can AI be used to unlock powerful data insights?

We’re amid a data explosion. Unaided, it’s almost impossible for us to draw valuable insights. Fortunately, AI can do the hard work for us. Algorithms can segment customers, understand their behaviour, and offer personalised experiences. Industry use cases for pairing AI and data are especially convincing. In FinTech, AI can detect fraud. In Healthcare, it can support disease management. There’s no doubt AI is the future, but to be useful, it needs data, or more specifically, a data environment that permits it to thrive.

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What is the relationship between AI and Big Data?

To generate insights, we need quality data.

Previously, we used data in structured formats. But in the last decade, we’ve begun tapping into giant unstructured volumes - known as Big Data. It’s a whole new world of insight. As businesses realise the potential of these giant volumes, they’re processing them with sophisticated AI algorithms for sentiment analysis, image processing, and text mining.

Are there barriers to AI? When it comes to digital endeavours, the Middle East punches above its weight.

However, a lack of digital maturity in some foundational areas, including data management and modernisation, holds businesses back. Disparate systems hinder them from maximising their AI. This results in a gap between the enthusiasm around AI and its adoption, where despite AI being mostly high on the C-Suite agenda, initiatives never go beyond the concept stage.

How can digital endeavour be accelerated?

Given the ongoing crisis, efficiency and resilience must be balanced to keep operations ticking. Here, digital strategies are critical. A strong data strategy acts as the foundation for digital maturity, enabling the business to modernise systems, empower the workforce, and improve the customer experience, all while achieving a strong ROI. This way, AI can work with data across the entire enterprise.

Are there common data modernisation challenges?

Some businesses lack a clear strategy or a roadmap. Often, multiple siloed departments all want their say in data modernisation, but the lack of a clear top-down strategy impedes progress.

Other businesses lack strategy around the handling of Big Data. The absence of a proper data governance framework further affects overall data quality.

What’s the key to an effective data modernisation strategy?

It’s critical to consider AI throughout the process. After all, data modernisation, more than data itself, is about ensuring the IT environment is ready to accelerate AI transformation. There are four real steps to consider: Ideation and prioritisation of business outcomes; modernisation and democratisation of data; decision-making, including insight generation, prediction, and prescription; and activating decisions and monetising data assets.

What factors should users consider before choosing a data analytics platform?

Data analytics is an investment that’ll pay if the correct product is selected.

It is advisable first to identify which product has the required functionality.

Next, consider compatibility with existing applications – what is required is a product that fits seamlessly into the technology stack. Lastly, explore the product’s performance with Big Data. Without this capability, the value of data modernisation will forever be restricted.

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VIEWPOINT

IS YOUR ORGANISATION A FIT OR A FRAGILE ONE? THE CIO AND CTO NEED TO BUILD A CONTINUOUS CULTURE OF LEARNING ON HOW TO USE TECHNOLOGY TO SURVIVE UNCERTAINTIES OF TODAY’S GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT, EXPLAINS RANJITH KAIPPADA, MANAGING DIRECTOR AT CLOUD BOX TECHNOLOGIES.

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hat is the culture of an organisation? Is it the value system of its top executives and the business formula for achieving operational success? Or is it the ability of an organisation’s workforce to utilise technology to adapt to fast moving changes outside and inside the organisation? Increasingly the latter is beginning to become associated as the culture of survival, especially after the enduring months of lockdown, entering the post pandemic phase, and now seeing no end to the volatility in the external environment Workforces need to develop the ability of being able to recognise uncertainty in the external environment and to plan for internal changes and restructuring. They need to be able to ask the question - is our organisation fragile and what can we do to make it fit?

According to global consulting firm Gartner, a fit enterprise recognises uncertainty as an ongoing situation and is prepared to adapt and navigate its way successfully through the prevailing conditions. Often times such fit organisations even start accelerating in their growth along the way, through a combination of having the right insights, right skills and the right offering for end users at such times of volatility and turbulence.

A fragile organisation on the other hand, with a weak culture of learning and adapting to uncertainty, typically slows down in such a prevailing condition of uncertainty and finally exits.

During the last decade having a visionary management team at the helm, with a far reaching, forward looking strategy,

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was believed sufficient for success by its shareholders. During those times the external conditions were not as volatile, the inflexion points on sales models determined by adoption of digital technologies was still in its infancy, and organisational culture was not a decisive survival criterion.

All this is now history!

Readiness to accept risk and failure and determination to find a new approach to survive the external conditions are now a critical part of the overall organisational culture. Managing a volatile external environment implies a workforce that has the ability to transform its skills.

This is facilitated by an internal culture of learning and training, pivoting on insights derived from customer data.

Such an organisation, whose workforce can flex and adapt to changing external demands and conditions is increasingly being looked at as a fit organisation.

According to Gartner, more than 25% of fit organisations are built on a pervasive culture of learning. Moreover, the CIO, CTO and the IT organisation are not silent

spectators in this run up. Rather than driving the development of specific IT skills, these executives are responsible for building the process of continuing learning and how technology can help drive the business success of an organisation.

So how do you go about it? Changing the culture is a huge task and bigger the task, the less likely that it will be successful. An easier way is to continuously think of how to break routines that define the culture, challenging the teams to adapt and find solutions.

The secret is to find the weak spots in the culture, and break out changes wherever you can make the most impact. # Use real life examples and don’t just talk about data models. # Build proofs of concept and roll them out without delay. # Celebrate failures by discussing learning points. # Encourage every meeting to end with hard hitting questions. # Announce changes in an internal process and block all steps in the old process. # Do not offer answers to all questions, make the team think them out. # Do not announce collaborative status meetings, let project owners document progress and failures. # Set a cut-off time line for any decision and reward quick decision making. # Making a decision, even if it is a bad one, is better than no decision.

By using a multifold approach around continuous learning and adaptation, regional enterprises can anticipate to remain fit and agile, rather than fragile and rigid.

VIEWPOINT

POSTING WARNING SIGNS ON YOUR CLOUD PROPERTY PRESENTING WARNINGS THAT CLOUD SECURITY TESTERS AND RESEARCHERS ARE UNWANTED AND LIABLE IS ALSO IMPORTANT AND PART OF TYPICAL CLOUD SECURITY MEASURES, EXPLAINS FRANK KIM, FELLOW INSTRUCTOR AT SANS INSTITUTE.

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n our real world, we are used to a variety of signs and displays that indicate a certain physical area is privately owned and uninvited visitors are not necessarily welcome to be onsite at these premises. Based on the nature of the ownership and the type of activities being conducted at these premises, there may be additional fences, warning signs of fines and punishments, and protective measures to keep visitors of the premises.

The intention being that the everyday law-abiding citizens will stay clear of encroachment on private property, while any violators are either hostile or unknown.

Today’s world of cloud deployment is in a somewhat similar situation. It is relatively easy to acquire and take possession of a cloud property. But it is relatively challenging to secure the property, and to ensure that only legitimate visitors enter the cloud property and utilize available services.

Cloud is a transformative and disruptive technology, that has shot into the limelight since the arrival of the pandemic. It is a required platform to enable teams to work remotely and collaborate efficiently during the post pandemic and lock down times.

Moreover, cloud will continue to define the technology landscape for years to come.

To manage cloud requires a good blend of skills around applications, code, and automation. Due to the ease of enabling and activating a cloud property, cloud is growing at brisk pace. But cloud security skills and investment that need to be growing alongside are not keeping pace.

How to secure a cloud property remains a specialised role requiring training and experience.

There are various types of skills and roles that go around protecting a cloud property.

These include Cloud Security Manager, responsible for leading; Cloud Security Architecture, responsible for designing; Cloud Security Engineer, responsible for building security capabilities; Cloud Security Analyst, responsible for enabling defenses and analyzing issues; and DevOps Professional, responsible for building applications and systems.

By default, when acquiring a cloud property, there are just a few security fences around the property and it is left to the leasers or those who are renting the cloud space to build their own security fences. The ongoing lack of such investment into cloud security creates three types of visitor groups.

The first is the genuine visitor who comes and goes and consumes available services from the cloud property. They do little to threaten the existing cloud security fences. The second group of visitors are those who have no malicious intent but are keen to test the security defences of the cloud property and if fallible offer their own expertise to rebuild the fences of that cloud

property. They are cloud security testers and researchers in a manner of speaking.

The third are the malicious threat actors who will continue to aggressively threaten the cloud property once they have decided the corporate entity and its assets are of interest to them.

In some ways, the entry of the second group of visitors, that is the visitor who is testing the security of the cloud property, can be damaging similar to the third malicious group. Owners of cloud properties need to take proactive measures such as signs and warnings to ward off the intrusive behaviour of cloud security testers and researchers, as well, who unknowingly and unwittingly may cause damage, similar to malicious threat actors.

Not all cloud property owners invest huge sums of money and sophistication into cloud security fences. For cloud security testers and researchers, breaching cloud security perimeters may give them access to an organisations data and assets. Further exposing the organisation’s vulnerabilities, data and assets to authorities as a way of gaining entry for the cloud testers’ professional services may unknowingly cause damage to the organization, through exposure of its data and assets into the public domain.

Placing warning signs to inform cloud testers and researchers that their activities are unwanted and amounting to infringement with punishment and liability, puts the organisation on the right side of jurisdiction and compliance. The better way for cloud testers and researchers is to approach the organisation with their services of an ethical hack with clearly defined rules of engagement to move forward.

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VIEWPOINT

SECURING THE NEW NORMAL THE NEW NORMAL CALLS FOR A RETHINK ON ENDPOINT SECURITY, SAYS BEN CARR, CHIEF INFORMATION SECURITY OFFICER, QUALYS

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or many years now, cybersecurity professionals around the world have been warning of a device explosion.

The most recent estimates from Cisco claim that there will be three IP-networked devices for every human on the planet by 2023, and half of all connections will be M2M. Policing this trend — coping with the expanding attack surface — was difficult enough up until the end of 2019. Then an unprecedented global public-health crisis accelerated a parallel trend that will add a new layer of complexity to the security conundrum.

The Arab Gulf region is rapidly embracing remote working. In the first half of this year, many projects

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that were in the pipeline were sped into production in an effort to keep employees safe from the spread of COVID-19. In March, Statista reported that 35% of Gulf enterprises were either already working remotely, starting soon or exploring the possibility. Given the events of the past few months, we can only assume that remote working will be the norm, rather than the exception. In fact, a July survey from Robert Half, found that 80% of United Arab Emirates (UAE) employees would prefer to work from home, post COVID-19.

While such practices are vital components of any coherent publichealth response, millions of stay-athome workers will look like a banquet to bad actors. Unvetted endpoints are strewn across the region, inviting

ransomware, enticing advanced threats, and encouraging phishing campaigns. CISOs must now look to the future, where it is likely our hybrid office will persist. Traditional security solutions, cumbersome and fragmented as they are, will no longer prevent, or even mitigate, digital incursions. Security professionals must now turn to integrated, all-inone endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions to navigate these new waters.

Out with the old…

A few months before the WHO declared COVID a pandemic, a Gartner Market Guide report on EDR solutions revealed a decisive worldwide shift towards these nextgeneration approaches. Half of those

especially for those without access to a VPN — by using cloud services.

These services can homogenise the network, treating remote and on-premises devices equally when it comes to pushing out software updates or monitoring suspicious processes.

surveyed talked of plans that were earmarked for completion by 2023.

The study noted the gap between legacy measures and EDR when it comes to threat coverage, response times, drilldown capabilities and damage analysis.

But as any IT stakeholder knows, setting aside the budget and calling in a deployment team is never enough. To make EDR work for the enterprise, internal processes will likely need an overhaul, and it may also be necessary to introduce some new ones. Like most useful technology solutions, EDR is only as good as the information it receives. A comprehensive asset inventory that includes all remote and intramural devices will allow you to map the road ahead more accurately, as you will know what entities are joining your network and what their vulnerabilities are. Without effective asset management, you live in a world of unknowns.

When employees connect from remote locations, implementation of EDR can be complicated. Use of a home Internet service usually requires a Virtual Private Network (VPN), which allows each endpoint to behave as if it were connecting at the office. Management of such a hybrid environment is greatly simplified —

Get smart You also need to consider how your threat intelligence is generated and used. Encounters with malware and other sinister artifacts feed a growing knowledge base that arms you against future encounters. But you must collect vast amounts of data and log it in an easily retrievable format, to allow threat hunters and analysts the context they need to act in a timely and inciteful manner.

Whether your knowledge base is generated from your own incident logs alone, or from collaborative pools, costs can vary wildly, as can effectiveness.

BY FIXING THE MAJOR FLAWS ACROSS ALL YOUR ENDPOINTS AS SOON AS FIXES BECOME AVAILABLE, YOU GREATLY MINIMISE THE IMPACT OF MANY ATTEMPTED INCURSIONS. AND

BY AUTOMATING THE PRIORITISATION AND DEPLOYMENT OF PATCHES, YOU FREE UP SECURITY PROFESSIONALS TO CONCENTRATE ON MORE SUBTLE TASKS.

This is where effective asset management comes into play. By fixing the major flaws across all your endpoints as soon as fixes become available, you greatly minimise the impact of many attempted incursions. And by automating the prioritisation and deployment of patches, you free up security professionals to concentrate on more subtle tasks.

So how do you deliver on all these EDR requirements? Well, to ensure that you can respond to threats in real time, before they carry out their mission and deal damage to your network and your brand, you ideally need a lightweight cloud agent that performs a comprehensive range of security functions on each of your endpoints. This agent will constantly be on the lookout for vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, while sniffing out malware and suspicious activity.

And it will be able to take remote control of endpoints to snuff out errant processes, quarantine files, patch vulnerabilities and exile exploits. …in with the new If you get your EDR approach right, you can optimise your threat posture to the point where you drastically reduce false positives and negatives, consign alert fatigue to the garbage bin of history, and deliver almost complete accuracy on your analyses.

It is only then that you can achieve the real-time response capabilities necessary to be master of your own environment.

The scenario of more remote workers does not necessarily mean more management. It just calls for smarter management. With the right people, processes, and technology, CISOs can deliver a safe environment where innovators can take flight without having to worry about birds in the propellor. And when the region emerges from the economic downturn, entire industries will be more secure.

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A NEW ROLE FOR THE CYBERSECURITY INDUSTRY WHY YOU SHOULD CONSIDER HIRING BUSINESS INFORMATION SECURITY OFFICERS TO DEVELOP SECURITY STRATEGIES THAT ARE MORE CONNECTED AND INTEGRATED INTO THE BUSINESS, EXPLAINS MYRNA SOTOM, CHIEF STRATEGY AND TRUST OFFICER AT FORCEPOINT.

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raditionally, those working in the cybersecurity industry have been technically savvy and laser-focused on finding tools and solutions to ensure that data, and the people who access it, are secure from breach or attack. At a time when the whole enterprise was safely housed in a corporate office and on the corporate network, this worked fine.

However, digital transformation, open supply chains and mobile devices have been changing this paradigm for some time, and we were all beginning to change our approach. 2020 had 32

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other ideas, however, and changes required due to the coronavirus pandemic have exponentially accelerated these trends, bringing fresh complications around assessing and balancing risk.

The mass shift to remote working has dramatically increased the unmanaged security risks of the remote working environment, from unsecured networks to using unsecure personal devices to access corporate systems. At the same time, cybercriminals keep chasing the money – we’ve seen phishing attacks up more than 667% in the first half of this year.

Couple this with the sobering financial, brand trust and intellectualproperty damaging costs of a data breach (latest research shows that the average cost of a breach is US $3.92 million) and you’ve got a perfect riskbased storm.

Ensure you have cybersecurity warriors who know the business inside out I do believe that the changes our industry has had to make due to the pandemic will be irrevocable, and they go far deeper than mass home working. CISOs are no longer operating within the tight controls

of a traditional security system and have new unmanaged security risks to tackle – once this genie is out of the bottle, it’s hard to put it back in. We now need to enhance the skillsets of cybersecurity personnel, and find and train people within an IT department to both understand risk, and how a business operates, so they can advise on how best to protect it.

Our recent research found that 63% of cybersecurity leaders report that a lack of common vocabulary between CEOs and CISOs can make identifying top organisational priorities difficult, and 53% say it makes technical decisions more challenging.

In my previous role as CISO of Comcast, I encountered these issues first-hand, and created the role of Business Information Security Officers (BISO), to develop a security strategy that was more connected and integrated into the business.

Although I had ultimate responsibility for the security of the business, the BISOs who reported into me helped to develop a line of sight across different business units.

The security professionals in this role developed relationships with business unit leaders in order to better understand the goals of the business unit, and what it would need to protect and achieve in order to be successful.

The role undertaken by BISOs helped us to realise that because the goals, missions and workstreams of each business unit was different, they required different security and tech solutions to protect them.

The skills required to be a BISO If you’re considering deploying BISOs within your business, you’ll need to know the key skills that makes a candidate good for the role.

BISOs should not only be well versed in the latest cybersecurity threats and technologies, but also great communicators and fast learners. They will need to be able to distil complex security imperatives and talk about them in business terms, with the ability to understand risk and

THE MOST SUCCESSFUL SECURITY LEADERS UNDERSTAND THE IMPORTANCE OF THEIR BUSINESSES AND HAVE A SENSE OF WHY IT NEEDS TO BE SECURED. IN OTHER WORDS, THEY UNDERSTAND THE BUSINESS GOALS AND SECURITY’S FUNCTION IN ENABLING AND PROTECTING VALUE CREATION IN ORDER TO CONTRIBUTE TO THEM. the impact of security decisions. An understanding of data analytics or machine learning would be helpful: when it comes to gaining true visibility of risks across an organisation, it can’t be done by human alone – data analytics offers both a real-time and historical view of events. This provides a unified view of threats and security breaches and allows for smarter planning, faster resolution and better decision making – something that a BISO would benefit from.

Good candidates are also those who have had some sort of operational role during their career where they managed a team, who understand P&L and costs, and who are strong analytically. For example, I have hired BISOs previously from financial analyst backgrounds – they had moved into technology or fintech roles and learned security controls.

However, it’s clear that in a world with limited talent, you’ll need to train and nurture people from a range of different skillsets and backgrounds to become a successful BISO. You cannot expect new hires to be completely up

to speed on business principles and terminology, so you may consider fasttracking their learning by embedding them within different business units for “tours of duty” to understand how different departments work. This can benefit not only the enterprise but also the individual’s growth, helping to open their eyes to business needs and perspectives and make them more well-rounded employees and executives.

The flipside can also be valuable: technically savvy business-side workers can be stationed temporarily in the security organisation to expand their perspective and knowledge. Crosspollination across all levels can only increase understanding and help security better understand what’s at stake.

The most successful security leaders understand the importance of their businesses and have a sense of why it needs to be secured. In other words, they understand the business goals and security’s function in enabling and protecting value creation in order to contribute to them. Too many cybersecurity professionals are focused on hardening of systems, asks or perimeters without wondering why.

Understanding what you’re trying to secure allows you to make the correct risk-based analysis and choose the correct security solutions to tackle today’s most pressing security problems.

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TIPS FOR LEADING A TECH COMPANY THROUGH COVID-19 GUY YEHIAV, GENERAL MANAGER OF ZEBRA ANALYTICS, ON STEPS BUSINESSES SHOULD TAKE TO NAVIGATE THE GLOBAL PANDEMIC

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he societal effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have been repeatedly characterised by a pair of terms that, at this point, we’re all likely a little tired of reading.

Unprecedented is the first that comes to mind, followed by A New Normal as a close second. While it’s accurate that the cause-and-effect scenario stemming from COVID-19 has been entirely unprecedented, the pandemic hasn’t actually created a new normal.

Our current reality is a world of erratic uncertainty. Nothing about 2020 fits the definition of normalcy.

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Instead of a new normal, the pandemic actually represents a new era of opportunity. Right now, there’s never been a greater need for digitisation.

As the power of advanced technology is at an all-time high, industries have quickly learned that the companies transforming through digitisation amid the pandemic are the ones that will emerge from the pandemic more capable than they were before it.

The power of advanced technology is what will shape our normal in the years to come, and it’s vital that the leaders of top technology organisations are cognizant of that. As the late Steve

Jobs once said, “Innovation is what distinguishes a leader from a follower” -- so it’s on us, as stewards of the sector, to be proactive in our leadership and continue offering digital innovation for industries that are combating the complexities of COVID-19.

Take Care of Your Team Before technology organisations can achieve any level of success amidst the pandemic, they first must take care of their own. In that sense, it’s essential to support our employees in order to maintain a productive remote workforce. The sudden shift to

full-time remote operations has been a major adjustment. Employees are experiencing cross-team collaboration challenges, communication gaps, increased levels of stress, and workfrom-home burnout. Now more than ever, they need to feel supported.

Prior to the pandemic, informality was the glue that kept organisations intact. Informal interactions like a quick hello in the hallway, a chat at the water cooler, bringing someone their coffee or an impromptu lunch outside of the office helped to build trust across all levels of organisations. However, informal interactions are now few and far between. As leaders, it’s our responsibility to reinvent informality within remote environments.

Take advantage of numerous channels of communication, such as instant messaging, texting, and calling, instead of traditional emails and calendar invites. Find time to interact with employees outside of planned meetings or scheduled events. Make impromptu calls between team meetings, as if you walked into someone’s office to ask a question.

Extend your availability by making time for colleagues outside of traditional business hours. Being accessible builds trust and strengthens relationships.

Keep your teams informed by making an active effort to hold staff-wide meetings to share updates on company successes, new challenges, industry trends, and the overarching direction of your organisation.

Focus on the Future From a technology sector standpoint, the winners of the pandemic have been the ones who have made moves with a forward-thinking approach. Don’t hold a singular focus on what technologies are helping industries today. While it’s still important to keep tabs on current trends, you should also leverage insights from those trends to accurately forecast what advanced tech will make a difference after the pandemic.

• Automated Intelligence and Machine Learning: Artificial intelligence (AI)

will be utilised everywhere, ranging from streamlining supply chains and weathering demand volatility to optimising inventory management and in-store layouts.

• Prescriptive Analytics and Advanced Data: Companies will be relying on data-driven insights to analyze postpandemic consumer trends, demand returns, and budgeting strategies.

• E-Commerce: Consumers have become increasingly accustomed to the convenience of simplified online shopping, direct to consumer marketing (D2C) offerings, buy online and pick up in store (BOPIS), and curbside pick-up during the pandemic.

While in-store shopping will resume, e-commerce demand will continue to rise. Companies will be leveraging advanced technology to support, develop, and manage e-commerce fulfillment. Assess your organisation’s business strategy to identify how your offerings and specialisations align with the future of digitisation. Knowing this information will allow you to develop areas of emphasis moving forward.

Retire Your Legacy Mindset The formula for success after the pandemic will require technology companies to operate proactively instead of reactively. In turn, legacy

mindsets must be left behind. Leaders with a legacy mindset lack openness to change and are instead confined to traditional (and often outdated) norms and business practices that don’t fit with the changing world around them.

Collaborate with your leadership team to streamline every aspect of your company’s internal operations and product offerings. You’ll then be able to identify and make necessary adjustments needed to meet the new needs of partners, customers and employees. For example, retailers are still stinging from the effects of widespread out of stocks at the height of the lockdown. There’s no telling where the next COVID-19 hotspot will be next so it’s impossible to prepare for such an event with traditional forecasting.

A better solution is to leverage a prescriptive analytics tool, the best of which includes a built-in capability called “demand sensing.” Demand sensing monitors demand trends in real time and adjusts your plan accordingly. For example, if it detects a slight, but guided, surge in sales of cleaning products in a specific area, it will determine whether or not the area’s planned-for supply is sufficient to meet projected demand in the coming weeks. If not, it will automatically adjust the plan, perhaps rerouting other areas’ shipments to the area at risk of an outbreak. By aligning your offerings and internal operations with the ripple effects of the pandemic, you can boost prospect conversion rates and improve your ability to retain internal talent.

For technology organisations, these three leadership qualities will be essential for advancing in this era of opportunity and successfully navigating the changing industry landscape. During this period of uncertainty, leadership is what will separate the winners from the losers.

With the right approach, organisational leaders can foster higher levels of sustained success leading into an unpredictable post-pandemic environment.

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TAP THE POWER OF COLLABORATION CHARBEL KHNEISSER, REGIONAL PRESALES DIRECTOR, MENA AT RIVERBED, EXPLAINS THE BENEFITS OF BRINGING NETOPS AND SECOPS TEAMS TOGETHER AND GIVING THEM FULL-FIDELITY VISIBILITY.

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s companies continue to cope with COVID-19 and maintain a work from anywhere workforce, many have had to content with security infringements and breaches.

And the cause could be a lack of integration between their network operations (NetOps) and security operations (SecOps). By working in collaboration, these teams could avoid missing crucial information from one another that would enable them both to operate more efficiently and securely.

However, collaboration, and the success of any such venture between

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the two departments, relies on having and sharing, end-to-end visibility over their network and applications. Including capturing and storing every packet and flow. Without this full-fidelity visibility, NetOps and SecOps risk not being able to discover and troubleshoot security problems quickly and seamlessly within the network. This in turn results in a reduction in productivity levels, as employees are left operating on slow running systems and inefficient, fragmented applications for longer periods of time. Something no company can afford in the challenging COVID-19 business environment.

NetOps, SecOps and why their integration matters As its name suggests, NetOps — and the people and tools it includes — is focused on delivering networking operations.

Crucially, NetOps teams provide networking that meets the demands of business applications and technologies, as well as of end-users. As part of this, they identify and resolve bottlenecks to deliver agile, high-performance infrastructure which underpins the entire business estate.

Meanwhile, SecOps is a philosophy and development system that champions collaboration between IT security and

operations teams. Its goal is to get both to work together more effectively, chiefly through the integration of the technology and processes they employ to ensure the security of systems and data.

Although NetOps and SecOps teams have traditionally operated in siloes, they are interested in the same type of data. This is because security events and network performance issues are inextricably linked; with one unavoidably triggering the other. For example, a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack could overwhelm a network with malicious traffic. Therefore, it would present as a network problem before the security issue that was the root cause has even been identified.

Left unresolved, an attack such as this results in severe network disruption and financial cost for the business.

Furthermore, this can inhibit not only the productivity of the workforce, but also the safety of their data as DDoS attacks may serve as a distraction to launch other more dangerous attacks while the SecOps teams are busy dealing with it.

However, by working together, network and security teams can use their data and insights across both the estates, to find any breaches quickly.

This has become increasingly important as the number of cyber attacks and network performance issues has risen due to COVID-19.

How COVID-19 impacted the relationship between NetOps and SecOps At the onset of the pandemic, there were a significant spike in security incidents; as recorded by organisations such as Interpol. Alongside the increase in cyber threats, businesses also grappled with reduced network efficiency. In fact, 94 percent of business leaders surveyed for Riverbed’s Future of Work Survey reported technology performance problems. Both issues were somewhat unsurprising. Afterall, businesses across the world had to switch to work-fromanywhere models before they had a chance to develop the security protocols and network infrastructure needed to underpin new ways of operating.

ALTHOUGH NETOPS AND SECOPS TEAMS HAVE TRADITIONALLY OPERATED IN SILOES, THEY ARE INTERESTED IN THE SAME TYPE OF DATA. THIS IS BECAUSE SECURITY EVENTS AND NETWORK PERFORMANCE ISSUES ARE INEXTRICABLY LINKED; WITH ONE UNAVOIDABLY TRIGGERING THE OTHER.

However, it has presented an invaluable opportunity for NetOps and SecOps teams to integrate for a more efficient and secure operational future.

Overcoming obstacles to collaboration and embracing full-fidelity visibility Actively deciding to unite NetOps and SecOps is the first obstacle to collaboration, but it is not the last. Not only do both teams have different lines of reporting, budgets, and goals, but most importantly they lack a single, shared data source that can allow them

to collaborate effectively. This is where achieving full-fidelity visibility and sharing the information across both teams comes in.

Full-fidelity visibility means having end-to-end insight, across all network and application data, from packets to flows and logs. This enables teams to not only monitor every piece of the estate but see where the correlations are and make informed decisions based on them. Both NetOps and SecOps teams can achieve this independently, but it will not enable them to collaborate unless they share their data to provide a single source of truth for analysis to be conducted upon.

Afterall, if one team has blind spots and another has outdated information they cannot work from the same page.

Network Performance Management (NPM) offers the solution.

Adopting Network Performance Management tools NPM tools collect, record, store and analyse all the data that flows through the network for every application and every device. As such, they provide NetOps and SecOps teams with a holistic view of the IT environment across both departments.

Armed with this information, both teams can carry out forensic analysis of the data to identify performance problems or investigate security threats that have originated inside or outside of the enterprise. In both instances, this empowers them to resolve the issues, by acting quickly and putting the necessary measures in place before they negatively impact business operations.

Collaboration and visibility are the answers to success By enabling NetOps and SecOps teams to collaborate and giving them the right performance management tools to have and share full-fidelity visibility, companies can gain a better overview of the network. In doing so, they can identify any relevant behaviour changes, mitigating attack risks and responding accordingly. This will empower them to optimise performance and ultimately drive the productivity vital to the success of their business going forward.

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BRIDGING THE CYBERSECURITY SKILLS GAP SANDRA WHEATLEY, SVP, CUSTOMER MARKETING, THREAT INTELLIGENCE AND INFLUENCER COMMUNICATIONS AT FORTINET, ON ADDRESSING THE GLOBAL CYBERSECURITY SKILLS SHORTAGE WITH ROBUST TRAINING PROGRAMMES.

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y now, the majority of industry professionals are aware of the cybersecurity skills gap and its impact on organisations’ abilities to consistently protect their data and networks. The coronavirus pandemic has only amplified the issue, manifesting the economic strain that has forced many business leaders to make budget cuts and furlough, or even 38

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lay off, critical employees. Meanwhile, cyber criminals saw the pandemic as an excellent opportunity to execute attacks on vulnerable networks as more employees shifted to remote work.

The Fortinet NSE Training Institute’s programs enable IT professionals, students, veterans and more to learn new cybersecurity skills, reskill or upskill as a way to address the growing talent shortage our industry faces.

The Cybersecurity Skills Gap: Implications for 2021 and Beyond In a recent survey of industry leaders, it was found that 68% of responding organisations struggled with recruiting, hiring, and retaining cybersecurity talent. For such a critical branch of business, it’s an alarming statistic.

Perhaps even more troubling was the discovery that 73% of surveyed organisations had experienced at least

one intrusion over the past year that could be partially or wholly attributed to the cybersecurity skills gap.

When organisations lack a large enough team of qualified, experienced cybersecurity professionals, their networks, customer data, and even operational technology are far more vulnerable to threats. At the same time, the number – and level of sophistication – of cyberattacks on commercial businesses is steadily climbing. When successful, such attacks can be debilitating, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars in downtime or reparations. To help address this risk, organisations must shift their mindset away from traditional hiring and work to implement new, agile solutions that leverage untapped resources, without burning out their employees.

Organisations should invest in reskilling and upskilling current employees, which can effectively help bridge the skills gap.

Identifying the Right Individuals for the Job One of the biggest issues in cybersecurity hiring has to do with the sets of skills and attributes hiring managers believe are mandatory in a “qualified” individual. All too often, these wish lists grow much longer than what any individual could have possibly attained over the course of a 5-, 7-, or even 10-year career in the industry. Worse, hiring according to a set list of qualifications tends to rule out some of the most talented and capable recent graduates – those who are eager to learn and most excited about the profession.

By restructuring the hiring model to prioritise innate strengths over “X years of experience,” organisations will end up with employees who are happier to do their jobs and fit in more seamlessly with the rest of the team.

Interviewing for, say, communication skills and leadership ability, analytic sharpness, level of comfort with

abstract ideas, mathematical and modeling skills, independence and autonomy, and other such “soft” skills may reveal much more about a candidate’s chances for long-term success than his or her resume alone.

Then, organisations must put programs in place for on-post training, whereby talented and new hires pick up the technical, hands-on skills they need to monitor networks and mitigate threats. But this should not be the sole focus of these cybersecurity training programs.

Even tenured employees appreciate and benefit greatly from opportunities for continued education, whether via in-person or online courses, seminars, or conferences. Many organisations have found some of their best cybersecurity professionals by looking elsewhere in their IT departments, encouraging individuals who may no longer be stimulated in their current roles to move laterally into a cybersecurity position by completing training programs and/ or certifications. These workers bring a new, fresh perspective, benefiting the organisation in more ways than one – this alone demonstrates why upskilling and reskilling should be considered essential when looking to build out security teams.

Bridging the Skills Gap Fortinet is committed to helping close the cybersecurity skills gap through its technology, the NSE Training Institute programs and Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives.

Employers and aspiring network security professionals alike should be able to access the resources needed to close the skills gap – whether via training and certifications, professional networking opportunities, or mentorship.

The Fortinet NSE Training Institute programs provide IT professionals, students, veterans and more the opportunity to expand and learn new security skillsets. The NSE Training

WHEN ORGANISATIONS LACK A LARGE ENOUGH TEAM OF QUALIFIED, EXPERIENCED CYBERSECURITY PROFESSIONALS, THEIR NETWORKS, CUSTOMER DATA, AND EVEN OPERATIONAL TECHNOLOGY ARE FAR MORE VULNERABLE TO THREATS. AT THE SAME TIME, THE NUMBER – AND LEVEL OF SOPHISTICATION – OF CYBERATTACKS ON COMMERCIAL BUSINESSES IS STEADILY CLIMBING. Institute’s flagship NSE Certification Program, which has issued more than 500,000 certifications worldwide, has eight levels of certifications, ranging from cybersecurity fundamental education courses to advanced solution-based training. Additionally, Fortinet has made its entire catalog of self-paced NSE courses available free of charge for anybody interested in learning new skills or upskilling.

Through the Information Security Awareness Training service, Fortinet also provides organisations with free training for their employees to be cyber aware to identify and prevent threats.

By implementing cybersecurity training programs for all employees and diversifying the overall hiring strategy, companies across industries will see a marked improvement in their overall security program’s fortitude, as well as a greater degree of employee satisfaction and far less turnover.

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THE JOURNEY TO EFFORTLESS CUSTOMER CARE STEVE HARDING, CSM VP FOR EMEA AT SERVICENOW, ON HOW TO BUILD A BETTER CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

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perating a business in 2020 is challenging in ways that few of us could ever have predicted. Rarely have we seen change occur with such magnitude or velocity. Customerdemand fluctuations, fractures in supply chains, workforce disruption, and rapidly evolving government policies have stressed organisations all at once.

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Meanwhile, customer anxiety levels have soared and their priorities have shifted. In the COVID-19 era, many customers have less money to spend.

They are concerned about the future and increasingly want to engage digitally with organisations. This is true in both B2C and B2B scenarios.

Before the COVID-19 outbreak, customer service experts were already emphasising the “experience” of customers over the service itself. Matt

Dixon, an authority on sales, customer service, and customer experience, talks of the “effortless experience” and how it’s the new battleground for customer loyalty.

Today’s customers aren’t looking for prolonged engagements. They want organisations to eliminate frustrations and make interactions quick, effortless, and effective. This is more important than ever during the pandemic, when we’re all dealing with stress in multiple aspects of our professional and personal lives. If customers must expend what they see as unnecessary effort to receive support, they will ultimately spend less, leave earlier, and share negative word of mouth more readily.

Moreover, when customer spend is constrained and budgets are under prolonged pressure, businesses must renew their focus on operational efficiency.

So how do you deliver effortless customer experiences while simultaneously reducing cost and boosting productivity?

Focus on solving problems, not adding channels Because many organisations believe choice is the key to satisfaction, they often focus on providing multiple channels of engagement for their customers. This omnichannel approach fails on many levels.

Many of us are very time poor in our daily lives. Although it’s nice to have multiple ways to connect to a company, we really crave faster resolution to issues via the most efficient medium.

What’s more, moving from channel to channel in the hunt for answers is incredibly frustrating. Not surprisingly, research shows 84% of customers care more about the ultimate solution than about the channel on which they engage. Furthermore, customers tend to be less loyal when they are switched from one channel to another during a service interaction.

The emphasis needs to be on effortless experiences that solve problems. Orchestrate work so customers don’t have to engage with a service rep. This leads to faster problem resolution. So much the better if the resolution can be fully automated through non-human workflow.

However, don’t stop there. Find opportunities to drive proactive customer service and inform customers of an imminent problem — and a corresponding solution — before it even happens.

And where human involvement is desired, or perhaps preferred, arm your agents with the knowledge they need to resolve issues quickly, presenting them with rapid workflow pathways to get work done.

Respond rapidly In a world where change is constant, it’s key to invest in technologies that help you adapt quickly.

Low code and no code platforms let people build enterprise-grade apps with minimal programming effort, offering an alternative to the traditionally slow, costly, and inefficient development process.

This kind of agility is critical in times such as the COVID-19 pandemic,

OPERATING THROUGH A PANDEMIC HAS HIGHLIGHTED THE IMPORTANCE OF BRINGING AGILITY AND BUSINESS CONTINUITY TO CUSTOMER SERVICE. BUT IT CAN ALSO BE A CATALYST FOR POSITIVE CHANGE.

when companies are crying out for applications that accelerate workflows and processes that help maintain business continuity, particularly as volumes of incoming customer requests increase.

Above all, organisations need digital workflow solutions that are simple, fast, and affordable to build, while still meeting enterprise standards for security and scalability.

A typical self-service interaction can be as much as 98% less expensive than a phone- or email-based interaction — meaning your organisation can save money exponentially by moving more support requests to self-service.

Where this investment is made

is important, as unfettered use of technology can erode customer care.

If customers are anxious, stressed, or worried, it’s important to pair selfservice offerings with a customer service team that can focus on hightouch interactions that require care and empathy.

The primary goal is to make the user experience effortless. This is especially true for self-service channels. Focus on a small number of key interactions in the user journey where user experience is won or lost.

Remember too that self-service isn’t something that can just run in the background. Prioritise its improvement and maintenance and make it a priority for your service teams. Putting in place measurable goals will put the spotlight on the impact of self-serve on the customer experience, ensuring it complements your wider customer engagement strategy.

Customer experience at the crossroads Customer experience is more important than ever during the pandemic, when customer service teams are under extreme pressure while their organisations race to adapt business models and drive cost efficiencies.

Sectors such as hospitality and air travel are facing dramatic increases in customer support requests.

Customers are chasing refunds, adding nothing to the bottom line, and squeezing operating margins like never before. In contrast, many online retailers face unprecedented demand.

This promises big revenue increases, but exposes customer experience models that are unable to cope.

Operating through a pandemic has highlighted the importance of bringing agility and business continuity to customer service. But it can also be a catalyst for positive change.

Let’s learn from 2020 and take the opportunity to bring together people, processes, and technology so that effortless experiences become the heart of customer service.

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REPORT

PHISHING ATTACKS SOAR DURING COVID-19 COVID-19 CONTINUES TO SIGNIFICANTLY EMBOLDEN CYBERCRIMINALS’ PHISHING AND FRAUD EFFORTS, ACCORDING TO NEW RESEARCH FROM F5 LABS.

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he fourth edition of the Phishing and Fraud Report found that phishing incidents rose 220% during the height of the global pandemic compared to the yearly average.

Based on data from F5’s Security Operations Center (SOC), the number of phishing incidents in 2020 is now set to increase 15% year-on-year, though this could soon change as second waves of the pandemic spread.

The three primary objectives for COVID-19 – related phishing emails were identified as fraudulent donations to fake charities, credential harvesting and malware delivery.

Attacker opportunism was in further evidence when F5 Labs examined certificate transparency logs (a record of all publicly trusted digital certificates). The number of certificates using the terms “covid” and “corona” peaked at 14,940 in March, which was a massive 1102% increase on the month before.

“The risk of being phished is higher than ever and fraudsters are increasingly using digital certificates to make their sites appear genuine,” said David Warburton, Senior Threat Evangelist at F5 Labs.

“Attackers are also quick to jump onto emotive trends and COVID-19 will continue to fuel an already significant threat. Unfortunately, our research indicates that security controls, user training and overall awareness still appear to be falling short across the world.”

A Phisher’s Domain As per previous years’ research, F5 Labs noted that fraudsters are becoming ever more creative with the names and addresses of their phishing sites.

In 2020 to date, 52% of phishing sites have used target brand names and identities in their website addresses. Using 42

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phishing site data from Webroot, F5 Labs discovered that Amazon was the most targeted brand in the second half of 2020. Paypal, Apple, WhatsApp, Microsoft Office, Netflix, and Instagram were also among the top ten most impersonated brands.

By tracking the theft of credentials through to use in active attacks, F5 Labs observed that criminals were attempting to use stolen passwords within four hours of phishing a victim. Some attacks even occurred in real time to enable the capture of multi-factor authentication (MFA) security codes.

Meanwhile, cybercriminals also became more ruthless in their bids to hijack reputable, albeit vulnerable URLs – often for free. WordPress sites alone accounted for 20% of generic phishing URLs in 2020. The figure was as low as 4,7% in 2017.

Furthermore, cybercriminals are increasingly cutting costs by using free registrars such as Freenom for certain country code top-level domains (ccTLDs), including .tk, .ml, .ga, .cf, and .gq. As a case in point, .tk is now the fifth most popular registered domain in the world.

Hiding in Plain Sight 2020 also saw phishers intensify efforts to make fraudulent sites appear as genuine as possible. F5 SOC statistics found that most phishing sites leveraged encryption, with a full 72% using valid HTTPS certificates to trick victims. This year, 100% of drop zones – the destinations of stolen data sent by malware – used TLS encryption (up from 89% in 2019).

Combining incidents from 2019 and 2020, F5 Labs additionally reported that 55.3% of drop zones used a non-standard SSL/TLS port. Port 446 was used in all

instances bar one. An analysis of phishing sites found that 98.2% used standard ports: 80 for cleartext HTTP traffic and 443 for encrypted SSL/TLS traffic.

Future threats According to recent research from Shape Security, which was integrated with the Phishing and Fraud Report for the first time, there are two major phishing trends on the horizon.

As a result of improved bot traffic (botnet) security controls and solutions, attackers are starting to embrace click farms. This entails dozens of remote “workers” systematically attempting to log onto a target website using recently harvested credentials. The connection comes from a human using a standard web browser, which makes fraudulent activity harder to detect.

Even a relatively low volume of attacks has an impact. As an example, Shape Security analysed 14 million monthly logins at a financial services organisation and recorded a manual a fraud rate of 0,4%. That is the equivalent of 56,000 fraudulent logon attempts, and the numbers associated with this type of activity are only set to rise.

Shape Security researchers also recorded an increase in the volume of real-time phishing proxies (RTPP) that can capture and use multi-factor authentication (MFA) codes.

The RTPP acts as a person-in-the-middle and intercepts a victim’s transactions with a real website. Since the attack occurs in real time, the malicious website can automate the process of capturing and replaying timebased authentication such as MFA codes. It can even steal and reuse session cookies.

Recent real-time phishing proxies in active use include Modlishka and Evilginx2. F5 Labs and Shape Security are set to monitor the growing use of RTPPs in the coming months.

“Phishing attacks will continue to be successful as long as there is a human that can be psychologically manipulated in some way. Security controls and web browsers alike must become more proficient at highlighting fraudulent sites to users,” Warburton concluded.

“Individuals and organisations also need to be continuously trained on the latest techniques used by fraudsters. Crucially, there needs to be a big emphasis on the way attackers are hijacking emerging trends such as COVID-19.”

INFOGRAPHICS

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PRODUCTS

Linksys Cloud Manager Linksys has announced a new global release of Linksys Cloud Manager 2.0, an upgraded, cloud-hosted WiFi Management Platform purpose-built for SMB environments that reduces costs and increases operational efficiencies around remote WiFi management.

Linksys Cloud Manager 2.0 enables IT administrators and other authorized users to remotely monitor, manage and troubleshoot single or distributed wireless networks in real time via a single dashboard and sign-on. The platform offers centralized visibility and control of a wireless network without the cost and complexity of traditional hardware controllers, overlay software, or annual hosting costs.

Small businesses need a more affordable and easy-to-use Cloud Managed WiFi solution, and mid-sized companies have license fatigue from costly yearly licenses for management.

With Linksys Cloud Manager 2.0, the company is eliminating the cost barrier for using a Cloud Managed WiFi solution.

In a stand-out industry move, Linksys is upgrading its offering from five years free management to Limited Lifetime Free Management. Competitive solutions charge up to $100150 per Access Point (AP) per year, which adds up quickly for a business with multiple locations. The included cloud license fits any budget and provides a complete solution for IT solutions providers and their SMB customers, and isn’t a bait and switch using basic models and upselling with “pro” features.

ESET WINDOWS SECURITY PRODUCTS ESET has launched new versions of its Windows security products for consumers. The new versions upgrade the protection in ESET Internet Security, ESET NOD32 Antivirus and ESET Smart Security Premium.

The wide range of security improvements cover malware detection, online banking, password security and smart home support – in line with ESET’s goal to create a safer digital world for everyone to enjoy.

With the ever-increasing volume of reported cyberattacks, it is vital that users are secured in their online activities. These product updates address key issues, including online payments and banking-related threats, identity theft and leaking of personal information, stolen passwords and connected device security.

The updates bring fine-tuning of the Host-Based Intrusion Prevention System and Advanced Machine Learning modules, along with a significant reduction in the size of the Machine Learning module.

Other key updates include the new Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) and System Registry scanners capable of detecting malware that uses the WMI or the registry maliciously. The Connected Home module is also improved with better connected device detection and security issue troubleshooting.

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HP Spectre x360 14 HP has unveiled the HP Spectre x360 14, offering the viewability of a 15-inch device with the mobility of a 13.5-inch form factor for the ultimate browsing, reading, editing, and viewing experience.

Co-engineered with Intel, the Spectre x360 14 has been tested, tuned, and verified to meet the requirements of the Intel Evo platform, ensuring it meets Intel’s hardware specifications and key experience targets for responsiveness, instant wake, battery life, and fast charge. The Spectre x360 14 comes with the latest 11th Gen Intel Core processor that delivers an 34% performance improvement, and 79% performance gains with discretelevel integrated Intel Iris X graphics versus last year’s Spectre x360 13.

With up to 17 hours of battery life, this device can follow you throughout the home or wherever you want to go. Working from home requires a consistent, fast connection and the Spectre x360 14 delivers with 3x faster connection speeds with Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0 support.

The device also supports Thunderbolt 4 for fast signaling data rates to send and receive large files like videos, photos, and movies in seconds.

DYNABOOK SATELLITE PRO RANGE Dynabook Europe GmbH has revealed two additions to its Satellite Pro range – the new 14” C40-H, which expertly combines affordability and mobility, and an updated 15” model, the C50-H, with new processor, display, and memory and storage options. Both devices offer users all the tools for a productive work or study day in an easily portable package, without draining the IT budget.

The pair feature powerful 10th Gen Intel Core processors, DDR4 RAM memory up to 16GB* and fast SSD storage options up to 512GB. The C40-H has been designed with pure mobility and style in mind.

Weighing just 1.55kg with a 18.9mm compact form factor, it is easily transportable and its battery life¹ of up to 10 hours makes it a reliable companion for professionals and students on the move. Featuring a narrow bezel design around a non-glare 14” LCD HD or FHD screen, the device offers an immersive viewing experience but in a compact footprint, while its sister 15” device boasts up to 9.5 hours battery life1 and screen options including a new 250 NIT FHD screen for improved brightness. Both devices are equipped with a large keyboard and ClickPad, with supporting Precision TouchPad for comfortable typing and navigation all day long, while the 15” C50 adds a numeric keypad.

Both devices also offer an optional SecurePad with fingerprint reader.

Canon PIXMA G-Series MegaTank Canon Middle East announces the expansion of its popular PIXMA G-Series MegaTank range with the addition of five entry-level refillable ink tank printers, designed for small businesses, homeworking and students. Key features across the range include, improved usability with a replaceable maintenance cartridge to reduce downtime, new and improved ink bottles to make refilling tanks easier than ever, and a 2-line LCD display for quick access to settings.

Balancing cost and efficiency, the economy print mode makes it possible to confidently print thousands of pages when neveded, whilst further reducing costs.

For those in need of a cost-efficient printing solution that can drive productivity, this series can produce 6,000 pages from a single black ink bottle and print 26 per cent more in economy mode. For printing in colour, the MegaTank devices offer an impressive page yield of up to 7,700[1] pages from a set of colour ink bottles, a 700-page increase on previous models. The two high-speed models in the range, PIXMA G3460 and PIXMA G2460 can deliver deadline beating speeds of 10.8 ipm for black printing and 6.0 ipm for colour. Reliable and quick printing means users can focus their time and energy on other creative outputs, printing with confidence to deliver high-quality prints in impressive volumes.

Producing sharp, crisp prints, this range can satisfy a versatile mix of requirements, from those working from home who may need to print long, text-heavy documents, to those embracing home crafts with their families.

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THE SHOW MUST GO ON

PANDEMIC OR NOT, GITEX 2020 IS A MUST-ATTEND EVENT, SAYS SUNIL PAUL, MANAGING DIRECTOR OF FINESSE.

F

or the past four decades, one of the biggest global and disruptive technology events GITEX, has been a constant in a world where nothing is.

It is heartening to see that this has not changed even during a global pandemic. Most of 2020 has passed in a whirlwind of emotions, fighting a pandemic that threw us off track and forced us to reexamine everything we knew about business. However, with GITEX scheduled from 6th to 10th December, there is a new sense of optimism in the air.

GITEX, the region’s largest technology event, is expected to be the only global tech and startup show in the world in 2020 to go live and in-person, according to its organisers.

There are a couple of reasons behind this decision. The primary one being Dubai was voted the safest city in the world to attend an exhibition, according to a survey conducted by Messe Frankfurt Middle East. The study showed that 77% of respondents viewed Dubai as the safest destination to attend an exhibition post Covid-19, followed by Germany (41%), Saudi Arabia (19%), France (17%), and Italy (15%). Another factor giving expected attendees further confidence is that the Dubai World Trade Centre (DWTC) venue was recently certified with the Bureau Veritas SafeGuard Label. Not to forget, DWTC has already successfully held Ai Everything x Restart Dubai Summer Conference in a hybrid

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model a few months ago, which was considered a grand success. Here we saw the event drawing hundreds of attendees – attending physically as well as streaming sessions live remotely.

The annual show is not expected to be different from any other year except that we will have to adhere to all the safety precautions in place, don the mask and consider handshakes a relic of the past. In fact, if anything, it could be the biggest edition to date.

In its landmark 40th year, the show is expected to explore groundbreaking pre- and post-pandemic technologies, host high-octane tech conferences and showcase futuristic pioneering innovations. Also, the organizers have decided to combine a number of other sister conferences, which usually run as standalone events – so along with the regular GITEX Technology week and GITEX Future Stars, attendees will have access to GISEC, Future Blockchain Summit and Marketing Mania during the five days – making it even bigger and grander than any previous editions.

Although this edition promises to be a great platform, several technology firms are not investing in the show this year. I believe this might be a missed opportunity for them. While remote work models, digital technologies and virtual meetings have been the way of life this year, one aspect everyone agrees on is the fact that nothing can replace the human element. We

have definitely become a lot more productive and much more efficient and effective relying on digital and remote work practices. However, business is all about people, and if there is a platform offering a secure way to meet and reconnect, we must take complete advantage of that. It also gives us the chance to emerge from the bubble that we may have created over the past months and be inspired by new innovations and technologies and remind ourselves, this too will pass.

Technology players participating at the action-packed conference will put the spotlight on key areas, which will define our future lives, such as 5G, automation and AI, analytics, future mobility, digital economies, cybersecurity, cloud and edge computing, deep learning and big data.

With first time launches expected from more than 60 countries, attendees will truly be treated to the global tech scene. Moreover, all GITEX attendees will experience 70 plus hours of free content, helping them gain valuable insights from critically acclaimed companies and leaders.

Finesse will be exhibiting at the region’s biggest tech show in full force, displaying not only the latest state-ofthe-art solutions but also our unity and strength as a company thriving in these unprecedented times.

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