The Integrator February 2017

Nothing happened today In a perfect world, no one thinks about access control except you.

The hundreds of people coming and going don’t think about you, or what a good job you’re doing, or how they always manage to get seamlessly where they need to go. Because you chose Synergis access control, it was another great day.

© 2014 Genetec. All rights reserved. Genetec and Synergis are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Genetec.

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Editorial

Cover Feature - 18

Cloud, a mainstream strategy

A digital future D

igital transformation is underway at many companies, small and large, in some measure. But they are not all formalized and most are perhaps in early stages of the journey. There is an opportunity for channel partners to identify companies from existing customer base or from new leads to map out those looking to venture into some digital transformation initiatives.

Businesses that are keen on digital transformation are most certainly looking to leverage the power of SMAC – social, mobile, analytics and cloud. The channel has the opportunity to help these companies take a guided foray into these new deployments.

The channel needs to be able to help their customers broaden out their suite of customer offerings while making their infrastructure nimble and agile, through a mix of cloud or on premises solutions. Who else but channel partners can make customers discover the extent of these deployments, especially in scenarios where the in-house technology team of the customer may be either too lean or may lack the confidence with the new technologies.

The channel has the responsibility to help customers identify the areas of their business where digital transformation needs to start and they should also possibly help them identify the innovative tools they need to opt for.

They could refer to what some of their competitors or similar sized companies are doing or have done.

As the competitive landscape continues to undergo massive shifts, those companies who are still stuck with legacy business models and practices will struggle to keep up and meet their customer expectations. The onus is therefore with the channel to help their customers transform.

The question is how many partners today are making the necessary investments in these new technologies in terms of building expertise.Those companies that have done so, may already be ramping up.

R. Narayan Managing Editor

Founder & CEO: Vivek Sharma Managing Editor: R. Narayan Art Director: Faiz Ahmed Sr. Sales Manager: R. Subramanyan Sales Coordinator: Smitha Jithesh

The cloud is now a priority option for companies looking to upgrade their ICT infrastructure

News In Detail

Sophos unveils SMB focused partner initiative - 11

Genetec introduces new Retail Intelligence Application at Intersec 2017 - 12

WD showcases surveillance focus - 13 Feature

Intersec meets expectations - 24

The 2017 edition of Intersec was a success from the point of view of visitor turnout and quality of attendees

Point2Point - 14

Pioneering efforts

Roger R. GHOSTINE, MD, MENA – Harco Group discusses the company's focus in the region

Techknow

Enhancing customer engagement - 16

MerijnteBooij, the CMO for Genesys and Mohammad Afifi, MD of Middle East – Genesys discuss some of the key highlights of the company’s focus

A step ahead - 22

Hatem Hariri, GM, MEA discusses the vendor’s focus on secured networks and the shifts in the marketplace

Insight

How IoT and Internet Will Merge - 28

Bruce Zhou, CEO, AXILSPOT offers a snapshot of two principal areas where convergence between IoT and Internet technologies is rapidly taking place.

From Ransomware to Jackware - 30

Stephen Cobb, Senior Security Researcher at ESET examines how ransomware and jackware are evolving

Regulars

News Bytes EyeTech Market Stats

Published by: JNS Media International MFZE

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News Bytes

Finesse to offer IaaS to Al Masah Capital Management Finesse has announced the commencement of infrastructure as a service for Al Masah Capital Management Limited. Al Masah Capital Management Limited is a leading Dubai based alternative investment management firm and has contracted Finesse to offer them with IBM Cloud Solutions.

Ashith Piriyattiah, the Group Head for Information Technology at Al Masah Capital Management Limited said, “The transformation of our data centre and Disaster Recovery sites onto cloud has been achieved with extreme cost efficiency and effective use of resource skill set with multiple layers of Data Security. The Finesse team has been very responsive at identifying the areas of challenges and suggesting the appropriate solution, working efficiently within the parameters set by us.”

Al Masah Capital Management Limited had their legacy Data Centre and respective Disaster Recovery running with peak utilization for more than 5 years. Finesse, with offerings on IBM Cloud, transformed them to new Data Centers with high availability and Disaster Recovery sites using the latest scalable technologies. This covers a revamp of all the corporate data centre and Disaster Recovery sites.

4 | February 2017

SentinelOne raises funding to fuel market growth SentinelOne, a provider of next-generation endpoint security, announced it has raised an additional $70 million in Series C financing. The company plans to use this new infusion of capital to aggressively expand its sales and marketing efforts to drive more than 400 percent global sales growth in 2017, while continuing to maintain a strong investment in its research and development initiatives towards its next-generation endpoint protection platform. Exclusive Networks, SentinelOne’s distributor in EMEA, is confident about achieving dramatic growth in the region with this new aggressive plan of new initiatives.

New investor – and current SentinelOne customer – Redpoint Ventures led the round along with new investment from Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s firm, Sound Ventures.

Existing investors Third Point Ventures, Data Collective, Granite Hill Capital Partners, Westly Group, and SineWave Ventures also participated in the round, bringing the total investment in SentinelOne to more than $110 million to date.

“Confidence remains dismally low when it comes to traditional antivirus’ ability to stop anything but the most mundane threats. Even vendors that are now touting machine learning-based file-scanning, and artificial intelligence capabilities are in fact pursuing a very narrow approach, and only an incremental improvement – if any – to a much broader problem,” said Tomer Weingarten, co-founder and CEO of SentinelOne. SentinelOne unifies endpoint threat prevention, detection and response in a single platform driven by sophisticated machine learning and intelligent automation.

Schneider Electric collaborates with HPE on Micro Data Center Solution Schneider Electric announced its collaboration with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) on HPE Micro Datacenter, introduced recently at the Gartner Data Center, Infrastructure & Operations Management Conference. The jointly engineered converged infrastructure solution provides end-to-end IT infrastructure, networking, storage and management in a single, self-contained and easy-to-deploy architecture ideal for distributed IT environments.

Schneider Electric is leveraging its SmartBunker FX, an integrated and secure enclosure with UPS, power distribution, cooling and monitoring, with HPE storage, network and compute solutions to create HPE Micro Datacenter, a custom-designed and integrated architecture that supports edge environments. Designed utilizing Schneider Electric engineering and HPE consulting expertise creates an operationally-optimized solution.

“The growing quantity of data – due in part to the growth of IoT and connected devices – is having a transformational effect on the data center market and the technologies needed to support it,” said Kevin Brown, CTO, Schneider Electric – IT Division.

“As data is becoming increasingly impactful to data center performance and business success, edge computing has emerged as a compelling solution to reduce latency, meet IoT processing needs and deliver greater availability and reliability. Micro data centers provide a turnkey solution for edge deployments, complete with all the necessary IT and compute components to meet new data growth requirements and deliver connectivity demand.”

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News Bytes

Infoblox appoints Cherif Sleiman as VP EMEA Infoblox appointed Cherif Sleiman as VP of EMEA operation, responsible for charting the company’s business strategy across EMEA. Sleiman previously oversaw Infoblox’s Middle East and Africa (MEA) business.

Sleiman will be reporting to Bill McCarthy, EVP of Worldwide Field Operations.

“The EMEA region is of strategic importance to Infoblox, so finding the right leadership is critical to our ongoing success,” said McCarthy.

“Cherif has done a terrific job in leading the Middle East and Africa team over the past two years. Under his leadership and given his expertise in security and cloud solutions, I am confident that Infoblox will flourish in the EMEA region.”

“With the rising number of DDoS attacks and data breaches, DNS Security has become mandatory to ensure safe computing in service provider and enterprise networks,” said Sleiman. “Organizations must realize that ignoring DNS as a threat vector can result in damaging consequences.

The recent European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) aims to strengthen data protection and will hold institutions responsible for any data privacy breaches.

Infoblox is uniquely positioned to help organizations comply with GDPR and other data privacy regulations by delivering DNS based security measures.”

6 | February 2017

Fakhro and Avaya celebrate 25 years of partnership

Fakhro Electronics, part of one of Bahrain’s oldest and best established groups of companies, and Avaya, a global leader in business communications software, systems and services, are celebrating 25 years of implementing innovative technology solutions to help regional companies achieve their digital objectives.

The two companies will continue to collaborate to provide business communications and networking solutions and services to enterprises of all sizes in the Middle East & Africa region, they announced today. Recent collaborations include working with Bahrain Petroleum Company (Bapco), the national oil company of Bahrain, to transform its network infrastructure and deploy Avaya’s next-generation Fabric technology to power the corporate network across its locations in Bahrain.

OMA Emirates set to expand Payment Solution Portfolio OMA Emirates, a provider of cutting edge technology solutions for the payment industry announced its investment into India based MobiSwipe, a company that specializes in Mobile Point of Sale (mPOS) solutions. The new acquisition will help in broadening the services and solutions that OMA Emirates will now offer in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and the APAC regions. The solution enables merchants to accept both credit and debit card payments via a simple mobile application and provides an innovative, convenient and economical payment option to a wide range of business sectors.

The mPOS solutions which is PCI-DSS and PA-DSS compliant is highly secure with payments accepted anywhere and anytime by using an Android smartphone or tablet that is loaded with the MobiSwipe application that is connected to an EMV certified pocket-size card reader. The solution runs on robust Ingenico payment terminals which are clearly supported by mPOS applications.

“In keeping with OMA Emirates’ expansion plans into new geographies and our experience in POS Management across Middle East, it was important for us to add an mPOS solution to the existing portfolio. The new investment in MobiSwipe provides us a stronger platform to broaden our set of business solutions and services. The new solution will help us provide our merchants with a wholesome mPOS ecosystem that is a combination of mobility, payment and business processing across all sales channels,” said NiranjSangal, Group CEO, OMA Emirates Group.

News Bytes

Ingram Micro signs distribution agreement with HPE Ingram Micro has signed a distribution agreement with Hewlett Packard Enterprise for the whole range of its Security Software product line and solutions.With this agreement, Ingram Micro is authorized to distribute all HPE Software including security products across Gulf countries, Egypt and Levant.

“HPE is committed to helping our customers understand the need to protect their business by building security into the fabric of their enterprise,” said Tim Grieveson, chief cyber & security strategist for HPE EMEA. “We are convinced that through our partnership with Ingram Micro we will be able to reach and help more customers mitigate risk in their hybrid environments and defend against advanced threats.”

“We are delighted to be adding HPE Software solutions in the portfolio we offer to our partners,” said Ali Baghdadi, senior vice president and chief executive of Ingram Micro’s META region. “HPE Software will help our partners and customers to significantly enhance the protection and management of their enterprise.”

“Our target is to enhance the value proposition to our business partners with a dedicated range of services and relevant large vendors,” said Marc Kassis, cyber security director, Ingram Micro META region. “With HPE, we are reaching the front-runner position as a value-added distributor of Cyber Security solutions.”

8 | February 2017

TransSys wins ‘Oracle CX Cloud Partner of the Year’ Award for GCC

TransSys Solutions, a leading regional IT services and solution provider, announced that it has won the ‘Oracle CX Cloud Partner of the Year’ award for 2016 at the recently held Oracle Partner Day Event in Dubai. TransSys was recognized for its commitment to delivering a variety of innovative client cloud transformations solutions using Oracle’s CX (Customer eXperience) Cloud in the GCC region.

"Cloud and digital transformation are at the center of any business’ corporate strategy to jump start from where they are today. TransSys has been helping customers embark on their digital transformation journey using Oracle’s cloud solutions. We are delighted to win the ‘Oracle CX Cloud Partner of the Year – 2016’ award, which is an achievement and an honor. This award is a testament to our team’s dedication towardsexcellence and in providing solutions that drive real business value and results for our customers,” said Prabu Balasubramanyan, Executive Director, TransSys Solutions.

Smartworld records robust performance Smartworld, a leading systems integrator, announced strong financial performance during 2016 with an estimated over 15% growth in revenues in comparison to 2015.

The growth performance was marked by a record number of new projects Smartworld implemented during the year, with the top ones being in aviation, telecom, construction and banking sectors.

Saeed Al Dhaheri, Chairman, Smartworld, said: “The strong financial performance reflects the strength of the UAE’s economy, especially the IT sector, which is driven by the vision of UAE’s wise leadership. New projects across all major sectors of the economy, especially aviation and construction, have been the key factor that has led to the excellence performance and position us for a continuous long-term growth.”

AbdulqaderObaid Ali, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Smartworld, said: “Smartworld’s growth is driven by the clear vision of being the top-of-the-league digital services provider to enable a futuristic digital growth and we are firmly committed and inspired by the path shown by our visionary leader His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum to always be the best in everything. In 2016, we made considerable strides and launched a number of major initiatives which put us in a strong position for 2017.”

“The new projects, along with Dubai’s strong growth across all sectors, especially IT, make us highly confident that we are set for the next phase of future growth in 2017,” added Obaid Ali.

News Bytes

Redington and Huawei partner for Smart Solutions Redington Value and Huawei announced their collaboration in the information technology space with the objective of developing smart, futuristic solutions together.

“Huawei is not only one of the leading providers of information and communication technology but is also steadily changing the landscape in emerging technologies such as cloud computing and internet of things” said RamkumarBalakrishnan, President, Redington Value. “The partnership is focused on collaboration with Huawei's cloud offerings and internet of things.

We will also leverage the Red Vault to host leading Huawei technologies for the benefit of industry specialists while engaging jointly on smart city projects.”

“Huawei is very excited to join hands with Redington Value, a top information technology player in the region. Redington Value shares our vision of how the IT landscape is evolving and has introduced several key initiatives such as the Red Vault Solution Center and Citrus Consulting – its very own consultancy arm for disruptive technologies. We are looking to combine Redington Value’s expertise with our own to come out with smart innovative solutions applicable to all industry verticals” said Alaa Elshimy, Managing Director & Vice President, Huawei Enterprise Business, Middle East.

10 | February 2017

D-Link continues to strengthen GCC and SMB focus D-Link is strengthening its focus in the GCC as the company wants its channel partners to grow their share of business in this geography. According to the networking vendor, the strategy to reinforce its focus on the GCC market comes at a time when D-Link has continued to witness growth despite a tough business climate.

Sakkeer Hussain, Director - Sales and Marketing, D-Link Middle East and Africa (MEA), said the GCC market has continued to show maturity in IT even though spending slowed down in 2016 largely due to the drop in crude oil prices.

Hussain pointed out that the UAE leads in terms of the number of technology projects, IT spending and business in general and is closely followed by Kuwait, Qatar and Oman. “Saudi Arabia is by far the biggest market in the GCC but doing business in the Kingdom is not easy especially now that the country is moving away from its reliance on oil revenue,” he observed. “That said, the SMB segment is doing well in Saudi Arabia and we have seen that with our own networking SMB business.”

Hussain said D-Link is seeing steady growth in the networking segment as Internet broadband penetration continues to grow in the consumer, SOHO and SMB space. He added that partners who combine products and services have a better chance of earning higher recurring margins.

According to Hussain, the networking, security, managed services, storage all present business prospects for savvy partners to explore.

ManageEngine announces Data Centers in Amsterdam and Dublin ManageEngine, the real time IT management company, today announced the opening of its two new ISO 27001-certified data centers in the EU — one in Amsterdam, Netherlands and another in Dublin, Ireland.

This announcement is a part of its efforts to help IT teams move operations seamlessly to the cloud while adhering to the data privacy and security standards of the EU. With cloud adoption in Europe on a trend of high growth, software vendors are taking steps to protect customer data. To remove security concerns associated with the cloud, the new ManageEngine data centers are certified Service Organization Controls (SOC) Type II and reinforce the company’s efforts to facilitate cloud adoption by IT teams in the EU. “Our European customers are subject to some of the world’s strictest data privacy regulations, which apply to both on-premises and cloud applications,” said Rajesh Ganesan, director of product management at ManageEngine. “Our on-premises apps have maintained the highest degree of data privacy and regulatory compliance for years.

With our new EU data centers, we’ve set the same standard for our cloud apps and eliminated the privacy barrier to adopting our cloud-based IT management solutions.”

The company also announced the availability of ServiceDesk Plus, its flagship ITSM product, from its newly commissioned EU data centers.

News In Detail

Sophos unveils SMB focused partner initiative Sophos has announced a new initiative for small and medium sized businesses (SMB) in the Middle East. The special training and incentive initiative for channel partners is designed to enable them to address small and medium businesses as a focus for their go-to-market activities.

Speaking on the new initiative, Harish Chib, vice president, Middle East and Africa, Sophos said, “With the growing volume of sophisticated and targeted threats across the world, small businesses without dedicated security resources are particularly challenged to stay secure. They often do not have adequate skilled security staff on board and have invested more on managing business challenges than on IT security infrastructure. The strategy of adding layer upon layer of security technologies is really no longer practical or effective.

It is costly and complex and out of reach for a vast majority of businesses. Hence, we felt

it is important to cater to this segment.”

“Our intention is to help incentivize our channel partners to better serve and support our customers in this market segment with security knowledge and expertise.

Channel partners, who meet these targets will incentivized and rewarded by Sophos for their efforts, where they will be able to earn back by way of price discounts and credit for certification training,” Chib added.

Sophos also announced a special pricing and rebate promotion for channel partners targeting the small and medium business end users. As part of this special incentive, partners can get a return through reduced pricing and extra training initiatives.

“Sophos is a 100% channel driven IT Security Company offering synchronized security through our next-generation portfolio of endpoint, network or cloud security solutions.

As part of our ‘Channel First –

Channel Only’ sales strategy, we are committed to providing simple and comprehensive security solutions to not only the mid-market enterprises but also the SMB segment and the channel partners that serve them. We are confident that our new training and incentive initiative will encourage our regional channel partners and gear them to cater to the ever-growing SMB segment in the Middle East,” Mr. Chib explained.

Within the Middle East and Africa, Sophos has built its regional channel partner program based on feedback from its distributors and reseller channel partners.

The regional partner program is well segmented into four different on-boarding levels with different skills certifications, sales and target activities, and rewards.

Partners are now able to manage all Sophos solutions for every customer through the company’s centralized management platform, Sophos

Central. Within Sophos Central is Sophos Central-Partner, a specialized dashboard that allows partners to distribute licenses, add new customers on demand, cross- and upsell services, drive recurring revenue and have a clear, real-time perspective on all customer activities. Partners can respond to security incidents faster and track alerts of all levels directly from the dashboard, so time spent handling incidents, including minor ones, is more productive and effective.

The primary objective of the Sophos partner program is to equip partners with training and resources that enable them to sell, market, distribute and implement the company’s award-winning cloud, network, server and end-user protection solutions to organizations of all sizes. It provides access to the company’s portfolio of marketleading endpoint and network security products, which have been engineered keeping its partners in mind.

February 2017 | 11

News In Detail

Genetec introduces new Retail Intelligence Application G

enetec, a leading provider of IP security and intelligence solutions, offered early previews of a new application designed to transform existing video surveillance content into powerful consumer insights at Intersec 2017, the world’s leading trade fair for security, safety and fire protection that took place in January at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Center (DICEC).

The new Genetec Retail Intelligence application filters and analyzes incoming video surveillance data to produce actionable intelligence about store operations, buying patterns, and trends.

The UAE has positioned itself as the region’s leading retail hub, with a recent study by the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry forecasting Dubai’s retail sector in particular to touch AED 200 billion in 2017 and expand at an average of 5 per cent annually. The retail data gathered from the Genetec retail intelligence application will enable marketing, operation and merchandising

12 | February 2017

staff of boutique-style stores or large multi-site retailers to improve their customers’ experiences and impact instore profitability by increasing consumer engagement.

Genetec Retail Intelligence will help retailers gain a deeper understanding of customer behavior, needs and preferences to build a more personal relationship by analyzing and correlating information gathered from multiple sensors such as video surveillance cameras and point-of-sale systems.

With powerful analytics such as queue management, heat mapping, directional analysis, people counting and conversion rate analytics, the application can notify staff in real-time to respond to shoppers in the store or in a particular section. It will also inform them about long lines on check-out lanes or changing rooms so that the necessary staff can be reassigned. Marketing and merchandising professionals can use the information provided by the application to design new promotions and

optimize inventory strategies from within a single interface.

"There is a wealth of information collected by security systems that has gone virtually untapped until now,” said Derek Arcuri, Product Marketing Manager for Genetec Retail Intelligence. “Our Genetec Retail Intelligence application will help retailers not only gain insights into store performance and customer buying patterns, but will generate powerful analytics-driven intelligence, delivered in a format that can be easily understood, interpreted and shared.

Genetec Retail Intelligence will be available via a costeffective subscription basis that will work with a wide variety of camera brands, and will not require complex and expensive additional equipment," added Arcuri.

“Retail is a key pillar of the UAE’s economic diversification strategy and we extend our support to the country’ retail industry by presenting our latest application that can provide valuable data on customer

behavior to retailers. Genetec will throw the spotlight on its video surveillance application and how it can be leveraged for some powerful real-time in-store intelligence that can improve and impact sales and customer experiences. With a user-friendly customizable dashboard, Genetec Retail Intelligence will provide real time insights as well as in-depth analytics based on activity patterns over time.

It can be easily accessed by any Internet-enabled device, allowing retailers to stay connected regardless of where they are located,” concluded FirasJadalla, Regional Director Middle East and Africa, Genetec.

Genetec Retail Intelligence is designed to be infinitely scalable and optimized to easily interpret data from a multitude of stores—from small franchise operations to large-scale retail chains.

Information gathered from multiple stores in different locations will be available for comparison across locations, giving retailers a greater understanding of their entire business operations.

News In Detail

WD showcases surveillance focus W

estern Digital showcased its wide range of high capacity WD Purple hard drives at Intersec 2017. The high-powered devices are engineered for 24/7 alwayson, high-definition surveillance systems.

“From an Intersec perspective, we have here for past several editions. We have been having our own stand and also participated with partners. In the past five years, the quality of participation and visitors has gone up considerably. We have had very good meetings this year,” said Khwaja Saifuddin, Senior Sales Director – Middle East, Africa & India, WD. On the surveillance segment, Saif remarks that it has been a strong growth area for the manufacturer.

He said, “We were the first storage manufacturer to come out with purpose built hard drive for the surveillance segment. We kept enhancing

our products and at the end of the day the heart of a surveillance solution is storage and it comes down to how well you store it and share it as required between different platforms and different authorities.”

Saif mentioned that the participation at Intersec has been entirely about strengthening the channel business and meeting with consultants, VARs etc that have a strong forte in surveillance.

The Middle East market for security and surveillance is on track for double digit growth over the next four years, with an increased demand for advanced CCTV surveillance systems and technology as part of rising security, compliance and smart-city initiatives.

“It is a very strong segment for us. It is a growing market share and is showing a growth rate of 30-35% CAGR. The segment is growing and

new technologies are growing.

There is a growth in terms of first time adopters and among those who had solutions, are adopting newer solutions, migrating to IP cameras etc.”

Recently released Frost & Sullivan research indicated that the Middle East’s security market is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of 23.7% between 2015 and 2020, with spending in the region's physical security market expected to reach $10.2 billion in the next four years, making up at least 10 per cent of the global market.

“Western Digital’s wide range of purpose-built WD Purple hard drives are built with the region’s growing surveillance needs in mind and allow customers to achieve the most ROI from their surveillance investments with the right storage technologies to achieve their objectives. The WD Purple drives have achieved high

success since launch in this market, both from individuals and property owners, as well as from leading public and private sector organizations.

As the demands from surveillance systems evolve beyond monitoring to offering real time, quality video for analysis and insights, WD Purple’s product range has continued to develop to match market needs,” said Saif.

The WD Purple range of surveillance storage have been tested to be compatible in a wide-range of security systems and are designed for high temperature, always-on, surveillance security systems to help ensure reliability and quality video play back.

Featuring IntelliSeek and AllFrame technologies, the WD Purple surveillanceclass drive delivers premium reliabilityand peace-of-mind for your home and business surveillance system.

February 2017 | 13

Point2Point | Harco Group

region as one of the formidable players in the IP security and Harco Group is a leading Solution Provider for Advanced Video Surveillance Solutions in the Middle East and North Africa. Based in Brussels (Belgium) and with many offices in the MENA region, Harco Group are specialists in Digital Surveillance and the Distributors in the Middle East and North Africa of leading brands in the Video Security and Surveillance. Roger R. GHOSTINE, Managing Director, MENA – Harco Group discusses some aspects of the pioneering role the company has played in the region’s surveillance segment.

Roger R. Ghostine Managing Director, MENA Harco Group

Pioneering efforts

surveillance segment.

What is the differentiation you offer as a distributor?

One of the differentiators of Harco is that we are not a regular distributor who is just moving boxes. We are consultants and solution providers for our partners. We are a Belgium based company and when we decided to enter this region, we were certain that we will bring in differentiators in our strategy.

We were participating in educating the market in term of new technology trends.

Our go to market strategy was three pronged. One the three key pillars of our strategy was that we decided to focus only on high end and noncompetitive products, with no

Discuss how the company

IP was nascent, there were

solutions is that vendors were

compromise in terms of quality

established its forte in IP

bugs in the early technologies.

providing only some part of

or price.

security solutions?

That is one of the challenges

the solution. There were no

One of the major differences

we faced as customers were

one-stop solution vendors

of our strategy was that

between Harco and others

not confident about IP based

back then In IP security. While

we focused on people with

is that from the moment we

security.

one vendor may have had the

technical expertise. And

storage part, another offered

it is not possible to have

started focusing on the MEA

A few years later, by the

The second key aspect

market back in 2002, we always

time the market matured and

only cameras and still another

same expertise across a

focused on IP security solutions.

other distributors were getting

the software etc. There was no

very wide spectrum and

Analog security solutions was

into the IP security market, we

single point of accountability as

therefore restricted attention

never a focus for the region.

had a clear advantage because

far as solution was concerned

to key brands and products.

While there were no IP camera

of the head-start we had

which is where Harco came

That enables our team of

then to start with, there were

taken. So by 2006-2007 when

in. We designed the turnkey

salespeople to have the

IP encoders and DVRs. It was

IP security was beginning

end to end solutions. We made

focus and knowledge to be

not until 2007-2008 that other

to gain wider acceptance,

sure of providing a workable

consultants.

distribution companies started

we were already quite an

solution for the end user

looking at IP security.

established leader.

We were a pioneer in IP

One of the challenges in

surveillance. However, since

the early years of IP security

14 | February 2017

And third, within our go to

through our partners, up to their

market execution, we make

expectations which helped us

sure all concerned stakeholders,

consolidate our presence in this

the consultants, systems

"We designed the turnkey end to end solutions. We made sure of providing a workable solution for the end user through our partners, up to their expectations which helped us consolidate our presence in this region as one of the formidable players in the IP security and surveillance segment."

integrators and end users, are in sync and working

you can imagine the new focus in our approach. We

closely- in enabling

are distributors

the required knowledge transfer. Our technical people can demonstrate the solutions to customers with the demo units they typically carry. This approach helped them convince customers that there was a lot of substance to what they had said. This helped Harco in the earlier years of IP security solutions generate a lot of

Do you see many traditional focusing more in the surveillance segment?

In the earlier years, the

applications and hence

solutions were mostly

provided a great opportunity

Vision, Exacq Technologies,

companies that were from

for IT integrators. They

Raytec, Nexsan Storage, Verint

the physical security industry.

therefore ended up selling

Video Solutions, Theia, ACIC,

Over time, many companies

more storage, servers and

Riva, Veracity, Protec, etc. We

from IT industry came in for

networking as IP surveillance

have a wide channel of over

the simple reason that IP

consumers more bandwidth.

200 system integrators and

surveillance solutions required

Many of them therefore made

client base across the region

the same servers, networks

the shift and have become our

including the UAE, Saudi Arabia,

and storage components that

partners in this industry.

Qatar, Kuwait, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, etc. We are happy to

they were already dealing with

Business.

IT focused integrators

integrators in surveillance

for brands such as Arecont

for enabling other applications.

Discuss your consolidation in

have signed up with Seagate,

However, with surveillance

terms of vendor association?

a leader in storage solutions.

deployments, the requirements

In the first 13 years, Harco has

In the past 24 months, we

of these components was a

added six brands to our offering.

have been able to consolidate

multiple of several times over

In the past 8 months, we have

our thirteen years of our

the need seen for regular

added six more vendors. So

experience.

Harco ties up with Altronix

H

arco Group sa/nv has announced its strategic partnership with Altronix, a global leader in power and transmission solutions for professional Security, Surveillance/ IT, Access Control and Fire applications. Altronix designs and manufactures innovative solutions that integrate disparate infrastructure and maximize overall performance and efficiency. Their comprehensive line of power products and peripherals feature the quality, reliability and unparalleled customer support that have been associated with Altronix for over 30 years.

The security industry requires electronic components which can perform flawlessly under rigorous conditions, twenty-four hours a day. Incorporating cutting edge design and engineering, Altronix has secured an unprecedented reputation synonymous with quality, service, and reliability.

Most of its products carry a 'Lifetime Warranty'.

In addition to producing a wide range of components, Altronix offers OEM design and manufacturing services to create custom electronics for commercial and industrial applications. Founded in 1983, Altronix's headquarters is based in Brooklyn, New York.

“As part of our ongoing commitment to world class IP CCTV solutions, we are focused on partnering with companies to provide the most comprehensive service to customers who trust us for their solutions in this region" said Roger R. GHOSTINE, Managing Director, MENA – Harco Group. "You don't worry when the project is installed and delivered, because not only Altronix is made in the USA but it has also a Lifetime Warranty. And Harco’s extensive Industry expertise, market knowledge and distribution network, makes it an excellent combination to offer an unprecedented value to users throughout the region".

February 2017 | 15

TechKnow | Genesys

Discuss how the move towards cloud services is gaining traction in the spaces you operate?

Merijn te Booij (MB): Traditionally, we have always been leaders in providing sophisticated customer experience and the recent acquisition of Interactive Intelligence is a complementary fit to our portfolio in the mid-market, both cloud and on premises.

This now means, we have a solution that fits needs of everyone, whatever size they may be, for offering sophisticated customer experience.

There’s a clear trend among CIOs to move many of the services they consume to the cloud. I don’t see customers moving all services they use to the cloud. Over the next few years, a clearer differentiation may emerge in the shape of hybrid environments wherein they have maybe innovative social and Mobile services/ capabilities enabled from the cloud while IVRs and voice centric capabilities may stay on premise.

The trend towards the cloud started in the SMB space but we see that picking up in the high end enterprise segment.

How do you see the cloud journey from a regional perspective?

Mohammad Afifi (MA): Dubai is a unique market compared to the rest of the Middle East and will continue to lead the cloud journey. We have more datacentres in the region now.

16 | February 2017

Genesys, a market leader in omnichannel customer experience and contact center solutions recently announced its decision to acquire Interactive Intelligence, a global leader of cloud and onpremise solutions for customer engagement, communications and collaboration, in a transaction valued at approximately $1.4 billion. The combined portfolio makes the company a formidable leader in the customer engagement space. Merijn te Booij, the CMO for Genesys and Mohammad Afifi, Managing Director of Middle East – Genesys discuss some of the key highlights of the company’s focus and the shifts in the market

Merijn te Booij CMO Genesys

Enhancing customer engagement We do see some adoptions in the governments looking for cloud services, starting with CRM and going for customer experience platforms and also looking for infrastructure services. Still Banks and Telcos maybe late in joining the journey but the journey has already started. With the acquisition we have done, we already have 20 customers on the cloud including big brands like Almarai. We have others like Damas in retail, pharmacies etc. We are already leading in the space.

As a company, how do you impact or drive this transition

and how important is cloud from a customer perspective for better services? What does it mean for partners?

MB: It is not us who dictate the speed. Customers will drive the trend based on services they want to consumer including social, mobile. Customer expectations are accelerating at an incredible speed and now we see trends like Virtual Reality, AI coming in at incredible speed. To be able to adopt those new services, you need to be agile as an environment and I believe cloud is the best approach to being agile and consume those services as you grow.

For partners as well, if they want to stay relevant, they need to find their differentiation in offering services from the cloud. The advantage of moving to the cloud is that they can really focus on offering high end services.

How do you look at offering solutions for different vertical use case scenarios?

MB: Genesys has always offered very horizontal solutions to meet vertical needs. We have offered software solutions for Banks but we have offered the same platform for governments and telcos etc. That is where

partners come into play by diversifying their services on what they know. For instance, with their significant knowledge of specific industries, they can help us know what the specific problems of a vertical is and which horizontal solutions meets those specific needs.

As a company, we are now about 5000 people but looking globally at the different industries we need to service, that is modest and which is why we need partners to be our extensions in terms of reaching out into the market and allowing us to differentiate.

What is the roadmap ahead in terms of integrating the portfolios of Interactive Intelligence and Genesys?

MB: We are very complementary in terms of portfolios. The organizations will be integrated this year.

Of course there common elements including media processing, desktop capabilities, speech engines, routing engines etc. We want to take our time and not rush into integration of technologies. We want to learn from market and take the best approach to a specific vertical or a market. There maybe markets where we may focus on a part of the portfolio and other markets where there maybe a focus on the entire portfolio. We are going to make those choices in the year. We are making a lot of efforts in analytics, digital and cloud- these three combined would be areas of great focus

for the year.

Most of the engines are core to us. We started out as open platform. We would always have an open platform following next generation architectures, supporting industry standards. We will do that with partners but in our core will have an organic offering with complete services. We are adding partner integrations for instance in fraud detection which is not necessarily our core offering but is quite important to our Banking customers. We have third party partners on the speech side where Nuance is a partner, Interactions is a partner. We will have core solutions and which will be supported and enriched on top with partner technologies.

Would you map customers in terms of size or in terms of solution requirements?

MB: We look at what is characteristic of a customer’s requirements. Rather than looking at them in terms of size, we would like to look at if the customer wants a low TCO, quick go to market really simple solutions or is he looking for a really sophisticated customer experience and differentiation.

If you probably look at a global level, SMB, mid-market and high end is probably one third each in size. However, it really is different in some countries.

MA: In the Middle East, there are smaller economies scattered around.

The UAE is one of

the more mature markets in the region and has maybe gone ahead of KSA in terms of offerings and adoption of technologies. The rest of the markets are quite small and SMB markets are quite small.

When it comes to services, a Bank in Dubai compared to a Bank in Ajman may be offering the same set of services but when it comes to scale, perhaps there might be a 700 seat contact center for the former with the latter perhaps using a much smaller contact center. Since they may require the same set of services, in our region, the number of seats or number of staff may not be an indicator of whether the client is an SMB or not. We have looked at it from a vertical point of view and what they

want to offer to market.

However, from a size perspective, 5% of our customers maybe from the very high end customers.

Then 10-15% maybe from the large enterprises which are 500 plus seats. Then about less than 20% is of customers with 100 plus seats. About 50% of our customers would be companies with in the range of 25-50 customers. From a revenue perspective, it is completely reverse and revenue from the SMB market may be modest, but it is a growing market. We have grown with customers including Emirates. We stay close to our customers and an SMB today could be a large enterprise of tomorrow.

Mohammad Afifi Managing Director, ME Genesys February 2017  |  17

Cover Feature | Cloud Computing

The cloud is now a priority option for companies looking to upgrade their ICT infrastructure

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t is no secret that organisations globally and in the region have stepped up their spending in build- up of cloud computing infrastructure and services. The cloud has become the preferred option of upgrading IT capabilities for enterprises and SMBs. Tarik Taman, General Manager, IMEA at Infor says, “We are seeing strong growth in the region and according to a recent report by Gartner, the Middle East and North Africa public cloud services market is projected to grow in 2017 and expected to reach $1.2billion, up from $956 million in 2016. The highest potential for the cloud services market in MENA comes from platform as a service (PaaS) and software

18 | February 2017

as a service (SaaS). There are several indicators of this growth, including a move away of application and workloads from on premises data centers to the cloud, as well as development of cloud ready and cloud native applications. Large enterprises in the region are seizing opportunities that the cloud offers to achieve business competitiveness while SMEs with smaller budgets are forgoing huge up-front IT costs and instead opting for scalability and agility.”

Whether, IaaS (Infrastructure as a service), PaaS(Platform as a service) as well as SaaS (Software as a service), all are gaining greater traction among larger to

smaller enterprise customers in the region.

Organisations are seeking the greater agility that cloud based computing offers.

Ayman El Sheikh, Solutions Architect Manager, Middle East, Turkey and Africa, Red Hat says, “IaaS, PaaS and SaaS are certainly gaining traction in this region with adoption rates increasing as the IT organization realizes that increasing IT agility is the only way to address the demand of the line of business. Every group within the IT organisation thinks about how to speed up the application lifecycle from a different angle and each one could have confidence in a different Technology.

Prototyping, testing, and provisioning in

production line of business applications can be done through traditional virtualisation, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing, or Platform as a Service (PaaS) cloud computing.”

Elaborating that there is no single right approach in the cloud journey, Ayman says that the application development team may feel closer to the PaaS approach while the infrastructure and operation team could have a preference for traditional virtualisation or IaaS. Hence the hybrid approach takes precedence.

He adds, “There is not the “right” tool.

Most likely, the IT organisation will have to leverage some or all of the above in combination selecting the most efficient tool for each situation, hence the hybrid cloud. Of course, offering multiple cloud platforms is not enough. Without a unifying management layer, IT organisations would end up building multiple management silos, recreating the same policies and automation steps for each platform. That unifying cloud management platform is what keeps the different portions of the same application together, no matter if they are hosted on a scale up or scale out platform, on a maintaining consistency from provisioning to retirement.”

Hesham El Komy, senior director, international channel, Epicor Software says that the adoption of SaaS among the SMB sized organisation has seen an upsurge in recent years.

“Over the last couple of years, driven in large part by the prevalent economic conditions, we have definitely seen an increase in interest from SMBs for cloud and SaaS solutions as enterprises look to swap their CapEx for OpEx. Whether it be inquiries from existing customers looking to transition to the cloud, or prospective new customers, cloud and SaaS are a part of almost every conversation we have.”

Explaining that there are a variety of reasons why cloud computing is becoming such a popular trend, Ayman says that a cloud computing environment can react quickly and, in some cases, automatically to changes in workload demand, and new applications can be provisioned with much less time lag and effort than with traditional computing infrastructures.

“An internally implemented cloud computing infrastructure improves

efficiency and helps organizations save money relative to less flexible and dynamic IT infrastructures.

Better provisioning processes make it easier to reclaim servers that are no longer being used for a project. These private clouds are often the evolution of a virtualized infrastructure into something that’s more dynamic and automated.”

He adds that Public cloud providers offer a way to buy computing capacity as it’s needed, which can save money, especially where the alternative is to over-purchase capital equipment to protect against demand spikes or greater-than-anticipated capacity requirements. The fact that so many public cloud infrastructures are based on Linux and other open source software also helps keep costs down. They also allow organizations to pay for their IT as an operating expense rather

Tarik Taman General Manager, IMEA Infor

The highest potential for the cloud services market in MENA comes from PaaS and SaaS. There are several indicators of this growth, including a move away of application and workloads from on premises data centers to the cloud, as well as development of cloud ready and cloud native applications.

than making capital purchases.

Ultimately, cloud computing isn’t just about cost cutting but is also about using IT to drive innovation and respond to changes in the business. A more flexible infrastructure, whether hosted internally or externally, encourages more experimentation and iteration, which in turn lets businesses introduce new technologies and services more quickly and more often.

“Clouds based on Red Hat technologies leverage infrastructure products that are used by thousands of enterprises worldwide for some of the most

demanding applications. And Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, the on-ramp for Red Hat clouds, is designed from the ground up for the needs of cloud computing with great performance, quality-of-service guarantees, and advanced security features.

All this is made possible by an open source development model that brings to bear more development resources than any single company can marshal, while augmenting it with proven enterprise support,” says Ayman.

Hesham opinesthat there are really two key motivations for enterprises to move to February 2017 | 19

Cover Feature | Cloud Computing

Hesham El Komy Senior Director, International Channel Epicor Software

Ayman El Sheikh Solutions Architect Manager, MEA Red Hat

the cloud. While the first reason he cites is of doing away with CapEx nature of traditional ICT spend, he also opines that the onus is squarely on vendors to maintain with cloud service contracts.

“Firstly, by moving to the cloud, organisations can significantly reduce their CapEx, specifically their hardware related costs (including space). The reduced CapEx coupled with the OpEx business model that the cloud affords, means organisations can substantially reduce their total cost of ownership (TCO).Secondly, by moving to the cloud, organisations can put the onus on vendors or cloud providers to manage maintenance, security and upgrades. This in turn allows in-house IT teams to focus on deploying and managing business critical infrastructure and applications that will help improve productivity and efficiency of the business, contributing to overall growth.“ Since the announcement of cloud-first strategy for the region last August, the cloud is a big area of focus for Epicor and the vendor offers a flexible strategy for is customers of moving between on-premises

20 | February 2017

deployments and the cloud model.

Hesham elaborates, “The Epicor cloud solution strategy is based on two basic principles. First, providing our customers a choice in how they want to deploy their ERP solution, and, second, providing easy access to point solutions that connect and extend the value of their Epicor system.

Epicor ERP allows customers to easily migrate between cloud deployed systems and on premises licensed deployments with no impact on end-user efficiency. Indeed, most customers are entirely unaware of the physical location of their application and data (before or after a move to, or from, the cloud). This means that as customers’ needs change, they are able to easily migrate to the cloud (and back again if they so wish).”

If customers have Epicor ERP deployed in a single- or multi-tenant SaaS model, they retain ownership of their data, and have the ability to ‘repatriate’ it to their network at any time. Their data remains their sole confidential property, and Epicor privacy and data protection policies ensure

that customers’ data is not exposed to any third party.

A vertical approach Vertical focus is a popular approach towards building cloud solutions. According to an industry report, the increasing adoption of advanced technologies, smart technologies, digital technologies are few of the factors going to increase the adoption rate of cloud automation in verticals.

“The cloud is a trend that every single vendor is embracing. Epicor focuses on the SMB sector and delivers industry-specific solutions for a wide range of verticals in the Middle East including manufacturing, hospitality, and services.So while we already offer industry-specific, cloud ready, ERP solutions for SMBs, most other vendors in the market are also offering cloud based solutions in one form or another. My expectation is that within the next couple of years, every vendor, including local players, will have a cloud ERP option available which would be great news for SMBs in

"A true cloud solution is multi-tenant, has extensibility built into it, and has integration as a service capability. These allow the end user to configure and customise the solution around the core logic and create real-time web services."

the region,” says Hesham.

Infor has also taken the vertical focused approach successfully to market. The vendor provides complex mission-critical solutions to a vast number of industries including hospitality, manufacturing, retail, and distributions, along with some of the more traditional industries. Infor has built its cloud strategy around three core parameters that determine the nature of its solutions.

Tarek says, “The cloud offers previously unimaginable flexibility to customers in the region. Infor’s approach from the beginning has been not to rewrite all our industry solutions to a single monolithic cloud solution. Our corporate strategy globally is to be the first true industry cloud provider in the marketplace. In our opinion, a true cloud solution is multi-tenant, has extensibility built into it, and has integration as a service capability. These allow the end user to

configure and customise the solution around the core logic and create real-time web services moving back and forth between itself, and the upstream and downstream platforms. It is important for end users to consider whether those vendors have rebuilt flagship, complex, mission critical applications into true cloud solutions using the three benchmarks of multi-tenancy, extensibility, and integration.”

Infor claims a large customer base of several thousand cloud customers from around the world. Its global partner is Amazon Web Services.

Tarek elaborates, “From an Infor perspective, the majority of verticals we are working with include manufacturing, retail and distribution in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. These are already operating across

borders and this is an area where there is limited sensitive data -- mostly inventory and some transactions.

However, Infor continues to attract new customers to our vertical cloud platforms as cloud adoption gains further momentum in the region. “ He expects this growth to continue, citing industry forecasts that the Middle East and Africa (MEA) cloud traffic is expected to more than quadruple by the end of 2019, with 83 per cent of all MEA data center traffic coming from the cloud.

In sum, while adoption rates of cloud computing indicates that it is more or less a mainstream option these days, the trick for Businesses is to evolve a strategy that ensures that adoption is well phased and further, utilisation rates of deployments in place are optimised. This is where the partners will always play their role as consultants to ensure customer confidence.

EMEA Cloud IT infrastructure revenue grows

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ccording to IDC WW Quarterly Cloud Infrastructure Tracker, IT infrastructure spending (server, disk storage, and Ethernet switch) for public and private cloud in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) grew 19.5% year on year to reach $1.5 billion in revenue in the third quarter of 2016.

The cloud-related share of total EMEA infrastructure revenue from servers, disk storage, and Ethernet switches grew by 6 percentage points compared with last year to 24.9% in 3Q16. In terms of storage capacity, cloud represented around 44.8% of total EMEA capacity in 3Q16, with 8.6% growth over the same period a year before.

Looking at the market in euros, EMEA in 3Q16 reported strong YoY user value growth (19.1%) in public and private cloud across servers, storage, and switches.

"IDC expects this market to reach a value of $10.9 billion by 2020, from the five-year forecast, or 35.4% of the total market expenditure. Fueled by increasing maturity and adoption rates of many new cloud-dependent technologies such as the Internet of Things, cloud continues to represent an area of tremendous growth for the European

infrastructure sector," said Kamil Gregor, research analyst, European Infrastructure Group, IDC. Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (CEMA) cloud infrastructure revenue grew by 17.8% year over year to $214.14 million in 3Q16, driven by investment in networking functionalities as Ethernet switch recorded the fastest growth. The Middle East and Africa (MEA) region saw the strongest growth in EMEA, with many organizations investing in private cloud to consolidate and optimize their resources as IT budgets come under pressure due to challenging economic conditions in the region.

"Private cloud deployments have been driving growth in the CEMA region as organizations that are consolidating their IT infrastructure seek greater flexibility, lower capex, and faster implementation over traditional IT infrastructure," said Jiri Helebrand, research manager, Systems and Infrastructure Solutions, IDC CEMA. Cloud infrastructure spending in the CEMA region is estimated to be 19% of the total addressable server, storage, and networking hardware market, with public cloud accounting for about 47% of this share.

February 2017 | 21

TechKnow | Juniper

A step ahead Hatem Hariri, general manager, Middle East and Africa is responsible for all aspects of sales strategy, planning and operations across Juniper’s entire MEA business. He discusses the vendor’s focus on secured networks and the shifts in the marketplace

Discuss briefly Juniper’s strategy towards SDN and how it is unique?

Networking and security are both domains where we are an established leader. Bringing these two together, we are offering SDSN (software defined secure networks). So while other vendors are still discussing SDN, we are a step ahead.

What is needed today is a network that can service the partner and customer the way they want with scalability, open and interoperable with different vendors. You don’t want to be locked into solutions that aren’t open and interoperable. We confirm to open standards so that we can interoperate with other vendor solutions and can help customers build appropriate

22 | February 2017

cloud environments that can support required for applications.

Everyone want to embrace the new digital technologies.

You cannot rely on traditional technologies of past years to offer the flexibility required for digital transformation for instance. Which is why we are moving further into the SSDN journey.

Discuss Juniper’s focus on simplifying network management?

We have been a leading manufacturer of secured routing, switching, datacenter equipment etc. We offer the Junos Space Network Management Platform that works with our management applications to simplify and automate management of

Hatem Hariri General Manager, MEA Juniper

Juniper’s switching, routing, and security devices. This sits on top of all these and reduce costs by automation and providing monitoring and enable the right platform for the cloud.Before we used to have standalone network management for security, another for data etc. Today with our platform, you can cover everything from a single window.

The platform helps network operators at enterprises and service providers scale operations, reduce complexity, and enable new applications and services to be brought to market quickly, through multilayered network abstractions, operator-centric automation schemes, and a simple pointand-click UI.

Elaborate on partner focus?

There is a massive evolution happening in the industry.

Our partners are key to our strategy. We are a partner centric organization with 95% of our Business coming through partners. We are looking at ways to help partners enhance their skills and to give them more opportunities.

In our region, all of our telco Business requirements is addressed by partners. We do direct engagement with these large key customers but the sales is through partners.

We are also working with telco service provider to become partners for us to their customers. This is a growing trend. The decline of revenues from voice services has inspired telco companies to resell cloud and other

"What is needed today is a network that can service the partner and customer the way they want with scalability, open and interoperable with different vendors. You don’t want to be locked into solutions that aren’t open and interoperable."

technology solution to their customers in the enterprise segment.

Our routes to market include the SI channel, global integrators and the ISP channel. At the end of the day, they are our feet in the market.

Today customers are looking for partners that can understand their Businesses and accordingly propose the right solutions.

They need to bring some domain expertise and therefore vertical focused partners are quite important for us.

Discuss specialization focus for partners?

At the moment, specializations are around technologies. We have scaled our program to include specialization around

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the datacenter and the cloud. We don’t offer specializations around verticals but we have marketing campaigns directed around verticals that our partners can take to market.

Is the datacenter Business a strong focus?

The datacentre business is a strong play for us. We have a good customer base in the GCC. We are transforming the solution to a cloud datacenter. We have recently acquired AppFormix, a cloud operations management and optimization startup and are integrating the solution to offer a

unique solution to the market.

How aware are customer about the advantages of solutions with open standards?

Everyone is transforming and it is the time for consolidation. Customers are more aware that today they cannot afford to be locked into a technology solution. In order to take advantage of newer technologies, they need solutions that adhere to open standards, open platform that are also secure at the same time. This is our differentiator and we are seeing more enterprises approaching us to build their networks as well as private and hybrid clouds.

17/01/17 10:47

February 2017 | 23

Feature | Intersec

Intersec meets expectations The surveillance and security solutions industry witnessed the conclusion of the 2017 edition of Intersec, a success from the point of view of visitor turnout and quality of attendees

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ntersec’s 2017 edition was a busy one and saw participation from several leading vendors, solutions providers and distributors. The quality of visitors arguably has been to the satisfaction of most exhibitors, endorsing the fact that the security solutions market continues to stay buoyant. The event also gives insights into the trends and shifts in the region’s security and surveillance industry.

Exhibitor perspectives confirm that companies are scrambling to offer solutions that are innovative and meet or exceed customer expectations.

Customers are now demanding more intelligence from their security installations.

Lee Copland, Managing Director, EMEA at Maxxess Systems, says, “End users are looking at solutions from very specific objectives. They consider what the solution

24 | February 2017

gives back to them; whether it does grant efficiency or provide cost savings or does it make money. More such solutions are being made available. While projects are slowing down, there are a lot of systems out there that need to be upgraded, expanded and made more intelligent. It fits in well what Maxxess does best and we give them a footprint to start building, developing technologies, expanding and bringing the different systems to make them work.”

One of the highlights for Maxxess at this year’s event was the unveiling of its Dashboard DI, a solution that can transform the live management, monitoring and verification of people in transit on big, busy sites and multi-site estates, making it quick, easy and affordable to proactively pre-empt security situations, optimize operational efficiency

and cut costs. The flexible, feature-rich solution combines multiple data inputs, including access control feeds, with powerful big data intelligence, analytics and algorithms, to create customized displays with tailored filters that deliver dynamic live reporting about the movement of people on-site.

MAXDashboard DI is vendor-agnostic, so can be seamlessly integrated with any existing security system. It is available as a pay-as-you-go service and is highly scalable.

Without upfront capital costs or technical barriers, it can be up, running and delivering results fast.

Maxxess also showcased its operations intelligence platform, eMobile, with feature-rich new dashboards that turns security systems, point of sale, IT networks software data into intelligence as well as Visit-Point, a new

module within Maxxess eFusion that is operated via a web browser, and allows employees to book meeting rooms and input details of required attendees Gus Brecher, Business Development & Marketing Director at Cathexis, one of the exhibitors at the recently concluded edition says, “This has been the third show for us. Last year was the busiest probably but we have had very good quality visitors, both consultants and end users this edition as well.”

Cathexis is an electronic and software systems development, and manufacturing company, specializing in video management solutions, for the international market. The company has been developing solutions for the industry for more than 18 years and its' video surveillance solutions are deployed across diverse vertical markets. These include retail, manufacturing, banking, healthcare, education, city surveillance, government, shopping malls and more.

The company is looking to make inroads in the market here and has had some good customer wins in recent times.

However, Gus admits the challenge from entrenched players.

He says, “If you look at this market, we have been on the back foot a little bit compared to companies that came in earlier like Milestone and Genetec that have entrenched themselves with consultants and high profile corporate customers. We have got to break into that market to build our brand. We made

Lee Copland Managing Director, EMEA Maxxess Systems

Gus Brecher Business Development & Marketing Director Cathexis

some good inroads and in the past few months, have done some good business.We have got some good projects in the hospitality sector in Abu Dhabi, have projects from DEWA, MOFA etc.”

WatchNet, a Canada based manufacturer of CCTV Cameras and smart access solutions, has been a regular participant in Intersec and saw it as the opportunity to enhance visibility of its integrated solutions in the region.

Alex Thomas, President & CEO at WatchNet says, “While today there are many companies in the Surveillance and Smart Access market, what makes us different is the kind of integrated solutions we sell. We develop software and firmware for the products we sell. We bring multiple products

"End users are looking at solutions from very specific objectives. They consider what the solution gives back to them; whether it does grant efficiency or provide cost savings or does it make money." that complement each other.

We are introducing an IP based intercom systems that can record as a security device and at the same instance work as access control system.”

He adds that the company’s expertise in the industry in terms of multi-location projects gives it an edge. These projects require integration of thousands of cameras to operate under one management platform etc.

“Our software development capabilities gives us the flexibility to work with integrators, understanding their needs and helping offer them solutions in very quick turnaround time compared

to some other manufacturers who may take up to several months,” he adds.

RBH, another leading manufacturer of Access Control systems, has also been a regular at Intersec and this year’s participation was its tenth.

Kanty Riarh, President, RBH Access Technologies says, “This is our tenth year of participation. Intersec is always a success story for us from last 11 years. It’s a platform for us to have meetings with our end users and the partners across the region.”

He adds, “While the US and China are our stronger

markets, the Middle East has been a good market for us. RBH has provided security management solutions to Airports, Oil & Gas Sector, corporate, Gated communities, Banks and financial institutes in the region. We are focusing more in emerging markets and have also opened an office in South Africa.”

RBH offers from an Enterprise to Small Business solutions, and has packages specifically tailored to a customer’s needs. Employing open interface protocols, RBH allow for a great selection of available identification devices from proximity, to fingerprint and iris, as well as a myriad of other technologies available on the market today.

February 2017 | 25

Feature | Intersec

Alex Thomas President & CEO WatchNet

Kanty Riarh President RBH Access Technologies

Challenges and market outlook For vendors who have entered the region’s market later than some of its competitors, it is a tough task to change the status quo in terms of brands recall and brand preferences of customers.

Gus of Cathexis explains that integrators in the region are not having a significant say in solutions customers choose.

Therefore the onus is on the vendor to create the pull.

“From product perspective, our products are premium and compete directly with the other top brands. We need to educate the market that we are a premium product but we are still regarded as sort of a new kid on the block in this region.

The integrators install what they are told to. I have seen

26 | February 2017

"The integrators install what they are told to.

I have seen this happen more in this region more than any other. In other regions, the integrators have more say."

this happen more in this region more than any other. In other regions, the integrators have more say. So here, we have to create the pull form the end users and also rely on our consultants. We have to rely on our distributor relationships as well to convince the integrators. There are a handful of big installers or integrators and we need to ensure we are reaching the right partners.”

The slowdown in some sectors is apparent and has impacted growth. However, Lee believes there is room to improve solutions that are already deployed.

He says, “Some of the newer projects have slowed

down- Saudi market has been a little cautious. It is best to take stock and maybe look to reengineer or redesign solutions and make them more efficient.”

According to WatchNet’s Alex, the company has focused on partner development across markets and have always met their requirements for quick turnaround in solution design, backed by support from its engineers.

“We are focused on dealer development. We developed our partners across many countries. We make sure not to flood our products in the market. They benefit from our technology and the fact that they can come to us with

their requirements for large projects and our design engineers based in Canada can help design the project for them. In case of requirements, our software developers can help.”

One of the standout features of the company’s operations is that it offers support for customers who have bought analog cameras even as long as ten years ago, which he opines is not common to other vendors.

He adds, “We have our own line-up of cameras and provide value for installations.

If someone had brought an analogue camera several years ago, we offer updates or support even now. We also offer high definition over COAX or UTP cable that helps transition from analog to digital using the same cabling.”

Insight | AXILSPOT

T

Bruce Zhou CEO AXILSPOT

he ability to connect machines, devices, sensors, and other everyday things into an intelligent network and make sense out of them, has huge promises to change everyday life. As can be expected by taking in our entire world and attempting to change it one stroke and with one magic wand is unrealistic, challenging and cause for chaos in the short term.

For business decision makers and technology providers, some measure of clarity and progress can be made by understanding the challenges of applying IoT to business. We look at two principal challenges in making this happen.

Technology protocols

How IoT & Internet Will Merge Bruce Zhou, CEO, AXILSPOT offers a snapshot of two principal areas where convergence between IoT technologies and Internet technologies is rapidly taking place.

28  |  February 2017

The challenges of IoT are resident in the ability to connect sensors and devices directly to the Internet. To connect to the Internet any device and application must use Internet Protocol stacks. It is for this reason that devices called Internet Gateways have been created that connect to non-Internet Protocol devices and networks on one side and the Internet driven applications, devices and networks, on the other side.

By doing so, Internet Gateways need to be designed for the type of local networks and local applications that they manage on one side and how they connect to the Internet on the other side.

Over the years, countless Internet Protocol driven applications, software tools

and diagnostic kits, have been developed and exist, that can be applied to IoT devices and sensors, with or without much adaptation. This will help to get the IoT environment up and running in a short period of time, relatively speaking.

That is provided they are in the same Internet Protocol environment.

The basis for the development of Internet Protocol applications till now has been growing availability of large computing power and significant memory capacity to manage complexity of the Internet Protocol based applications. And all this within localised high cost nodes like desktops, notebooks, smartphones, tablets, amongst others.

This is the exact antithesis of the IoT environment as it exists today, which is low cost, low power consuming, low computing capacity, and distributed computing nodes.

Networking architecture When building an IoT network it is essential to plan and look ahead. It is also important to converse with all departments associated with the benefits and operations of the IoT network and applications. When dealing with tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of sensors and devices in any IoT project, it is important to have a networking strategy to ensure the end result is managed chaos instead of unmanaged chaos.

Industry consultants who have gone through such projects point out, IoT application

"When dealing with tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of sensors and devices in any IoT project, it is important to have a networking strategy to ensure the end result is managed chaos instead of unmanaged chaos."

and network designs need to be built looking at requirements five years from now.

When in doubt the rule of thumb is design networks for a requirement that is 10X the number of devices that are connecting in now.

Another important consideration is to design the wireless environment thinking about what will happen in that specific industry over next five years.

While the benefits of such best practices are self-evident, industry surveys show that such discussions are not happening as much as they should. If all else fails, the

minimum rule of thumb to apply, think big for IoT. Looking ahead into the requirements for IoT type of networks there is a significant change in the way devices will communicate. More often than not, communication signals will hop from device to device, to enter and leave the network of devices, connecting into and out of their mesh network.

Using a number of hops between devices rather than the conventional hub to spoke jump will become the standard

for most IoT applications and networks. The key here is multiple and random paths between IoT devices, based on predefined algorithms, rather than a fixed point to point hop. This saves power, saves cost, builds scale, and builds redundancy.

Such networks are called mesh networks and the devices are called wireless nodes. Since connectivity within mesh networks rely on each other, their efficiency grows with an increase in the

number of devices.

Mesh networks become more efficient as the number of wireless nodes inside them increases. This is the opposite of what happens with the hub and spoke, star network arrangement.

As silicon technologies improve the computing capabilities of IoT sensors, devices, machines and appliances, they will increasingly become more and more Internet like. At that stage the two worlds will come together in exponential fashion and the true power of IoT will become a reality.

February 2017  |  29

Insight | ESET

O

ne of the trends found most worrying in 2016 was the willingness of some individuals to participate in the following three activities: holding computer systems and data files hostage (ransomware); denying access to data and systems (Distributed Denial of Service or DDoS); and infecting some of the devices that make up the Internet of Things (IoT).

Sadly, these trends will continue to evolve in 2017 and there is potential for cross-pollination as they do so. For example, using infected IoT devices to extort commercial websites by threatening a DDoS attack, or locking IoT devices in order to charge a ransom – something I like to call “jackware”.

Past and future threats Abusing information systems to extort money is almost as old as computing itself.

Back in 1985, an IT employee at a US insurance company programmed a logic bomb to erase vital records if he was ever fired. Two years later he was – and, accordingly, the bomb erased the records, leading to the first conviction for this type of computer crime.

Malware that used encryption to hold files for ransom was identified in 1989, as David Harley has recounted. In 2011, my colleague Cameron Camp described locking computers for a ransom as “stooping to new lows”.

So how might these elements evolve or merge

30 | February 2017

Stephen Cobb, Senior Security Researcher at ESET examines Stephen Cobb Senior Security Researcher ESET

how ransomware and jackware are evolving

From Ransomware to Jackware in 2017? Some people have been referring to 2016 as “The Year of Ransomware” and I’m concerned 2017 could be dubbed “The Year of Jackware”.

Think of jackware as malicious software that seeks to take control of a device, the primary purpose of which is neither data processing nor digital communications. A good example is a “connected car”, as many of today’s latest models are described.

These cars perform a large amount of data processing and communicating, but their

primary purpose is to get you from A to B. So think of jackware as a specialized form of ransomware. With regular ransomware, such as Locky and CryptoLocker, the malicious code encrypts documents on your computer and demands a ransom to unlock them. The goal of jackware is to lock up a car or other device until you pay up.

Picture this: on one particularly cold and frosty morning I use the car app on my phone to remote start my car from the comfort of the

kitchen, but the car does not start. Instead I get a text on my phone telling me I need to hand over X amount of digital currency to re-enable my vehicle. This is what jackware could look like from a victim’s point of view. Fortunately, and I stress this: jackware is, as far as I know, still theoretical. It is not yet “in the wild”.

It’s not easy to prevent jackware being developed and deployed; especially considering previous examples. We have already seen that a car company can ship more than a million

vehicles containing vulnerabilities that could have been abused for jackware: take the Fiat Chrysler Jeep problem that was all over the news in 2015.

An equally serious case was the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) apparent lack of planning for vulnerability patching in the vehicle design process. It is one thing to ship a digital product in which ‘holes’ are later discovered – in fact, this is pretty much inevitable – but it is a different and more dangerous thing to ship digital products without a quick and secure means of patching those holes.

While most “car hacking” research and discussion centers on technical issues within the vehicle, it is important to realize that a lot of IoT technology relies on a support system that extends well beyond the device itself. We saw this in 2015 with VTech, a player in the Internet of Children’s Things (IoCT) space. Weak security on the company’s website exposed personal data about children, reminding everyone just how many attack surfaces the IoT creates.

We also saw this infrastructure issue in 2016 when some Fitbit accounts had problems (to be clear, the Fitbit devices themselves were not hacked, and Fitbit seems to take privacy seriously).

Also this year, bugs were discovered in the online web app for BMW ConnectedDrive, which connects BMWs to the IoT. You can use the BMW ConnectedDrive to regulate

"To be clear, terms like RoT and jackware are not intended to cause alarm. They symbolize things that could come to pass if we do not do enough in 2017 to prevent them from becoming a reality."

your home’s heating, lights, and alarm system from inside your vehicle.

The possibility that the features and settings of an in-vehicle system could be remotely administered through a portal that could be hacked is unsettling to say the least. And reports of vehicular cyber-insecurity keep coming, like this Wi-Fi enabled Mitsubishi, and hacked radios used to steal BMWs, Audis, and Toyotas.

While I originally thought of jackware as an evolution of malicious code targeting vehicles, it was soon clear that this trend could manifest itself more broadly – think “the Ransomware of Things (RoT)”.

A chilling story from a city in Finland indicates one direction that this might take (DDoS attack halts heating in Finland in winter). While there was no indication of ransom demands in the reports, it does not take much imagination to see this as the next step. Want us to stop DDoSing the heating system? Pay up!

Stopping the RoT To stop the IoT becoming home to the RoT, a number of things need to happen; in two different spheres of human activity. First is the technical sphere, where the challenge of implementing security on a vehicular platform is considerable.

Traditional security techniques like filtering, encrypting and

authenticating can consume costly processing power and bandwidth, adding overhead to systems, some of which need to operate with very low latency. Security techniques like air-gapping and redundancy could potentially contribute significantly to increasing costs of vehicles.

And we know that controlling costs has always been critical to car manufacturers, down to the last dollar.

The second sphere in which action against the RoT should be taken is policy and politics. There has been a collective international failure to prevent a thriving criminal infrastructure evolving in cyberspace; one that now threatens every innovation in digital technology you can think of, from self-driving cars to drones; from big data to telemedicine. For example, as alluded to in Challenges and Implications of Cybersecurity Legislation, concerned politicians failed to pass legislation in 2016 that would help secure the smart grid, despite bipartisan support.

To be clear, terms like RoT and jackware are not intended to cause alarm. They symbolize things that could come to pass if we do not do enough in 2017 to prevent them from becoming a reality.

So let me end with some positive developments.

First, a variety of government agencies are stepping up their efforts

to make the IoT more secure. In 2016 we saw the publication of the Strategic Principles for Securing the Internet of Things from the US Department of Homeland Security, and the NIST Special Publication.

The full title of the latter is Systems Security Engineering Considerations for a Multidisciplinary Approach in the Engineering of Trustworthy Secure Systems.

NIST is the National Institute of Standards and Technology, part of the US Department of Commerce, and over the years the agency has exerted a positive influence on many aspects of cybersecurity.

Hopefully, these efforts – and the many others around the world – will help us make progress in 2017, working towards the goal of securing our digital lives against those who choose to abuse technology to extort us.

Finally, evidence that we might be making some progress – at least in terms of public awareness of the IoT’s potential to bring problems as well as perks and productivity gains – comes from a different kind of publication: the results of an ESET consumer survey. Reported under the title of “Our Increasingly Connected Digital Lives” the survey revealed that more than 40% of American adults were not confident that IoT devices are safe and secure.

Furthermore, more than half of respondents indicated that privacy and security concerns had discouraged them from purchasing an IoT device.

February 2017 | 31

EyeTech

Seagate IronWolf Pro

AXIS Q1659 Network Camera

Overview: Seagate IronWolf Pro for NAS applications is built to help small-to-midsize enterprises better manage the massive amounts of data they create and consume, IronWolf Pro empowers SMEs to keep the right data ready for use with extreme workload rates of up to 300TB, and blistering fast access, so they can quickly discover and capitalize on new business opportunities. IronWolf Pro now comes standard with a two-year Seagate Rescue Data Recovery Service Plan, meaning IronWolf Pro drives are covered when disaster strikes - such as a flood, fire or accidental damage.

IronWolf is designed for everything business NAS. For example, the IronWolf Pro is optimized for NAS with AgileArray to help businesses enhance performance for filesharing, backup and private cloud environments. AgileArray delivers drive balancing by using dual-plane balance and rotational vibration sensors, RAID optimization for increased performance and advanced power management.

Key features: • Rotational vibration (RV) sensors to support consistent performance by reducing vibration in one-to-16-bay NAS systems.

• 10TB capacity, means more data to serve for businesses.

More capacity means more physical bay space available for redundancy or more storage.

• Expanded multi-user capabilities to deliver a user

workload rate of 300TB per year – more than five times the rate of a standard desktop drive.

• IronWolf Pro includes Seagate’s market-leading Rescue Data Recovery service, which covers accidental damage as well as damage caused by a natural disaster, such as a fire or flood.

Overview: AXIS Q1659 Network Camera combines a highperformance image sensor and Canon EF/EF-S lenses with the full range of Axis flexibility, ease-of-use and features to provide exceptional image quality. It is best suited for detailed surveillance over long distances such as, cities, airports, stadiums and other open areas.

AXIS Q1659 is its first Network Camera to combine professional-caliber photographic imaging technologies from Canon with its proven surveillance technology. The camera brings a new level of ultra high image quality for a fixed, wide-area surveillance camera, and leverages leading-edge image sensor and EF lens technologies for unmatched color, contrast and detail even in the most challenging lighting conditions.

AXIS Q1659 is supported by the industry’s largest base of video management software through the Axis Application Development Partner (ADP) Program and AXIS Camera Station. Third-party video analytics applications can be installed on the camera via AXIS Camera Application Platform. ONVIF support allows for easy integration into existing video surveillance systems.

Key features: • AXIS Q1659 delivers 20MP resolution at 8 frames per second (fps), achieving unprecedented levels of detail for observing open spaces and across long distances.

• It features digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) imaging technology and offers a choice of 7 different EF/EF-S lenses depending on individual user needs.

• The new camera also offers the latest enhancement of Axis’ Zipstream technology, which offers even more storage and bandwidth savings in video surveillance applications without compromising on important image details.

32 | February 2017

Matrix COSEC DOOR FMX Overview: Matrix launched COSEC DOOR FMX - a high-performance door controller with multispectral fingerprint sensor. The device is powerful enough to scan a fingerprint of dry, wet, elderly or oily hands. It reads both - the surface and the subsurface of a finger producing more accurate image even when the finger surface features are difficult to read due to dirt, usage, age or adverse environmental conditions.

Due to its unique fingerprint reading and matching algorithms, COSEC DOOR FMX can work in extremely harsh environment. Powered by a high-speed processor and live-finger detection algorithm, DOOR FMX is specifically engineered for high security applications including defence, airports, R&D labs, banks and industries such as mining, construction and heavy manufacturing for their access control and time-attendance needs.

This unique identification process outperforms all other fingerprint sensors and offers robust and reliable biometric information of the user.

Key features: • 4.2" Touch-screen capacitive display • Easy mounting on a back plate • Perform attendance functions • Standalone and network operations • 50,000 users and 500,000 events storage • Identification in less than one second

QNAP TS-831X

Overview: QNAP TS-831X is a new cost-effective 8-bay business NAS with a quad-core 1.7 GHz CPU to provide users with enhanced system performance for daily business operations. Alongside the standard models with 8GB or 16GB RAM, there is also a model with 4GB RAM (TS-831X-4G) to provide an affordable option for budget-conscious users. The new TS-831X uses an AnnapurnaLabs, an Amazon company Alpine AL-314 quad-core 1.7 GHz ARM Cortex-A15 processor, and features 4GB/8GB/16GB DDR3 RAM (upgradable to 16GB), hardwareaccelerated encryption, and SSD caching.

The powerful 8-bay, quad-core TS-831X includes two 10GbE SFP+ ports to fully support 10GbE high-speed networks at a budget price with maximized ROI. The TS-831X provides versatile all-in-one functionalities and unique features including VJBOD (Virtual JBOD), which introduces an economical way to utilize unused NAS storage space for expanding the storage capacity of other QNAP NAS, and Container Station, which allows you to rapidly develop and deploy Internet of Things (IoT) apps. The TS-831X is a cost-effective storage solution designed for growing businesses looking for backup, restoration, private cloud, storage for virtualization, and to future-proof their IT infrastructure for 10GbE networks.

Key features: •

•

•

•

• •

10GbE readiness, SSD cache, and hardware-accelerated encryption engine VJBOD allows using the TS-831X to expand the storage capacity of other QNAP NAS Enjoy containerized virtualization and IoT app development with Container Station Build a private cloud to centrally organize & manage files and backup tasks Secure access with VPN Server & VPN Client Quickly find files using a real-time, natural search with Qsirch

February 2017 | 33

Stats & Trends

IT spending to witness modest growth

W

orldwide IT spending is projected to total $3.5 trillion in 2017, a 2.7 percent increase from 2016, according to Gartner, Inc. However, this growth rate is down from earlier projections of 3 percent.

"2017 was poised to be a rebound year in IT spending. Some major trends have converged, including cloud, blockchain, digital business and artificial intelligence. Normally, this would have pushed IT spending much higher than 2.7 percent growth," said John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner. "However, some of the political uncertainty in global markets has fostered a wait-and-see approach causing many

enterprises to forestall IT investments."

The worldwide IT services market is forecast to grow 4.2 percent in 2017. Buyer investments in digital business, intelligent automation, and services optimization and innovation continue to drive growth in the market, but buyer caution, fueled by broad economic challenges, remains a counterbalance to faster growth.

"The range of spending growth from the high to low is much larger in 2017 than in past years. Normally, the economic environment causes some level of division, however, in 2017 this is compounded by the increased levels of uncertainty," said Mr. Lovelock. "The result

of that uncertainty is a division between individuals and corporations that will spend more — due to opportunities arising — and those that will retract or pause IT spending."

For example, aggressive build-out of cloud computing platforms by companies such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon is pushing the global server forecast to reach 5.6 percent growth in 2017. This was revised up 3 percent from last quarter's forecast and is sufficient growth to overcome the expected 3 percent decline in external controller-based storage and allow the data center systems segment to grow 2.6 percent in 2017.

Worldwide IT Spending Forecast (Billions of U.S. Dollars) 2016 Spending

2016 Growth (%)

2017 Spending

2017 Growth (%)

2018 Spending

2018 Growth (%)

Data Center Systems

170

-0.6

175

2.6

176

1

Enterprise Software

333

5.9

355

6.8

380

7

Devices

588

-8.9

589

0.1

589

0

IT Services

899

3.9

938

4.2

981

4.7

Communications Services

1,384

-1

1,408

1.7

1,426

1.3

Overall IT

3,375

-0.6

3,464

2.7

3,553

2.6

Source: Gartner (January 2017)

Usage of Security Analytics rising

C

yber security professionals have become more aware of the value of analytics and have moved beyond using analytics for detection and response to using analytics to measure and improve their overall risk posture, according to the results of SANS' 2016 Survey on Security Analytics.

“Traditionally, cyber security has been focused around protection and prevention.

But with the growing complexity of the threat landscape, businesses are realizing the need to take a more proactive approach,” explained Ned Baltagi, Managing Director, Middle East & Africa at SANS. “Organizations are now tapping into the wealth of data being generated by their security infrastructures and using this to

34 | February 2017

identify patterns, uncover vulnerabilities and stay one step ahead of would be attackers.”

In the survey, only 11% of survey respondents either don't use analytics or don't know that they do. Of the 44% who were able to quantify improvements, 17% reported increased visibility into actual events or breaches, and 11% reported improved detection of unknown threats, with an equal percentage noting reduced duration of events.

As in previous SANS surveys on security analytics, the greatest impediments to implementing analytics and reaping the advantages of security analytics continue to be lack of qualified staff and funding/resources to implement

programs. Because of these shortcomings, 49% have prioritized investment in personnel/training, 42% are looking to make detection and security operations centre upgrades and 29% plan to invest in integrating incident response into their analytics programs in the coming years.

In this survey, 54% of respondents rated their programs as being "Fairly automated," while only 4% considered their programs to be fully automated.

Unfortunately, only 22% said they deployed machine analytics to enable better, faster decision making, while 54% said their programs did not use machine learning as part of their analytics programs, and 24% didn't know analytics.