Value Journal | Issue 04 | September 2016

Issue 04 // September 2016

HPE ACQUIRES SGI FOR $275 MILLION

H

ewlett Packard Enterprise has announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire SGI for $7.75 per share in cash, a transaction valued at approximately $275 million, net of cash and debt.

SGI products and services are used for high-performance computing (HPC) and Big Data analytics in the scientific, technical, business and

government communities to solve challenging data-intensive computing, data management and virtualisation problems.

The company has approximately 1,100 employees worldwide, and had revenues of $533 million in fiscal 2016.

“At HPE, we are focused on empowering data-driven organisations,” said Antonio Neri, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Enterprise Group, Hewlett Packard Enterprise. “SGI’s Continued on page 2

Dell-EMC deal set to close Oracle MiniCluster in September S7-2 Engineered Dell and EMC have announced plans to close the transaction to combine both businesses on 7th September 2016.

Michael Dell, CEO and Chairman, Dell Technologies

Dell Technologies, the name of the new combined company, will begin operating

immediately following the close of the transaction.

The announcement follows regulatory approval of the Dell and EMC transaction by China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), which has granted clearance for the companies’ proposed combination.

MOFCOM approval was the final regulatory condition to closing the transaction. EMC shareholders approved the Continued on page 2

System

The new system aims to bring Oracle database customers the required zero downtime and full security compliance.

Oracle has released a low cost SPARC Cluster based on the new low cost SPARC S7-2 servers.

The new system aims to bring Oracle database customers the required zero downtime and full security compliance.

According to the company, the MiniCluster S7-2 is a simple and efficiently engineered system designed

to run enterprise databases and applications with uncompromising security. It allows users to run remote offices, small offices, and agile software development (DevOps) environments. It is also ideal for highly securitysensitive applications, such as managing patient medical Continued on page 2

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From page 1

HPE ACQUIRES... innovative technologies and services, including its best-inclass Big Data analytics and high-performance computing solutions, complement HPE’s proven data centre solutions designed to create business insight and accelerate time to value for customers.”

SGI’s highly complementary portfolio, including its inmemory high-performance data analytics technology, will extend and strengthen HPE’s current leadership position in the growing mission critical and high-performance computing segments of the server market. The combined HPE and SGI portfolio, including

a comprehensive services capability, will support private and public sector customers seeking larger supercomputer installations, including U.S. federal agencies as well enterprises looking to leverage high-performance computing for business insights and a competitive edge.

“Our HPC and highperformance data technologies and analytic capabilities, based on a 30-plus year legacy of innovation, complement HPE’s industry-leading enterprise solutions. This combination addresses today’s complex business problems that require applying data analytics and

From page 1

“

“Combined, we will be exceptionally well-positioned for growth in the most strategic areas of next generation IT.”

tools to securely process vast amounts of data,” said Jorge Titinger, CEO and President, SGI. “The computing power that our solutions deliver can interpret this data to give customers quicker and more actionable insights.

Together, HPE and SGI will offer one of the most comprehensive

suites of solutions in the industry, which can be brought to market more effectively through HPE’s global reach.”

The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of HPE’s fiscal year 2017, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.

From page 1

Dell-EMC... transaction on July 19, with approximately 98 percent of voting EMC shareholders casting their votes in favour of the merger, representing approximately 74 percent of EMC’s outstanding common stock.

“This is an historic moment for both Dell and EMC. Combined, we will be exceptionally wellpositioned for growth in the most strategic areas of next generation IT including

“

Our HPC and high-performance data technologies and analytic capabilities, based on a 30-plus year legacy of innovation, complement HPE’s industry-leading enterprise solutions.”

Oracle... digital transformation, software-defined data centre, converged infrastructure, hybrid cloud, mobile and security,” said Michael Dell, Chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies. “Our investments in R&D and innovation, along with our 140,000 team members around the world, will give us unmatched scale, strength and flexibility, deepening our relationships with customers of all sizes.”

At closing, EMC shareholders will receive $24.05 per share in cash in addition to a newly issued tracking stock linked to a portion of EMC’s economic interest in the VMware business. Based on the estimated number of EMC shares outstanding at the close of the transaction, EMC shareholders are expected to receive approximately 0.111 shares of new tracking stock for each EMC share. Upon close of the transaction, EMC shares under the ticker symbol ‘EMC’ will be suspended from trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

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Oracle MiniCluster S7-2 Engineered System

records, processing financial transactions, handling secure communications, running mission-critical enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications, and hosting security-related services.

It has 1 TB of memory with 16.8 TB of raw flashbased storage and 48 TB of raw disk-based storage. The system is also powered by Oracle’s SPARC S7 processor, which delivers higher baseline per-core performance than x86 processors and features

silicon secured memory, data analytics accelerators (DAX), cryptographic acceleration, and in-line memory decompression to support its security and analytics performance.

Oracle highlights that this prebuilt Clustered system can bring end-users secured and accelerated cloud infrastructure, including Oracle Database, Java, and enterprise applications.

Its unique built-in security technology helps protect data against intrusions by malware and security breaches.

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Gigamon fortifies security analytics with certificate metadata Certificate metadata allows to leverage the network to shorten the time to detection and response.

Jai Balasubramaniyan, Director, Security Product Management, Gigamon

Gigamon has announced that the Metadata Engine, a key part of the GigaSECURE Security Delivery Platform (SDP), can now generate Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate metadata.

GigaSECURE expedites the time to detection of potentially malicious web servers and unwanted SSL communications by providing security analytics technologies with the information they need to identify invalid SSL certificates.

SSL-based attacks are on the rise, and many phishing sites use fake SSL certificates to appear legitimate so that targets and infected machines will connect to them. Security analytics tools like Security Information and Event Management Systems (SIEMs) can spot these potentially harmful web communications by flagging inconsistencies in the fields of SSL certificates.

Trend Micro achieves recommended status from NSS Labs Deep Discovery Inspector has achieved a 99.8 percent detection rate in the latest Breach Detection System test.

Eva Chen, CEO, Trend Micro

Trend Micro’s Deep Discovery Inspector has been recognised for the third consecutive year as a recommended breach detection system by NSS Labs.

Deep Discovery achieved a 99.8 percent detection rate in the latest Breach Detection System test, demonstrating a consistent ability to detect network and endpointbased targeted attacks, advanced threats and ransomware.

“The Breach Detection System test by NSS Labs continuously

helps define the enterprise security space, recognising those that raise the bar for the industry,” said Eva Chen, CEO, Trend Micro.

“As advanced threats continue to increase in sophistication, effective breach detection is an essential part of a connected threat defence for enterprises. Our customers need an effective BDS as part of a layered approach to security to not only detect, but also respond to and protect against new threats.”

Deep Discovery, which is also sold as Trend Micro TippingPoint Advanced Threat Protection, uses extensive detection techniques to identify advanced threats, and ransomware. It monitors all network traffic traversing physical and virtual segments, on over 100 protocols and applications across all network ports.

Still, the certificate data needed for the detection can be difficult to retrieve pervasively and continuously from broad and distributed networks.

“Sifting through raw packet streams to identify malicious network activity can be a slow and cumbersome process in a world where real-time threat identification and remediation is critical,” said Robert Lowe, Information Security Manager, Fannie Mae. “Gigamon’s network visibility and new HTTP SSL certificate metadata capabilities provide an added layer of intelligence and the context needed to more quickly, effectively and efficiently protect both network infrastructure and data.”

Certificate metadata lets Gigamon, together with its ecosystem partners in the security analytics and SIEM markets, leverage the network to shorten the time to detection and response.

“Organisations know that their network traffic contains a lot of potential intelligence that can help remediate breaches,” said Jai Balasubramaniyan, Director, Security Product Management, Gigamon. “Gigamon is revolutionising Big Data security analytics by uniquely extracting metadata from this data-in-motion and delivering it at network speeds to security technologies that use it to detect and remediate threats faster.”

AWS announces Kinesis Analytics Using the service, developers can write standard SQL queries on streaming data and gain actionable insights in real-time.

Amazon Web Services has announced the availability of Kinesis Analytics, a fully managed service for continuously querying streaming data using standard SQL. Using Kinesis Analytics, developers can write standard SQL queries on streaming data and gain actionable insights in real-time, without having to learn any new programming skills.

Today’s digital businesses generate massive quantities of streaming data from diverse sources. Being able to continuously query and gain insights from this information in real-time – as it arrives – can allow companies to respond more quickly to business and customer needs. AWS claim that with Kinesis Analytics, continuously querying streaming data in real-time is as simple as writing SQL queries. It integrates with Kinesis Streams and Kinesis

Firehose and can automatically recognise standard data formats within data streams and suggest a schema, which is easy to edit using Kinesis Analytics’ interactive schema editor.

MLB Advanced Media (MLBAM) is a full service solutions provider that delivers digital experiences through all forms of interactive media.

“We capture telemetry and clickstream data from our video streaming clients using Amazon Kinesis Streams. We process that data in real-time to monitor the video streaming experience we provide our customers,” said Rob Goretsky, Director, Data Engineering, MLBAM. “Insightful analysis of streaming data previously involved building dedicated data pipelines to derive specific metrics. We can now interactively develop queries in minutes using Kinesis Analytics.”

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EVENTS

VMware VSP - VTSP Bootcamp in Dubai, U.A.E. – 2nd August 2016

Fortinet ATP Framework Technical Day in Manama, Bahrain – 11 August 2016

SonicWALL Security Partner Update in Dubai, U.A.E. – 15 August 2016

Fortinet Wireless Framework Technical Day in Muscat, Oman – 16-18 August 2016

Fortinet Security Roadshow in Amman, Jordan – 22 August 2016

Fortinet Wireless Framework Technical Day in Doha, Qatar – 23-25 August 2016

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Vision Solutions Partner Bootcamp in Dubai, U.A.E – 10 August 2016

Trend Micro Deep Security ATC Training in Dubai, U.A.E. – 16-18 August 2016

VMware Airwatch Enablement Session in Dubai, U.A.E. – 21-25 August 2016

Entrust Datacard Partnership Launch in Dubai, U.A.E. – 22 August 2016

Fortinet Security Seminar in Lebanon – 23 August 2016

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Oracle Security Solution Workshop with partner IITC in Muscat, Oman – 23 August 2016

Fortinet ATP Framework Technical Day in Abu Dhabi, U.A.E. – 25 August 2016

Fortinet ATP Framework Technical Day in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia – 10 August 2016

Palo Alto Partner Bootcamp in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia – 10 August 2016

Avaya Partner Bootcamp in Nairobi, Kenya – 11th August 2016

Tripplite Partner Bootcamp in Ethiopia – 16 August 2016

EMC End User Forum with Partner IMPC in Ghana – 17 August 2016

EMC End User Forum with Partner ISON Technologies in Kenya – 18 August 2016

Symantec Partner Bootcamp in Nairobi, Kenya –18 August 2016

SAP, Dell and EMC End User Forum in Nairobi, Kenya – 24 August 2016

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Cisco releases Midyear Cybersecurity Report The report highlights that organisations are unprepared for future strains of more sophisticated ransomware.

Mike Weston, VP, Cisco Middle East

Cisco highlighted in its 2016 Midyear Cybersecurity Report (MCR) that organisations are unprepared for future strains of more sophisticated ransomware.

According to the report’s findings, the struggle to constrain the operational space of attackers is the biggest challenge facing businesses and threatens the underlying foundation required for digital transformation. Other key findings in the MCR include

adversaries expanding their focus to server-side attacks, evolving attack methods and increasing use of encryption to mask activity.

So far in 2016, ransomware has become the most profitable malware type in history. Cisco expects to see this trend continue with even more destructive ransomware that can spread by itself and hold entire networks, and therefore companies, hostage.

It underscored that new modular strains of ransomware will be able to quickly switch tactics to maximise efficiency.

For example, future ransomware attacks will evade detection by being able to limit CPU usage and refrain from command-andcontrol actions.

Mike Weston, VP, Cisco ME said, “Attackers are going

undetected and expanding their time to operate. To close the attackers’ windows of opportunity, customers will require more visbility into their networks and must improve activities, like patching and retiring aging infrastructure lacking in advanced security capabilities. Cisco is working with our customers to help them match and exceed their attackers’ level of sophistication, visbility and control.”

Visibility across the network and endpoints remains a primary challenge. On average, organisations take up to 200 days to identify new threats.

Cisco’s median time to detection (TTD) continues to outpace the industry, hitting a new low of approximately 13 hours to detect previously unknown compromises

VMware launches AirWatch Express CyberArk secures Configuring devices with apps, email and Wi-Fi easily, it enables enterprise cloud the data encryption and security as well. orchestration and VMware has released computing device automation AirWatch Express, for many businesses, a simple mobile and these same device management organisations (MDM) cloud are struggling to solution designed to keep up with the get devices up and device and app running quickly. proliferation. The AirWatch Express truth is managing Blake Brannon,VP, Product Market- mobile devices aims to make it easy ing, End-User Computing, VMware to configure devices can be a timely with apps, email and complicated and Wi-Fi, while enabling the data process,” said Blake Brannon, Vice encryption and security that is President of Product Marketing, necessary in today’s environment.

End-User Computing, VMware.

It delivers an “affordable, “Without the need for technical consumer-friendly MDM,” built knowledge or additional IT staff, on the same platform as VMware AirWatch Express empowers AirWatch, an enterprise mobility organisations to support an ever management solution. The solution increasing mobile workforce.” intends to allow more organisations AirWatch Express is a globally to protect their company by solution that doesn’t require securing their employee’s devices in extensive set up or training, just a few clicks. and is available for iOS, macOS, “The transformative nature Android and Windows 10. It of mobility has caused the mobile starts at $2.50 per device and is endpoint to become the primary available today.

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for the six months ending in April 2016. This result is down from 17.5 hours for the period ending in October 2015. Faster time to detection of threats is critical to constrain attackers’ operational space and minimise damage.

As attackers innovate, many defenders continue to struggle with maintaining the security of their devices and systems. In the Europe, Middle East, and Africa region, Ukraine and Romania were the greatest sources of blocked traffic as a proportion of their overall traffic; and in Asia-Pacific, Australia topped the list. Just 8.4 percent of the total vulnerable Cisco devices detected globally were in the Africa region – a small collection compared to 24 percent found in Europe, and 35.5 percent in Asia.

Solution v9.7 enable broader cloud automation capabilities and greater security for DevOps environments.

CyberArk secures assets running in the cloud, but also integrates privileged account The solution allows firms security into DevOps processes, to secure and manage all privileged accounts in the cloud. facilitating cloud migrations and enabling organisations to get the full benefit of the agility and CyberArk has announced new elasticity of the cloud. capabilities for reducing cyber “When investing in the security risk in the cloud. business benefits of the cloud and The CyberArk Privileged DevOps strategies, organisations Account Security Solution shouldn’t have to make tradeallows organisations to secure, offs between speed, efficiency manage, control access, rotate and security,” said Roy Adar, credentials, monitor and audit Senior Vice President, Product all privileged accounts in the Management, CyberArk. “CyberArk cloud. Working with automation is a trusted advisor and partner in and orchestration tools such our customers’ cloud migration as Chef, Puppet, Windows strategies. An effective cloud PowerShell, Jenkins and others, strategy must include security CyberArk helps build privileged from the beginning – not after the account security into cloud fact. We bake privileged account environments with automatic security into cloud automation provisioning and integration tools and the processes they enable during cloud migration and onto create repeatable, reliable going management. Enhanced security that is responsive to the REST APIs available in CyberArk elasticity of these environments.”

Privileged Account Security

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Check Point introduces SandBlast Agent for Browsers

Fortinet launches universal wireless access points

SandBlast Agent for Browsers is designed to protect users from evolving threats by seamlessly incorporating key components of the security model into the browser.

The FortiAP-U series of universal wireless AP is designed to reduce complexity.

Addressing the exponential growth in web-based malware, phishing and social engineering attacks, Check Point Software Technologies has announced SandBlast Agent for Browsers with Zero Phishing technology.

It is designed to protect users from evolving threats by seamlessly incorporating key components of

“

SandBlast Agent for Browsers brings the highest level of protection to users in a simple browser plug-in.”

the security model into the browser.

It provides real-time protection, all while reducing the resources required to prevent today’s most advanced attacks.

For better business results, users now expect unconstrained internet access and immediate delivery of downloaded content and email. At the same time, enterprises must contend with the changing threat landscape, as they strive to prevent the theft of sensitive customer information and their own intellectual property, while maintaining the efficiency of their critical business systems.

Files downloaded from the web represent a leading entry point for malware today, and data shows this threat is growing.

Web-based malware and social engineering attacks targeting organisations are increasing in volume and sophistication, with cyber-attackers using the latest evasion techniques and persuasive scams to infect their victims.

“Existing technologies ask users to wait for content to be evaluated, or require multiple, intrusive software installations on every system,” said Nathan Shuchami, Head of Advanced Threat Prevention, Check Point.

“SandBlast Agent for Browsers brings the highest level of protection to users in a simple browser plug-in that blocks unknown and zeroday malware delivered via web downloads, while quickly delivering safe content within seconds.”

Pivot3 adds policy-driven data protection capabilities The new QoS includes data protection, application integration, scheduling, and performance enhancements.

Pivot3 has extended the capabilities of its patented Dynamic Quality of Service (QoS) software to include policy-driven data protection capabilities.

The software’s new QoS includes data protection, application integration, scheduling, and performance enhancements to the existing QoS capabilities of the Pivot3 flash arrays, providing customers with more automation and flexibility in how they guarantee service level agreements (SLAs) for critical business applications.

With data protection QoS, customers can simply define policies specifying snapshot, replication and retention and apply them to volumes or groups of volumes. The addition of QoS scheduling capabilities lets customers set pre-defined

schedules for both performance and data protection policies, allowing them to change automatically at pre-determined times. By automating policy changes, IT can support the business with greater agility as application priorities and workloads change.

“By eliminating contention issues, Pivot3’s QoS has allowed us to improve the performance of our most critical member-facing systems, such as online banking,” said Chris Visocnik, Director of IT, Consumers Credit Union.

“Now with the addition of data protection QoS, we have the option of simplifying and automating our data protection policies for mission-critical and memberfacing credit union applications.”

“IT organisations are pushing to consolidate multiple application

workloads onto common infrastructures to reduce their capital and operating expenses,” said Ahmad Chamseddine, Vice President and Chief Operations Officer, Pivot3. “Customers need guaranteed performance and data protection in line with their business priorities, which is why we’re continuing to innovate with Quality of Service and hyperconvergence. This is another step in the development and integration of the Pivot3 and NexGen Storage technology sets following our recent acquisition as we move toward achieving the software-defined data centre.”

The new QoS capabilities are now available with vSTAC SLX Hyperconverged and N5 Flash Storage systems through Pivot3’s authorised resellers and to Pivot3 customers on support contracts.

Fortinet has announced the launch of its new FortiAP-U series of universal wireless access points (AP), designed to reduce complexity with what the company claims to be the most flexible, enterprise-grade wireless solution on the market.

The universal APs combine unified access network control and visibility, with the protection of Fortinet’s Security Fabric. FortiAP-U claims to simplify deployment and administration of access networks by offering a single appliance that is compatible with all of the company’s access management platforms.

Seamless integration with Fortinet’s Security Fabric also enables access network segmentation capabilities to deliver the only security strategy capable of protecting enterprises against threats targeting IoT and endpoint devices before they can access critical internal data.

The access points feature innovative plug-in-play implementation, enabling each device to automatically determine the type of management and pull down configuration information to deliver rapid deployment without the need for IT to manually update every appliance.

Fortinet Universal APs are also designed to suit the wireless needs of the largest enterprises with cutting-edge features such as quad special streams, extended 5 GHz channel support, wide-channel 160MHz and Multi-User MIMO. These technologies maximise bandwidth and device capacity, supporting even the densest wireless needs with multigigabit throughput.

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