Riding a wave of increased spending by the military and defence sector, and bolstered by the pressing need for Oil & Gas and broadcast organizations to streamline operations and optimize operational costs through the use of advanced technologies, VITEC, a global leader in end-to-end video streaming solutions, has doubled down on its investment in the Middle East. Earlier this year, the company established its presence in the region with the inauguration of an office in Dubai and has since expanded its workforce and customer base at an accelerated pace.

Outlining his organization’s rapid expansion in the region, Nicolas Pons, VP Business Development Middle East at VITEC said, “Given the space that VITEC operates in, the prevailing socio-economic conditions in the region have proven favourable, fuelling our growth. Across industry verticals, our expertise and future-proof, market-leading solutions are helping customers achieve their ambitious objectives with confidence in the quality and security of their investments. We have firmly committed to the region and will continue to invest in our presence here as we deepen our ties with customers, strengthen our channel, and help drive the maturity of the digital video delivery sector.”

Pons outlined two key technology focus areas for VITEC in the Middle East:

• Point-to-Point Broadcasting:Given the need for live reporting from the field to cover the near-constant stream of breaking news and events in the region, VITEC see this as an essential solution for broadcasters. VITEC takes the benefits of HEVC encoding out of the server room and into the field by integrating a high-quality, low-delay hardware codec into a professional appliance, reducing operating expenses and extending the reach of video services to remote destinations with bandwidth constraints. The company’s Point-to-Point broadcasting contribution solution is the industry’s only portable IP streaming solution for HEVC (H.265) MGW Ace Encoder, D265 Decoder, and EZ TV IPTV.
• IPTV & Digital Signage:Through its engagement with regional customers, VITEC has uncovered that being able to find secure, scalable cost-effective ways to distribute video is a key priority across a myriad of sectors, including enterprises, sports and entertainment, healthcare and government. VITEC’s award winning EZ TV platform offers the most advanced IPTV experience with live streaming, on-demand video, digital recording, mosaic player, time-shifted TV and customizable look-and-feel. EZ TV content security and user-access controls are certified by military units and broadcasters for local and multi-site applications. Furthermore, the platform’s Digital Signage module uses powerful hardware-based endpoints to deliver eye-catching digital content with dynamic data and full HD IPTV content.

Over the next year, the company intends to continue the expansion of its workforce, extend is channel partner ecosystem, and deepen penetration into key customer accounts across the Oil & Gas, Broadcast, and Military & Defence sectors, particularly in the UAE, Jordan and Turkey.

“2019 has been a remarkable year for VITEC and we intend to build on our business momentum. We have a clear strategy for the region and are eager to establish our brand as the partner of choice for all the digital video delivery needs of Middle East organizations,” concluded Pons.

Survey reveals how CISOs are shifting priotities and security strategies to manage increasingly advanced threats with limited resources 

Fortinet® (NASDAQ: FTNT), a global leader in broad, integrated and automated cybersecurity solutions, today announced a new report by Forbes Insights it commissioned titled “Making Tough Choices: How CISOs Manage Escalating Threats and Limited Resources.” The global survey polled CISOs across various industries about the biggest challenges they’re facing and strategies they’re putting in place to address these obstacles. 

The survey found that 84 percent of CISOs believe the risks of cyber attacks will increase and almost a quarter believe the capabilities of attackers are outpacing their ability to defend their organization. This issue is compounded with limited resources, including lack of sufficient budget and skilled professionals as well as a threat attack surface that is quickly expanding and becoming more sophisticated. Because of this, security leaders understand it is critical to have the right strategies in place as they face an arms race between the capabilities of attackers and their own defense postures.   

“The Forbes Insights survey echoes the primary challenges we hear directly from Fortinet customers and prospects. Today’s CISOs are tasked with the challenge of allocating limited funds and resources to the highest-return cybersecurity projects which can range from breach detection to response. These C-level security leaders must maximize security with finite resources, all while balancing strategic leadership responsibilities and tactical issues. Through the Fortinet Security Fabric, Fortinet is providing end-to-end security so that CISOs can navigate a rapidly changing cyber threat landscape day in and day out,” said John Maddison, EVP of products at Fortinet. 

Other key takeaways from the Forbes Insights report include:

• CISOs are increasingly implementing AI technologies to cybersecurity. Forty-eight percent of security leaders are focused on seamlessly integrating security into their network operations and 45 percent are shifting and changing their cybersecurity strategy toward advanced analytics for greater visibility into their environments. AI, like machine learning, and analytics relieves IT teams time away from monotonous tasks, so they can focus on business-critial tasks such as identifying anomalous behavior in their networks and responding to threats quickly.

• CISOs would like to allocate more of their budget to detection and response.According to the survey, security leaders are currently allocating an average if 36 percent of their security budet on response. However, in an ideal world, they would shift their resources from prevention to bolster detection and response. The survey found they’d increase response to be 40 percent of their budget. 

• Cybersecurity training and education for employees is key. The Forbes Insights survey found that CISOs believe talent and training constraints have a significant impact on their organizations. As a result, CISOs are paying more attention to educating their own employees on best practices and building cybersecurity awareness in order to prevent and reduce internal threats. 

• CISO are constrained by the lack of an adequate budget.While threats are expanding, CISOs find that there resources, including budget, remain limited. A third of CISOs surveyed in the report felt that the lack of an adequate budget is having a significant impact on their cybersecurity program. 

• A top priority for CISOs is safeguarding customer data and intellectual property.More than a third of respondents said protecting their organization’s brand is top of mind. More than 36 percent of CISOs selected customer data as the highest priority for protection. A majority of respondants also shared they are focusing on protecting intellectual property as one of the most important assets in their care, which they believe is another core target of most malicious actors.

Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, has announced its participation at GITEX Technology Week taking place between 06 -10 October 2019 at the Dubai World Trade Centre. In its 10th appearance at GITEX, the company will be demonstrating its revolutionary Aruba Experience Edge Platform – that intuitively assimilates existing cloud, mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) data into a simple, single system to transform customer experiences at the Edge.

Commenting on the company’s participation at GITEX, Jacob Chacko, Regional Business Head – Middle East & Saudi at Aruba says, “Aruba’s Edge platform is designed to provide simple, secure and smart networking, to support integrated experiences without compromising simplicity for end users. Smart workplaces, schools, stores, hotels, hospitals, and factories can all deliver amazing experiences through this platform. GITEX, with its position as the Middle East’s largest tech exhibition and networking platform, is the perfect venue for us to showcase our technology innovations and drive key discussions with customers and partners.”

Aruba’s Edge platform powers the digital enterprise. Category leaders can take advantage of the experience and digital era and deliver smart experiences by blending mobile, cloud, and IoT. The following scenarios will become a reality:

• Workplace Productivity – Employees at work can collaborate instantly in smart meeting rooms
• Retail Engagement – Shoppers in stores will be able to use mobile personalized assistance in the palm of their hand
• Hotel Personalization – Guests in hotels can mobile check-in and check-out and get a personalized in-room experience as if they were at home
• Educational Excellence – Students can get state-of-the-art mobile and digital learning and stay connected whether in or out of the classroom
• Patient Satisfaction – Patients in hospitals can get the best care with connected in-room services that give doctors and nurses information at their fingertips

At GITEX, Aruba will showcase its latest technologies addressing the needs of the digital era including: 

• Wi-Fi 6 & Switching – Seamless, secure connectivity everywhere along with a breakthrough campus core switch that extends intelligence from the edge to the core.
• Cloud-Based Networking – Aruba Central is a unified network operations, assurance and security platform that simplifies the deployment, management, and service assurance of wireless, wired and SD-WAN environments
• Aruba AI-based Analytics, Assurance & Security – Harvesting data from the Edge for the optimal User- & IT-Experience, Aruba uses AI-Based in 3 key area’s – network-based analytics, user-based analytics and network security. 

Trade visitors to the Aruba stand at GITEX can also take advantage of Aruba’s Networking Product Wizard which provides an optimized network design in under two minutes. With a few clicks, it will recommend the right switches, access points and network management solution, right-sized for a particular business, based on number of users, location, network use and performance needs. 

Aruba will be exhibiting at stand number H7-A1 in Hall 7 alongside Hewlett Packard Enterprise. 

A10 Networks(NYSE: ATEN), today announced its participation as a Platinum sponsor at MENA Information Security Conference 2019, that will take place at the Crowne Plaza – Riyadh RDC Hotel and Convention Centre in Saudi Arabia, 9-10^thSeptember. This is the third year in a row that the company will be sponsoring the event and this year, A10 Networks’ focus will be on educating conference attendees about 5G, multi-cloud and DDoS security. 

As a platinum sponsor, A10 Networks will have a keynote speaking slot with the theme “Safeguarding the Edge of 5G and Multi-Cloud,” which will be delivered by the company’s Founder and CEO Lee Chen. Executives from the company will conduct a one-hour technical session ‘Redefining Mobile Network Security Strategies: Prepare for 5G and IoT.’ In addition to the keynote and technical session, there will be a company booth in the exhibition area where event attendees have the opportunity to meet with the A10 Networks’ team and experience the latest innovations and technologies that the company has to offer.

Speaking about the company’s participation at the event, Mohammed Al-Moneer, Regional Vice President of Sales – MENA at A10 Networks says, “A10 Networks has a very strong value proposition for government and private enterprises, including telco operators, by offering leading AI-driven application and network security solutions, including hyperscale 5G security, DDoS protection and multi-cloud application visibility, analytics and automation. Our portfolio of security and application services are essential to digital business today and to fighting the increasing cyber war. Key to the product portfolio is our drive to increase security efficacy, automate complex processes and provide intelligence, all at hyperscale, ensuring businesses can be agile and operate efficiently.”

“We see MENA Information Security Conference as the perfect platform to engage in high-level discussions with regional organizations about the security challenges of emerging 5G infrastructures, multi-cloud environments and DDoS cyber attacks and how they can prepare their networks today for the cyber threats of tomorrow. We are also looking to expose our brand and capabilities.”

A10 Networks is a leader in next-generation security technology for mobile operators worldwide—and the solution provider of choice for carriers undertaking 5G transformation. Its advanced converged firewall and DDoS protection solutions provide hyperscale, feature richness and AI-driven automation to meet the growing capacity requirements and complex management needs of 5G networks, while also improving the economics and performance of user plane and control plane security in today’s networks. A10 Networks’ 5G security solutions are recognized and embraced by mobile operators worldwide. The company secured five design wins in the second half of 2018 for its Thunder® 5G Gi-LAN converged firewall from operators planning commercial 5G deployments in early 2019.

MENA Information Security 2019 is an annual security conference, organized by VirtuPort and hosting world-class keynote speakers, panelists and delegates. For more information about the event, visit https://menaisc.com/

Veeam® Software, the leader in Backup solutions that deliver Cloud Data Management™, today announced its participation at GITEX Technology Week, taking place between 6 -10 October 2019 at the Dubai World Trade Centre. As part of the company’s ongoing commitment to help regional organizations transition to the cloud and embrace digital transformation, executives from Veeam will share its vision for Cloud Data Management, delivering live demonstrations of Veeam Availability Platform™– the most complete solution to help customers evolve the way they manage data, from policy- to behavior-based, and make it smarter and self-governing, ensuring it’s available across any application and any cloud infrastructure. 

Talking about the company’s participation at GITEX, Claude Schuck, regional manager, Middle East at Veeam said: “As the importance of data has grown to drive every aspect of the digital business, so has the need for solutions that ensure information is available at any time, no matter where it resides. There is a new expectation for data in today’s enterprise:Data must move to a higher state of intelligence and be able to anticipate need and meet demand. Data must also move securely across multi-cloud infrastructures andmeet the expectations of the mobile, always-on world.”

“Given our leadership position and market leading technologies, GITEX is an opportunity to turn the spotlight on the criticality of Cloud Data Management,” continued Schuck. “CIOs and IT managers need to understand that ensuring instant and reliable data availability requires an evolution in how it is managed from policy-driven to behavior-driven, leveraging Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to enable data to back up autonomously, migrate to the right location based on the business need and to secure itself during anomalous activity.”

According to the 2019Veeam Cloud Data Management Report,  72% of organizations are looking to embrace Cloud Data Managementand are transitioning to cloud strategies. As part of the same survey, 80% of respondents from the Middle East see productivity bene­fits of Intelligent Data Management. Only 24% of enterprises in the Middle East describe their digital initiatives as mature. To help them on their journey, at GITEX, Veeam will educate regional organizations on this journey and outline the 5 Stages of Cloud Data Management: 

• Stage 1: BACKUP – Protect all workloads using backups, complemented by snapshots and replication where appropriate, to ensure they are always recoverable and available in the event of outages, attack, loss or theft
• Stage 2: CLOUD MOBILITY – ExpandsStage 1 to include multi-cloud environments — backing up and moving data to, from and within the cloud
• Stage 3: VISIBILITY – View the full breadth of your data, accompanied by the infrastructure that it passes through and resides on, so you can pivot from reactive to proactive management for better business decisions
  Stage 4: ORCHESTRATION – Optimize data utilization across multi-cloud environments with workflows that ensure consistent execution of otherwise manual and complex recovery orchestration and data-management tasks
• Stage 5: AUTOMATION –  Data becomes self-managing by learning to protect itself with appropriate SLAs, methods and locations to meet business objectives or comply with broader IT initiatives.

Veeam will have its own dedicated stand #C20  in Hall 7 at DWTC. 

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (ALE) has announced that the City Seasons Hotel Deira has consolidated its communications infrastructure with a deployment of ALE high performance access points to boost network availability and management. The City Seasons Hotel is part of the UAE-based Bin Ham Group, which operates a number of hotels in key locations in the UAE and Oman. 

Access to high quality Wi-Fi is among the top priorities for travelers when choosing their preferred hotel. It became imperative for the City Seasons Hotel Deira to upgrade their non-enterprise Wi-Fi points that lacked the capability to provide secure login and network management. The hotel deployed 180 high performance 802.11ac Wave 2 in-room Alcatel-Lucent OmniAccess® Stellar AP1201H WLAN Access Points for enhanced customer experience, in addition to the Alcatel-Lucent OmniAccess Stellar AP1221 WLAN Access Points for common areas like the lobby, restaurants, and corridors. 

“As an existing ALE voice customer, we were familiar with the high quality of solutions, and after sales service. It was a natural decision to choose ALE to meet our network and Wi-Fi requirements as well,” said Ahmed Mohamed, Group CIO, Bin Ham Group. “After replacing our legacy Wi-Fi system, we now provide our guests with faster, safer Wi-Fi access. This has resulted in better ratings and reviews on popular travel review websites, which also encourages more customers to choose to stay with us.”

Alaris, a Kodak Alaris business, has announced its participation at GITEX Technology Week taking place between 06 -10 October 2019 at the Dubai World Trade Centre. This year the company will focus on educating trade show attendees about the importance of intelligently re-engineering and automating business processes in order to increase agility and efficiency. 

Naji Kazak, General Manager – Middle East, Africa, Turkey & Russia at Alaris, a Kodak Alaris business says, “Digital transformation is high on every CIOs agenda today. However, we find that a gap still exists between digitisation and automation. There are plenty of business process workflows out there that are digitised but not yet fully automated. We still see lots of steps, lots of hands on a process from start to finish, and every one of those interactions costs money, opens up compliance risks and introduces errors.”

“We are eager to work with regional organizations in identifying the various inefficiencies in their workflows and then providing an end-to-end solution, using our market leading and award winning hardware, software and professional services. In this context, GITEX is a very important platform as it helps us to expose our brand and capabilities to potential customers and the channel community. We have several exciting announcements including new document scanners, service offerings and a new partner programme.”

True digital transformation demands dramatic change—new ways of thinking for a new era. Alaris embraces change and discovers innovative ways to think about what’s possible. The company’s custom solutions uniquely combine imaging science, artificial intelligence and advanced process automation to turn clutter into clarity and data into a powerful competitive advantage. The Alaris IN2 Ecosystem brings together document scanners, software and services, delivered by a network of trusted partners, to capture information that integrates with an organization’s business applications. 

Businesses of all kinds want to make their processes more efficient, and Alaris offers the right technology to optimize workflows that involves paper. At GITEX, the company will showcase its range of award winning desktop, departmental and production scannerswith intelligent automated features. 

A big focus at GITEX will be on the company’s software portfolio. Efficient operations are all about getting it right – delivering the right information to the right person at the right time. That single-mindedness on doing it right lets an organization get information from documents into its systems to make fast decisions, at a lower cost and with improved customer outcomes. In line with this, the Alaris software portfolioaccurately extracts data from paper documents and routs it to the desired location – no matter if it’s a local folder, cloud service, ECM system or integrated line of business application. Alaris Info Input Solutiongives companies the freedom to capture documents through a web browser or mobile device, and scaling across departments and enterprises is fast and secure. For high volume operations like service bureaus and mailrooms, Alaris Capture Pro Softwaregives the greatest ability to effectively manage scanning workflows  and take the manual steps out of the image capture process.

Furthering its commitment to help organizations in their digital transformation journey, Alaris recently announced a global strategic alliance with TAIGER, a visionary Artificial Intelligence (AI) company, to integrate its AI-based software with Alaris’ award-winning document scanners to simplify information intensive business processes. The collaboration will help end-users intelligently automate complex business tasks and drive greater efficiency in the workplace. Alaris will be exhibiting at GITEX as part of its distributor Mindware’s stand No. E1 in Hall 3 at the Dubai World Trade Centre. 

Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company has announced the appointment of Jacob Chacko as its Regional Lead for Middle East (UAE, Qatar, Saudi, Egypt, Gulf & Levant). Jacob will assume responsibility of the regional sales organization and will strive to grow market share and revenues with partners, alliances and associates, strengthening Aruba’s position in the region. Based out of Dubai, he will report directly to Jose Vasco, the company’s Regional Director, Central Europe Middle East and Africa.

“Jacob has been with HPE for the last 9 years and he has worked across the spectrum of the business. I am confident that his knowledge about the business and his techno commercial acumen will surely be of great value and help us grow the regional business. Jacob has close to 21 years of experience in the networking industry and his experience across sales, channel, distribution and category will give an impetus to our efforts in the region and take our business to the next level,” said Jose Vasco. 

Commenting on his appointment, Jacob explained, “I am excited to be a part of this team. 2019 will be an important year of change in the networking industry as innovations from recent years begin to reach the crest of their impact, and a variety of new technologies just hitting the market now will pave the way for future innovation in the coming years. Our focus is to enhance our regional structure, continue to develop our partner network and increase our product and services portfolio to further build on our market leadership.”