Remote work will catalyze a shift from the corporate perimeter concept to micro-office security certification. Outsourcing of IT and cybersecurity functions will be crucial to solve expertise shortages and save budgets. To coordinate managed service providers along with using multiple cloud services, cloud security and management skills will become a ‘must have’. These and other cybersecurity challenges and trends will be among those that businesses will have to manage this year, according to a new Kaspersky report.

A shift to remote work, financial constraints due to economic recession and the growth of cyber threats due to the global pandemic will affect the day to day role of cybersecurity professionals in 2021. Understanding the challenges but also perceiving opportunities in IT and IT security management is key for companies to maintain their protection. The recent Kaspersky report, “Plugging the gaps: 2021 corporate IT security predictions” suggests advice for each role related to cybersecurity, including CEOs or business owners, CISOs, SOC team leads and IT managers. Here are some of the main trends to monitor:

• Protecting the perimeter is no longer enough – home office assessment and certification will be needed. There should be tools to scan the level of security in a workplace – from the presence of software vulnerabilities to connecting to an unreliable or unprotected Wi-Fi hotspot. It will also require wider adoption of VPN, privileged access management, multifactor authentication systems, the implementation of stricter monitoring, and the updating of existing contingency and emergency plans.
• Transition to a service model will enable required levels of IT and IT security with lower investments. According to Kaspersky’s survey, seven-in-10 72% businesses in the META region said they already plan to use a managed service provider (MSP) or managed security service provider (MSSP) in the next 12 months^[1]. This is for good reason as the service model helps to minimize capital investments and transition business costs from CapEx to OpEx.
• Training for internal IT security specialists should incorporate management skills. Cybersecurity professions split into very narrow specializations, meaning that hiring staff for each specific role may be too expensive. This is where outsourcing can help plug the gap. However, businesses that outsource key cybersecurity components still need to focus on developing management skills for their in-house teams to handle those outsourced functions.
• There will be an increased reliance on cloud services, making dedicated management and protection measures necessary. The survey showed thatin 2020, employees in 91% of enterprises and 95% of SMBs in the META region used non-corporate software and cloud services such as social networks, messengers or other applications. This is unlikely to change when staff return to the office. To ensure that any corporate data is kept under control, better visibility over cloud access will be necessary. IT security managers will need to align themselves with this cloud paradigm and develop skills for cloud management and protection.

Along with the introduction of new cybersecurity practices, the quality of tools that enable these changes will be equally important. Quality of protection and seamless manageability are key when choosing cybersecurity solutions. “We have seen two important changes in what customers expect from corporate cybersecurity offerings. Firstly, the quality of protection is no longer up for discussion – now it’s a ‘must have’. Another major trend is that deep integration between various components of corporate security, ideally from a single vendor, now plays a bigger role. For instance, there was a long-held belief in the industry that various specialized solutions from various vendors can help create the best combination for protection. Now, organizations are looking for a more unified approach with maximum integration between different security technologies,” says Alexander Moiseev, Chief Business Officer at Kaspersky.

Check the full report ‘Plugging the gaps: 2021 corporate IT security predictions’ for more predictions.

[1] According to Kaspersky Global Corporate IT Security Risks Survey (ITSRS), conducted across 31 countries in June 2020. Throughout the report, a total of 5,266 IT business decision-makers were interviewed.

Transforming the university experience with assistive listening over Wi-fi

Worldwide, tens of thousands of students with a hearing impairment attend university – often with legislation that mandates that technical equipment is provided to ensure their full inclusion. With easy access to Wi-fi having become students’ most important tech resource for studying, the move towards Wi-fi based assistive listening systems such as MobileConnect from Sennheiser is the logical next step.

Wi-fi based assistive listening systems offer substantial advantages over traditional systems

In terms of installation, usability and student acceptance, traditional assistive listening systems present several shortcomings, be it labor-intensive installation of induction loops or the risks of sharing IR or FM devices during pandemics. Most importantly, however, these solutions make students feel excluded, exacerbating “feelings of loneliness, isolation and frustration” that the WHO cites as emotional impacts of hearing loss.^[1] With WHO projecting a significant uptick among hearing loss in children between now and 2050, this issue’s importance is only increasing.

Assistive listening over Wi-Fi, on the other hand, works simply and effectively: The lecturer speaks into a microphone, the audio signal travels to an AV station and is broadcast via the existing local Wi-fi network. Students can use their own smartphone with confidence to listen via an app, freeing them to sit anywhere they like.

Using their own smartphones with an app, students listen to the audio via headphones, hearing aids or cochlear implants 

Besides low cost of installation and maintenance, Wi-fi based systems are easily scalable and integrate readily with existing AV equipment. IT and AV managers can make system adjustments as needed using a software-based manager – but in many ways, assistive listening systems over Wi-fi are a set-and-forget solution.

Jakub Kolacz, Sennheiser’s Manager Product and Commercialization for MobileConnect, said: “Like so many others, we wish for a world where all people can be connected to each other and able to make the most of the opportunities that lie before them. This includes unrestricted access to information and teaching. With MobileConnect, we offer a fully inclusive, Wi-Fi-based assistive listening solution for the campus infrastructure of modern universities. With individually adjustable, lip-sync audio for as many as 100 students per room, it provides a productive, inclusive learning environment for higher education institutions.”

Contec Global, the UK-based conglomerate with a strong footprint in the Middle East & Africa in delivering sustainable AgriTech programmes, has marked a strategic tie-up with Maithri Aquatech, the developer of innovative air-to-water technology, to bring large-scale sustainable water solutions to the Middle East and Africa. The partnership aims to deliver a business of over US$200 million (AED 735 million) in atmospheric water generator (AWG) solutions in the region in the next three to five years.

The two entities will work together to provide safe, potable, clean water on a sustainable basis. They will focus on capacity building using Contec Global and Maithri’s joint expertise in delivering turn-key AWG projects for drinking water and micro-irrigation in acutely water-stressed areas.

Contec Global has strong business interests in agriculture, energy, information technology, automobiles, and manufacturing. Through Greenfields, its business that focuses on creating sustainable and profitable AgriTech solutions, the Group works in many Middle East countries in organic farming, providing bio-inputs that contribute to an increase in agricultural yield and reduces farming costs by up to 60 per cent.

Some of Contec’s ongoing initiatives include converting barren desert land into healthy livelihood alternatives, adopting multiple approaches including water and soil conservation, dryland farming, afforestation, pastureland, and animal husbandry development, and restoring the ecological balance. In MENA, its initiatives such as ‘the Great Green Wall’ are helping transform the landscape through good agricultural practices. The concentrated R&D backed efforts also help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and bring down genetically modified organisms (GMO) from the food chain through sustainable, affordable, and precision-farming practices.

Contec Global is strengthening its presence in Middle East & Africa in providing sustainable water solution through Maithri Aquatech’s air-to-water technology, which is already widely deployed by governments, NGOs and private sector leaders. It is the only AWG solution approved by India’s Ministry of Water besides being a part of the UN Global Compact CEO Water Mandate, committed to achieving UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 6&7).

Dr. Benoy Berry, Chairman of Contec Global, said“We are excited with this opportunity to showcase an innovative and cost-effective technology to deliver end-to-end water solutions for clients across the Middle East and Africa. In line with our core focus, the partnership with Maithri expands Contec Global’s offering to cover scalable water solutions that are capable of producing water from air on a mass scale and on a sustainable basis. Our solution is best suited to address the freshwater problem, which is expected to assume critical dimensions in the coming years.”

Ramkrishna Mukkavilli, Founder and Managing Director of Maithri Aquatech, said: “With the MENA region focused on ensuring national-level food and water security, our AWG solution is ideally placed to meet water requirements sustainably, as our technology creates a perennial and decentralised water generating source. In addition to making countries and communities water-secure, it will have a tremendous positive impact on the environment. Our vision is to be the largest air water company in the world by providing a viable solution to mitigate one of biggest existential problems faced by our planet. Through our partnership with Contec, we are building a global organisation with the best-in-class talent and state-of-the-art production facilities.”

“The Contec Global – Maithri Aquatech alliance is a sustainability improvement opportunity for both our companies. By providing our solutions through Contec Global’s established distribution system in the Middle East, it will help transform governments, corporates, communities, and others from being net consumers of water to becoming net producers of water, on a sustainable basis,” added Dr Berry.

The air-to-water solutions are suited to address the water scarcity challenge facing MENA region, which has an average water availability per person of only 1,200 cubic metres per year, compared to 7,000 cubic metres per year in other regions. They will also help address the water scarcity problem in the Middle East, where about 85 per cent of all water withdrawals are for agricultural purposes.

Contec and Maithri also see the AWG solutions as a good fit to the clean energy agenda of the region, where electricity and water production are closely related. A study by the International Energy Agency reported that the six biggest users of desalination in the region – Algeria, Kuwait, Libya, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE – used about 10 per cent of their primary energy from oil and gas resources for desalination. In MENA, desalination plants produce 48 per cent of the world’s total desalinated water, and as these plants are largely operated on oil, there is increased stress on hydrocarbon use, adding to the large carbon footprint.

The synergies created by combining Contec Global’s expansive network with Maithri Aquatech’s sustainable technologies open new horizons for both the businesses to address the needs of global markets for water solutions across different applications.

– Nutanix (NASDAQ: NTNX), a leader in private, hybrid and multicloud computing, today announced that it will continue its successful Cloud Bundles channel initiative for the commercial market segment. The initiative will provide commercial customers with access to Nutanix cloud solutions and hyper-converged infrastructure software. Commercial customers can thus modernise their data centers and IT environments at attractive prices, drive digital transformation and support their business by becoming a faster and more flexible IT organisation. At the same time, distributors will benefit from more flexible options for marketing their offerings via the channel. This is a seamless continuation of the successful initiative previously known as Nutanix Cloud Bundles.

Initially offered in 2020, Nutanix Cloud Bundles help enable commercial customers to simplify the management of their infrastructure, ensure continued business operations and deal with rapidly growing data volumes and the corresponding challenges. That’s because the challenges commercial customers are facing are essentially the same as those faced by large enterprises.

“Accelerated digitisation is one of the key strategies for commercial customers to cope with the economic consequences of the pandemic and ideally to emerge from the crisis stronger than before. However, digitisation is taking place against the background of a general shortage of skilled IT people. For this reason, this is not solely a technology question of obtaining right technology, but also and above all, one of economic efficiency,” emphasizes Aaron White, Sr. Sales Director, METI at Nutanix. “Against this background, automation is the key to make IT teams more flexible and more productive. The role model here is the cloud, but not as a location, rather as an operating model. With our commercial packages, we are bringing the cloud and its operating model to commercial customers more easily and cost-effectively than ever before.”

Nutanix Cloud Bundles help enable commercial companies to manage virtual machines (VM) and containers, files, computing resources, storage capacities and network services in a unified way. With these packages, Nutanix extends the access to its solutions and meets the requirements and budget restrictions of commercial customers.

The packages for medium-sized businesses are available in three different versions:

• The basic package contains the fundamental building blocks of the Nutanix stack: the enterprise cloud operating system AOS, the AHV hypervisor and the end-to-end management solution Prism.
• The standard level also includes the file management solution Nutanix Files as well as Prism Pro with its machine learning (ML) management automation capabilities.
• Commercial customers choosing the advanced level will benefit from the network security and micro-segmentation functionality of Nutanix Flow in addition to the components included in the standard package.

Depending on the selected service level, customers can subscribe to Nutanix software for server infrastructures with 24 (one node or server) to 192 cores (six nodes or servers). Commercial packages are compatible with all hardware platforms certified by Nutanix and include software support for three or five years.

Nutanix Cloud Bundles are aimed exclusively at new customers. Nutanix partners benefit from the same level of marketing support that they would otherwise receive when addressing the enterprise market. New partners who are interested in the Nutanix commercial packages must first register for the Nutanix Partner Program.

By: Jacob Chacko, Regional Director – Middle East & South Africa at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company

As retailers adapt how they serve customers to meet immediate and long-term challenges, they are transforming their services to do more. Business transformation requires a network foundation, digital tools, and new streams of data to be analyzed. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are emerging as innovative ways to drive profitable business outcomes while driving IT process efficiency.

Below are 5 key areas that retailers need to pay attention to if they are to succeed in the new normal:

1. Start with great Wi-Fi. Mobility is key to ensuring customers and associates devices and applications work. Customers must be able to seamlessly connect to the store network and associates must be able to use their devices to find goods and assist customers quickly. IoT-enabled store solutions like check-out point-of-sale devices, product scanners, scan-and-go apps and digital signage depend on reliable connectivity. Capacity limits make it critical to move customers in and out of stores quickly to optimize turn times.

2. Get a competitive edge using IoT. IoT devices are critical to delivering a multitude of new experiences and driving new efficiencies. Mobile readers, sensors, and smart shelves can allow stores to maintain accurate inventory in retail time. Footfall sensors and location beacons provide real-time analytics for contextual and personalized offers while supporting a safe shopping experience.

3. Don’t guess on application performance. Connectivity and mobility are the foundation, but the applications that customers, associates, and warehouse staff use must also perform flawlessly. IT teams have long prioritized business-critical applications so they perform at peak. Guest traffic is separated from associates’ applications, and transactions and payments are highly protected. But even with these steps to ensure optimal application performance, the user’s network experience is often hard for IT to discern until there are vocal complaints. A better way to ensure that shoppers, associates, and other staff receive a quality network experience is give IT a real-time view of the end-user experience along with clear action steps to resolve any issues before a service ticket is opened. 

4. Spend your time on innovation, not on network management. It is rare for every store to have an IT staff member. But it is common for IT to get bogged down into network management, rather than innovating with new digital use cases. A cloud-native, single-pane-of-glass network management solution can allow IT staff to work remotely while maintaining visibility and control over all vital network services. Cloud-managed networks enable retailers to scale back the network when the need for temporary drive-through or pop-up services pass—or scale up quickly as needed. Whether the site is a store, warehouse, or corporate headquarters, IT should be able to ensure a secure, high-performance network across all locations, including teleworker home offices.

5. Extend indoor services to outside. With the popularity of curbside pickup and the need to provide touch-free experiences, many retailers need to extend their Wi-Fi outdoors without compromising connectivity to applications and devices that associates need. Associates need mobile POS systems and inventory scanning devices to assist customers, while maintaining secure connectivity to payment transactions.

Aruba’s Edge Services Platform (Aruba ESP) addresses all these imperatives of the retail industry. It is the industry’s first AI-powered platform designed to automate, unify and protect the edge for businesses of any size or type. Aruba ESP includes attributes of Unified Infrastructure, Zero‑Trust Security, AI Powered Operations (AIOps), and Flexible Consumption/Financing Models. These attributes are designed for the unique challenges facing retail, including being able to adapt quickly for unknown future use cases. Aruba’s technology solutions provide retailers tested and proven integrations to support staff communications, electronic shelf labels, shopper analytics, real-time data and inventory management, and predictive machine maintenance.

Strengthens Veeam’s commitment to hybrid cloud, providing customers with broad platform support and choice

Veeam^® Software, the leader in Backup solutions that deliver Cloud Data Management™, today announced its expansion of public cloud support with the general availability of NEW Veeam Backup for Google Cloud Platform – completing Veeam’s support for all three major public cloud providers. With the majority of organizations now running hybrid or multi-cloud environments and 72% of those using public cloud currently having more than one vendor in place[1], Google Cloud is one of the top five-largest public cloud infrastructure providers worldwide[2]. With this new offering, Veeam delivers a single platform to protect, secure and manage all applications and data – cloud, virtual and physical – enabling organizations to accelerate hybrid-cloud adoption.

“Veeam recognizes the strategic importance of the cloud to our 400,000+ global customers and we are committed to providing broad platform support and choice,” said Danny Allan, chief technology officer and senior vice president of product strategy at Veeam. “As we now expand public cloud support even further with the general availability of Veeam Backup for Google Cloud Platform, we have simultaneously expanded our partnership with Google Cloud, enabling Veeam to jointly engage customers through the Google Cloud Marketplace. Additionally, with Veeam recently acquiring Kasten, customers can also acquire Kasten’s K10 datamanagement platform, purpose-built for Kubernetes, through the Google Cloud Marketplace.”

Veeam helps customers address security and data protection responsibilities by delivering Google Cloud backup and recovery to protect and secure applications and data, utilizing and automating Google Cloud-native technologies to quickly and reliably overcome any cloud data loss.

New functionality of Veeam Backup for Google Cloud Platform includes:

• Google Cloud-Native: Simple yet powerful web UI, deployable from the Google Cloud Marketplace starts protecting data in minutes; Policy-Based Automation of Google Cloud-native snapshots for fast and frequent recovery points, and rapid full- and file-level recovery options to overcome any cloud data loss.
• Cost Optimization: Industry-first cost calculation to align service-level objectives (SLOs) with budgets while avoiding cloud overspend; back up to Google Cloud object storage for cost-effective long-term retention and compliance.
• Security: Overcome security threats including ransomware as well as insider threats by isolating backup data from production (cross-project/cross-region); layered security to protect against brute force attacks with multi-factor authentication (MFA).
• Hybrid-Ready: Portable data format and integration with Veeam Backup & Replication™ external repositories enables easy recovery outside of Google Cloud; utilizes flexible Veeam Universal Licensing (VUL) to simplify license management and enable Cloud Mobility.

New Veeam Backupfor Google Cloud PlatformFREE edition (up to 10 Google Cloud workloads can be backed up with unlimited restore options and basic support) and BYOL edition (VUL with flexible Cloud Data Management and production 24/7 support) is available now in the Google Cloud Marketplace.

[1] 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence – COVID-19 Update: 2020 Trends in Managed Services & Hosting

[2] IDC Semi Annual Public Cloud Services Tracker, H1 2020

By: Jacob Chacko Regional Business Head – Middle East, Saudi & South Africa (MESA) at HPE Aruba

With CES a staple in the tech calendar for as long as I can remember, January always heralds the launch of some of the best, and at times most bizarre, devices of the year. And despite its virtual setting, this year’s show has delivered no differently.

Indeed, products “on display” at the 2021 conference included a furry anxiety robot, a home gardening machine, and smart perfume – all of which are either already available to buy or reportedly will be later this year. Good news for all the consumers who are eager to take them home and plug them into their network.

Of course, normally this wouldn’t represent any kind of problem for business leads and their IT teams – you can watch the launches with curiosity and consider each device’s merits as a consumer would. Expect this isn’t a normal year – and now it very much could be a problem.

According to Trend Micro research, more than half (52%) of global remote workers have IoT devices connected to their home network, and at least 10% are using lesser-known brands. With many such devices – especially from smaller brands – having well-documented weaknesses such as unpatched firmware vulnerabilities and insecure logins, the security implications of your corporate devices now being connected to the same network and vice versa are significant.

While I am certainly not casting any aspersions on this specific crop of CES gadgets, as the lines between work and home networks continue to blur smart home devices and their apps could represent a major weak link in corporate cybersecurity chains.

So with home working likely to remain standard practice even after the vaccine rolls out, how can you ensure your business is secure no matter where, how and what employees connect to it? And perhaps more importantly, how can you do so in a way that protects employee productivity versus simply locking them out?

The way I see it, securing the new hybrid workplace has three core requirements:

Identification – the only way to police access to your corporate network is to know what devices are trying to connect to it (either by name or behaviour), who is operating them and how and why they need to connect. With these details to hand, and the right security solution in place, you can differentiate the type of access you grant according to device or user group – full access, access to certain resource only, no access at all.   

Visibility – of course, in order to identify and segment all the devices accessing it, the network must first be able to see them. But with networks now extending across home, branch and cloud environments the picture most companies have today is fragmented at best. And this is only likely to get worse when hybrid working has employees constantly moving in and out of the office. That is why unifying your network infrastructure to ensure a single-pane-of-glass view is such an important step. After all, you can have the smartest technologies running on your network, but if they aren’t seeing the full picture then they can’t function 100% effectively and you’re still leaving yourself open to dangers.  

Automation – even with all this visibility, the sheer volume of devices now connecting to the network makes manual intervention to enforce any access policies practically impossible. Many IoT devices are operating around the clock and have the potential to “go bad” at any time – regardless of whether it is during work hours or not.

With AI you can develop policies that leverage context, such as the user role, device type, and location to make quick, accurate and automated decisions about how to react to anything out of the ordinary. That means that when an IoT device joins a network or starts to act suspiciously, it can be automatically quarantined (to borrow a topical word), keeping the rest of your corporate traffic separate and secure.

As we head deeper into 2021, security requirements might be getting more sophisticated, but so are the solutions available to meet them. We know hybrid working is coming, so why not take the time now to get your security prepared for everything this will mean.

By setting up comprehensive visibility as an essential foundation, and then building machine learning and artificial intelligence on top your business can stay one step ahead of, and reduce, the threat of the home-connected IoT device – and much more besides.