By: Ashraf Sheet, Regional Director, Middle East & Africa at Infoblox

As companies across sectors encourage—and even mandate—that their employees work from home to protect themselves and others from the spread of coronavirus, IT professionals are tasked with the increasingly complex and challenging responsibility of cyber safety for employees’ devices and companies’ networks.

Individuals and organizations are likely to face increased cyberthreats from malicious actors attempting to target weakened network security as a result of more people teleworking.

For organizations that already offer work-from-home options for all or many of their employees, their network infrastructure and institutional awareness are most likely prepared to protect them from outside cyberthreats. But for companies and employees where the option to work from home is new, it is important that IT professionals and individual employees take the steps necessary to prevent attacks.

Infoblox recommends that businesses implement the following guidelines and best practices to ensure the security of their networks and corporate data while employees are working from home.

Develop and communicate clear and consistent cyber safety policies

It is essential that employees have clearly defined IT policies and protocols in place for working from home. These cyber safety guidelines should include, but are not limited to:

• Making sure that employees use only approved devices to access and store corporate data, where possible
• Mandating the use of strong passwords—at least 12 characters—when accessing corporate networks; and
• Implementing multi-factor authentication—ideally with hardware tokens instead of text messages (which can be spoofed).

 Leverage technological solutions for cyber safety

Companies most likely already have a robust security infrastructure in place to ensure the cyber safety of their corporate networks. With users increasingly working from home, the traditional corporate security perimeter has vanished and VPNs are often no longer necessary to get work done. Instead, employees are increasingly using cloud applications, many of which have not been vetted for security issues.

Network managers and security teams need to ensure that technologies used when working from home are ready and secure, including:

• Ensuring that all corporate security products are patched and updated to the most recent version across users
• Providing a fast, secure, reliable and easy way to protect users, enforce acceptable use policies and ensure business continuity
• If they continue to use VPNs, ensuring that they are encrypted, updated and protected with strong passwords and 2-factor authentication
• Increasing the monitoring of endpoint, email and remote access security events.

 Educate employees about the increased risk of cyberthreats

Above all, employers should make sure that employees are aware of the increased risk of cyberthreats tied to the coronavirus pandemic and train them on how to avoid them, including:

• Alerting employees to expect an increase in phishing attempts and other malware, and to not respond to any emails seeking personal, corporate or financial information
• Reminding employees that malicious actors often disguise themselves using legitimate-looking email addresses and to verify a sender’s identity before clicking on a link in an email. Avoid clicking on links in unsolicited emails and to be wary of email attachments (for example, malicious actors are using fears of coronavirus to distribute the LokiBot malware)
• Teaching employees how to make sure their work-from-home setup is secure and that WiFi and other devices are properly configured; and
• Re-enforcing with employees the importance of reporting suspected security events.

As networks continue to be more decentralized and more employees take advantage of the benefits of working from home, securing networks from malware and other cyberthreats will remain a challenge. Emphasizing and implementing these cyber safety best practices for working from home will help IT managers ensure that corporate networks remain cyber-safe.

Partnership Brings Educational Opportunities to IT Professionals with 5,000 Scholarships

Nutanix (NASDAQ: NTNX), a leader in enterprise cloud computing, today announced a partnership with Udacity, the global online learning platform, resulting in a new Hybrid Cloud Nanodegree program. This program will enhance learning opportunities in the emerging cloud technologies market that are essential for organizations to uplevel their IT infrastructure. As part of the collaboration, Nutanix will also sponsor 5,000 scholarships to help IT professionals advance their knowledge with this initiative.

As more services move to the cloud, IT teams require the knowledge and expertise it takes to properly manage these infrastructures that increasingly stretch across on-premises and public cloud in a hybrid model. Although hybrid cloud technology continues to grow and evolve, educational opportunities in this field remain at a standstill. In Nutanix’s recent Enterprise Cloud Index survey, 85% of respondents said that hybrid cloud is the ideal operating model. However, 32% of respondents reported a lack of in-house hybrid cloud skills.

To fill this educational gap, Udacity and Nutanix have collaborated closely to develop a Nanodegree program that will advance the knowledge of seasoned IT professionals. To strengthen professional development in this space, the Nanodegree program will cover modern private cloud infrastructure and the design of hybrid application deployment. Ideal students are those managing traditional business applications, legacy infrastructure, or cloud-native applications on public cloud infrastructure.

“One of our primary goals at Nutanix is to ensure that cloud technology professionals continue to stay on the cusp of innovation in this developing field,” said Wendy M. Pfeiffer, CIO at Nutanix. “We are excited to have worked closely with Udacity to develop the Hybrid Cloud Nanodegree program, and now open access to thousands of leading cloud professionals through this scholarship program.”

To ensure all participants looking to increase their education within the cloud environment have an opportunity to do so, Udacity is opening applications to the Nutanix Hybrid Cloud Scholarship program. For the first phase of the scholarship program, Udacity will select 5,000 applicants to participate in the Hybrid Cloud Fundamentals course. From those 5,000 students, 500 high-performing students will be awarded a full scholarship to the Hybrid Cloud Nanodegree program.

“At Udacity, we strive to empower professionals with the most demanded, forward-looking skills in their fields,” said Udacity CEO Gabe Dalporto. “We’re delighted to team up with Nutanix, a pioneer and leader in the cloud computing field, to create the new, cutting-edge Hybrid Cloud Nanodegree program.”

The Hybrid Cloud Nanodegree program will focus on four subject areas:

• Modern Private Cloud Infrastructure: Learn to configure and manage a hyperconverged infrastructure cluster, providing a scalable, distributed storage, network, and compute fabric for virtual machines and advanced services.
• Hybrid Cloud Application Design: Learn about the evolution of hybrid cloud workload management and design for multiple infrastructures.
• Automating Private Cloud: Create a scalable web application and life cycle operational model with governance to enable on-demand, self-service workloads on-prem with fiscal oversight and quotas.
• Designing Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure: Learn public cloud concepts, manage hybrid workloads, and drive to global load balancing of workloads.

More information on the Hybrid Cloud Nanodegree and Scholarship program is available here.

Terry Greer-King, Vice President Of Europe, Middle East And Africa (Emea) Sales

Armed with an authority on cybersecurity and with extensive experience in the technology industry, Terry Greer-King is currently SonicWall’s VP of EMEA Sales.

Terry has extensive experience providing cybersecurity solutions to partners and customers across the EMEA region with a dedication to direct touch results and business growth hence we speak to him about his current role and trends in the area of cyber security.

Which countries in the Middle East is SonicWall most active in currently?

Sonicwall has been in the region for over one and a half decades now. We therefore have vast experience and a huge customer base throughout Middle East. Since we are a fully dedicated channel company, we cover all countries in the region, supported by our distribution partners and their technical and business skills.

Our team is based in Dubai, while we attempt to grow our presence to Saudi Arabia and also in other countries. Our business focus today is on UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and Oman from a Middle East perspective.

What type of threats are most common in the Middle East?

2018 was a year of high focus on the Middle East’s cyber threats. The strengthening economy, the additional wealth and an increased level of travel resulted in a malware surge mid-2018. This year, Middle Eastern governments have been working successfully on reducing the key threat vectors. Consequently, we saw a 60% decline this year of malware attacks, to 15 million malware attacks of our customers throughout the region in 2019, which we have blocked for our customers.

Dubai has been a focus target, and we expect a high interest during Dubai 2020 Expo and assume a sharp increase of attacks in 2020. Key malware variants detected were Trojans and viruses, that could be blocked with our technology, working in thousands of customer locations in Middle East.

What is driving your company’s business growth this year?

I would say there are two main drivers that are leading our growth. One, our ever-improving partner base that is armed with the technology, ability and knowledge to protect their customers by adding SonicWall services to our solutions and adopting the layered security needed.

Two, the push to the cloud. This will change the perspective of customers on their security immensely. Today, SonicWall is more than just a firewall vendor. Our solutions comply with  our customers’ need for micro-segmented networks with a mix of Hardware and virtual Firewalls, Endpoint security at the next-generation level, Cloud Application Security and Hybrid environments. Our customers also benefit from a single pane of glass management, a reporting and analytics platform for ease of use, and seamless integration into existing SIEMs and other tools. 

What challenges have you and your partners faced recently?

Legacy thinking about cyber security is probably the biggest inhibitor for every next-gen security vendor. “We don’t need security, there is no budget left to secure to current levels, we hear what you say, but we have not been hit yet”. What I like to say, if you secure your business with an old security solution, you will be protected against old threats.

Since cyber-attacks advance quickly, this is obviously not the right approach. Hence, we provide a bi-annual update of our threat report, to ensure, our partners can tell what is happening and support CISOs and IT Managers in their attempt to get the right budget. Security is not living in a silo in companies anymore. It is a matter of trust, brand, and business continuity more than ever. It has become a real matter for the board. This is not understood by some customers yet.

Can you talk about the strength of your comprehensive enterprise collaboration, vendor portfolio?

Our business exists to a major part due to the threat data gather every single day globally from our 1.1M sensors in over 215 countries and territories. This is the database of threats we use to protect our customers and advance our solutions. This is seamlessly integrated with all our products. A mix of on-premise and cloud solutions offers a variety of solutions for almost every use case.

Why is this important? Only a security solution, which is less complex, automated and can detect and prevent data breaches and other cyber-attacks, can deliver the least vulnerable security solution. Our layered security solution and platform, from the network perimeter to the cloud to the endpoint, discovers the known and unknown malware attacks, brings to light shadow IT use, protects against attacks using non-standard ports and easy deployment of encrypted traffic inspection.

All of that is managed through a single pane of glass, reducing complexity and increasingly visibility

In order to ensure right deployment, we not only have a number of skilled partners but, we also offer professional services delivered by partners. A simple starting point is the Network Health Check, which is a standardized check of current settings and deployment of the security solution. From there, a SonicWall Solution Architect can help to draft the best possible security layout.

What does the future products and services entail for SonicWall?

Being one of the most agile vendors in the security space, we have launched already 54 new products and capabilities in the past two years, with 160 Million lines of new code. This is a massive undertaking, but we will not stop. Look out for the coming announcements

By Alain Penel, Regional Vice President – Middle East, Fortinet

Businesses across the region are now in the process of rapidly enabling teleworking and remote productivity solutions to maintain business and operational continuity with high levels of security. This can be a complicated process when expediency is so critical. To complicate the process further, businesses in the region need to provide a growing number of remote workers with more than just a secure connection back to the core network or datacenter resources they are used to be remotely connecting to.

As an increasing number of applications are also being hosted in the cloud, organizations need to consider providing secure remote connectivity directly to those applications rather than backhauling those applications through the core network. Direct connectivity will not only reduce the load on the network, but also improve overall user experience, especially for high-bandwidth or latency-sensitive applications.

A Unique Secure Solution for All Deployment Scenarios

Deploying large-scale VPN solutions for remote users enable simple access, segmenting users based on role, security profile, and the content and resources they require are first-order tasks.

Teams also need to identify users that require special access to resources, like power users, such as system administrators, IT support technicians, and emergency personnel who require a higher level of access to corporate resources and the ability to operate in multiple, parallel IT environments. Or workers that process extremely sensitive and confidential information or require advanced access to confidential corporate resources, such as administrators with privileged system access, support technicians, key partners aligned to the continuity plan, emergency personnel, and executive management, and those users that require site-based access.

These considerations require thinking about the entire network architecture, from cloud to on-premise to endpoint. Fortinet addresses these and similar requirements by providing a flexible operating system that is consistent across form factors – whether deployed in the cloud, on-premise, or in a power user’s home office – and whose management can be centralized for policy orchestration, VPN templating, and user segmentation.  

Enabling a Multi-Pronged Security Approach

Our customers who deploy FortiGate solutions in the cloud, on-premise, or at remote locations are able to take advantage of its single pane of glass management, enabling the control and orchestration of multiple firewalls across locations to establish and maintain consistent security and user experience. We understand that business performance largely depends on user productivity, access to content and applications, at any location, at any time. With remote access and the ability to manage performance across locations using Secure SD-WAN as a core capability the Fortinet Security Fabric securely provides flexible options for mobile and fixed access to cloud resources at massive scale. 

Leveraging Existing Innovations

Addressing new or increased capacity requirements due to growing demand for applications hosted in the cloud as well as SaaS services can seem like a significant challenge. But by leveraging the innovation and capabilities in their existing technology investments, organizations can often address a majority of their requirements without significant additional overhead. Businesses that have invested in Fortinet’s Security Fabric architecture have access to all the necessary tools in a single pane of glass management system. It enables them to fine tune their existing configurations and environments to address urgent and increasing needs, while addressing critical business requirements, providing the organization with the lifeline they need to effectively and securely support their increased remote worker communities.

Nutanix (NASDAQ: NTNX), a leader in enterprise cloud computing will be hosting Nutanix NOW – a live digital event for organizations in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to learn about the latest trends and the most innovative technologies in the field of data centre and enterprise cloud computing: hybrid cloud, hyperconvergence, data management and end user computing. The virtual event will take place on April 13, 2020 at 10:00 am.

The exciting 3-hour online event with the theme ‘Bringing the Cloud Inside’ is planned for attendees to learn how to easily solve the cost and complexity issues associated with legacy infrastructure. Nutanix executives will discuss the key skills needed to develop a winning hybrid cloud strategy and how to use artificial intelligence-based lifecycle management and machine learning to deliver ideal experiences for customers and employees.

“Legacy technology that wasn’t made to work together leads to slow, manual, unstable, and expensive infrastructure—and IT teams and businesses suffer as a result,” explains Aaron White, Regional Director, Middle East at Nutanix. “Nutanix provides cloud technologies that combine the ease-of-management and usability of the public cloud, with the security, control, and performance of on-premises infrastructure. Our vision is a seamless enterprise cloud experience: One-click simplicity. Freedom to choose your hardware, hypervisor, and clouds. With Nutanix NOW we want to offer answers and solutions to IT modernization needs with the adoption of a successful hybrid cloud strategy.”

In addition to the vision of regional leaders of Nutanix, this important virtual event will see the participation of the company’s top management starting with the opening keynote address by Dheeraj Pandey, Founder, CEO and Chairman of Nutanix, followed by Tarkan Maner, Chief Commercial Officer who will illustrate Nutanix’s multi-cloud vision; Monica Kumar, SVP Product and Solutions Marketing who will talk about the future of data; and the reflection of Wendy Pfeiffer, Chief Information Officer, on ‘IT in the time of COVID-19’.

The event will also feature product demos, customer success stories and live Q&A sessions.

Participation is free upon registration at the following link – https://www.nutanix.com/company/news-events/nutanix-now/uae#agenda.

Mindware, one of the leading Value Added Distributors (VADs) in the Middle East and Africa, has extensively strengthened its security capabilities and portfolio. This will enable its channel partners to address the growing cyber security needs of enterprises across the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region.

Following the acquisition of Arrow ECS, Mindware inherited a large portfolio of security vendors. Among others, the revamped portfolio now includes Barracuda Networks, Forcepoint, McAfee, RSA, and Trend Micro.

Mr. Nicholas Argyrides, General Manager – Gulf at Mindware explains, “For today’s CIOs, IT security has become one of the highest priorities considering the increasing number as well as sophistication of cyber threats. As organizations undergo digital transformation and expand their digital presence, they, unsurprisingly, become more vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Technology trends such as Cloud Computing also increase similar risks. As such, the security shielding of companies needs to evolve, so as to include the latest security solutions coupled with best practices. This will ensure that the organization is not compromised in any way.”

“Against such scenario, we see the security business as being one of the major growth drivers for Mindware and our partners. Our focus in this segment will, of course, mean an increased investment in resources, training and certifications.”

Mindware has been steadily building out its security team and, by now, has a healthy spread of security specialists installed in every key country across the region. They work with partners to ensure that the various security vendors in Mindware’s portfolio are well-represented and promoted. The team comprises of product managers assigned to the various security vendors. These product managers work closely with the vendors to plan and implement strategies to increase market penetration. In addition, there is a parallel team of certified and highly skilled pre-sales engineers. These engineers are not only proficient in helping partners conduct proof of concepts (PoCs) but, upon request, also supporting when it comes to the actual implementation. This is especially helpful for those partners that are yet to develop their skillsets for particular solutions or technology verticals.

The distributor has also developed robust capabilities in conducting demos and PoCs pertaining to every single one of its security vendors, always in conjunction with its system integrator partners.

“These PoCs carried out by Mindware and our partners are often executed by deploying the product in a virtual setting in the end customer’s datacentre, which is fast becoming the favoured mode when it comes to testing. Alternatively, we also support partners in conducting PoCs by physically installing products on prem. These demos allow potential customers to test the solutions prior to a full-fledged implementation, which is invaluable in demonstrating the effectiveness of a particular offering,” said Mr. Argyrides.

The Cloud team at Mindware is currently working to identify and add relevant security solutions to the recently launched Mindware Cloud Marketplace in order to create co-sell opportunities for partners using the platform. These solutions are typically those that complement the Microsoft products currently available on the Marketplace and can be sold as a bundle.

Mindware also has agreements with its various security vendors to act as their Authorized Training Centre (ATC). The company regularly conducts training and certification programs across the region for end customers as well as channel partners.

“When it comes to IT security related skills, the general consensus is that there is a need for continuous education in our region. To help enhance skills, we plan and conduct a very dynamic series of seminars and training programmes every month, which are typically attended by both end users and partners. These sessions take into account the constantly evolving security landscape and the specific market needs at that point in time.”

Fortinet’s Engage Partner Program Offers Channel Partners New Enablement Initiatives and More Flexibility to Drive Business Growth

News Summary

Fortinet® (NASDAQ: FTNT), a global leader in broad, integrated, and automated cybersecurity solutions, recently introduced its new Fortinet Engage partner program. The program provides partners with specializations focused on growing markets, including SD-WAN and cloud, customized support and engagement flexibility to accelerate their business growth and expansion.

John Maddison, EVP of products and CMO at Fortinet

“With today’s digital innovations being a catalyst for organizations to evolve their networks and security strategies, we have transformed our partner program so partners can untap new opportunities and rising markets, including SD-WAN. Building on our investment in our partners, the new program offers specializations, updated enablement initiatives and tailored support for unique business models to further partner success.”  

Helping Partners Keep Up With Digital Innovations

Organizations are rapidly evolving and expanding their networks to keep up with the digital economy. By 2023, IDC predicts that the global economy will finally reach “digital supremacy” with more than half of all GDP worldwide driven by products and services from digitally transformed enterprises. As organizations transform their networks, security plays a critical role and also needs to evolve to keep up with new business demands.

Recognizing this, Fortinet designed new enablement initiatives and specializations, allowing partners to take advantage of digital innovations and this changing landscape. Fortinet’s Engage partner program provides greater flexibility on partner engagement, offers customized support to partners’ business models and allows partners to specialize in emerging areas through tailored training and certifications.

Expanding Partner Opportunities Through New Partner Program

Fortinet’s Engage partner program addresses the required technology and sales skills needed from new network ecosystems, such as next-gen branch offices and dynamic cloud environments comprised of multi-cloud and hybrid cloud. The new program is based on three main concepts, including:

• Specializations: Partners are able to select an area of specialization to receive additional support and benefits in their chosen areas. These include: Dynamic Cloud, Secure Access and Branch, Secure SD-WAN and Data Center. Customized training and certifications are available for each of these specializations to help partners upskill in emerging areas, further enabling partners to capitalize on growth opportunities.   

• Business Model: Fortinet offers specialized support for partners that fit the following three business models: MSSP partners, Market Place partners and Traditional Integrator partners. By offering customized support for these unique business models, Fortinet is evolving its partner program to further embrace growing business areas such as the selling of managed services. 

• Engagement: Partners have greater flexibility when determining the level of engagement they want to have with Fortinet. They’re able to select the type of expertise they want developed, the benefits and the revenue stream. This allows partners to select how they want to work with Fortinet to grow their business. As a result, there are four new levels of partnership outlined in the program ranging from Fortinet Advocate, Fortinet Select, Fortinet Advance and Fortinet Expert. More information about what these levels entail is available here.

Partner Supporting Quotes

“As a longtime Fortinet partner, Infosec Partners has been providing our customers with advanced security through the company’s Security Fabric platform approach. Just as the security landscape is everchanging, so are the business needs of our customers. Recognizing this, Fortinet’s new partner program allows us to take full advantage of the growing opportunities that the expanding digital marketplace provides through extensive, tailored support and specializations in areas like SD-WAN, Secure Access and Branch as well as bespoke decoy and deception controls”

Mark Oakton, CISO, Infosec Partners

“Fortinet has the unique combination of product innovation and partner enablement initiatives. Fortinet’s new partner program builds on its existing initiatives, providing specializations focused on high growth areas to enable partners like us to further expand our business. We look forward to leveraging enhanced aspects of the program as we continue to invest in our partnership.”   

– Koshy Oommen, Director – Infrastructure and Security at Intertec Systems LLC 

“As the Managed Security Services Provider (MSSP) market has grown and evolved Fortinet has maintained a steady presence, providing new and innovative solutions to Layer 3 Communications. This enables us to meet the security requirements of our customers. Seeing the new partner program add more incentives for different business models is a true testament of Fortinet’s commitment to helping MSSPs like us grow our managed security services, ultimately leading to maximizing profitability.” 

-Rodney Turner, President & CEO at Layer 3 Communications

“As our customers migrate to the cloud, they depend on NuSpective Solutions to help design and deploy their cloud environment for optimal scale, performance and security. With security being a critical part of our customers’ cloud strategy, Fortinet has been an invaluable partner in helping us provide greater value to our customers in this endeavor. We are pleased with the Dynamic Cloud specialization and the additional training available to us through the new partner program. This enables our team to expand our knowledge and expertise in this growing space.” 

 -Dave McMorrow, Principal and Co-Founder at NuSpective Solutions

“We’re excited about Fortinet’s new partner program. The Missing Link has heavily focused on leveraging Fortinet’s NSE Institute training and certification to become a leading provider, and the results speak for themselves. Fortinet has consistently been one of our fastest-growing vendors, year after year. The granularity and specificity of this program lets partners choose which areas and capabilities they wish to specialize in, including growing markets like SD-WAN. We look forward to continuing to invest in Fortinet to ensure The Missing Link can continue to provide the best level of service, innovation, and security to its clients.”

– Aaron Bailey, Chief Information Security Officer at The Missing Link

“Fortinet continues to provide MSSPs outstanding support as it evolves its new partner program’s enablement to further focus on modern business models like ours. Fortinet has been instrumental in our business success, and we look forward to building on our partnership as we continue to expand our managed services offerings and deliver ever-increasing value to our customers.”

-Brian Page, Chief Technology Officer at Xiologix