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

The COVID-19 crisis has accelerated digital transformation initiatives to offer an improved customer experience and personalized services, all while tackling increasingly sophisticated cybersecurity threats. More than ever, organizations need flexibility to keep pace with business change, but they are often hindered by a sluggish and rigid network infrastructure.

Below I will describe the five key benefits of implementing an advanced SD-WAN solution and how it can accelerate business growth:

1. Improve business agility while reducing overall WAN cost
   To connect branch offices to the corporate data center, organizations have traditionally used expensive MPLS lines. As more bandwidth is required to support increasing connectivity demands, MPLS lines become cost-prohibitive, preventing organizations from fully satisfying their business needs. New MPLS circuits can take up to four months to be provisioned, greatly slowing down the ability to spin up a new branch. This hinders business changes, agility, and flexibility.

An SD-WAN leverages less expensive internet and 5G connections by virtualizing and bonding network links, creating secure tunnels from the branch offices to the data center and to the cloud.

With SD-WAN, organizations can realize the agility needed by the business while reducing costs.

• Increase security and seamlessly transition to a SASE architecture

Organizations with an MPLS router-based architecture are not able to easily enforce security policies in branches due to the rigidity and the complexity of their network, especially in hybrid-cloud environments. The security perimeter is dissolving as users and devices now connect from anywhere. Traditional security measures such as VPNs are limited as a VPN doesn’t support enforcement of granular security policies. Indeed, once a user has been identified and authenticated with a VPN connection, they can access critical resources inside the network even if they shouldn’t.

SD-WAN is the foundational component to implement a robust SASE architecture. By choosing best-of-breed security capabilities with a tight SD-WAN integration, organizations ensure maximum protection to their employees and other stakeholders accessing the network.

• Enable a cloud architecture

Organizations are migrating their applications to the cloud and use software as a service (SaaS) cloud-hosted business applications such as Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Box, Dropbox, ServiceNow and many more instead of hosting them in the data center. However, organizations with traditional router-based WAN architectures continue to backhaul cloud-destined traffic from branch locations to the data center, mainly for security reasons, severely impacting the performance of cloud applications at the branch.

SD-WAN enables organizations to embrace the flexibility of a cloud architecture while improving cloud application performance by steering traffic directly to the cloud using local internet breakout.

• Simplify WAN infrastructure

Over the years, organizations have built their network infrastructure as their business grows. Branch offices often ended up with a stack of appliances in their facilities including routers, firewalls, VPN concentrators, and WAN optimization devices. Updating a business or security policy such as moving an application to the cloud or improving quality of service often requires manually reconfiguring multiple devices. Not only does equipment sprawl require advanced networking skills to maintain and manage, but it also results in multiple maintenance contracts to administer.

SD-WAN enables organizations to move to a thin-branch model by reducing the amount of equipment in branch locations streamlining the network architecture and significantly reducing WAN management overhead.

• Centrally manage network operations and get visibility

Very often, organizations must manage their network operations on a local basis resulting in a lack of flexibility. The network deployment of new remote sites can be tedious and can take several weeks to accomplish. Corporate IT departments often don’t have complete network visibility to comprehensively monitor transport throughput, packet loss, latency, and jitter. An advanced SD-WAN continuously monitors network health and automatically adapts to changing conditions to always deliver optimal application performance.

With SD-WAN, new branch offices are set up quickly and easily, and security policy changes can be automatically distributed to hundreds or thousands of branches in minutes while minimizing errors. Network administrators can monitor network health through a single pane of glass and dashboards.

Italy – a country of skilled manufacturers – and UAE – a country of high quality services –  share a strong vision on the future of mobility

Italy has a long and prestigious history in the automotive industry – over € 33 bilion of cars manufactured in Italy are exported abroad every year – and ranks among the first countries with the highest percentage of industrial robots used in this sector (9% of companies vs 7% European average). The challenges of decarbonisation are leading to a technological reconversion of the entire automotive supply chain, destined to become increasingly sustainable, connected and safe. 

A group of Italian and local experts were invited by the Italian Trade Agency (ITA), in cooperation with the Embassy of Italy in the UAE, the Consulate General in Dubai and the Italian Commissioner’s Office of the Italy Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai, at the Italy Pavilion at Expo 2020 to discuss the future of the mobility and how connected cars are becoming more and more a reality.

The Innovation Talk titled “Connected Cars and Sustaibalbe Mobility” was moderated by Carlo Ferro President Italian Trade Agency, and included as guest speakers Livia Cevolini, CEO Energica Motor Company S.p.A.; Alfonso Fuggetta, Ceo Cefriel; Alberto Litta Modignani, VP Hydrogen Nextchem; Elisa Vannini, Researcher Connected Car & Mobility Observatory of Politecnico di Milano; Andew DeFrancesca, Sales And Business Development Manager eka; Nuzhat Naweedd, Chief Product Offier CAFU.  H.E. Nicola Lener, Ambassador of Italy to the UAE, also attended the event and shard with the public his closing remarks.

All over the world we are at a cross road between digital transformation and environmental transition. Opening the floor, Elisa Vannini, Researcher, Connected Car & Mobility Observatory, Politecnico di Milano, shared what are the maintrends emerging in th automotive industry and their impacts in the business model evolution of the automotive sector.

“It’s all about data valorization” Ms Vannini said.  “We’ll see for sure the developing of a lot of new services, for instance maintenance in preventive and predictive way. There will be a process of servitization of hardware with car makers that are going to be able to build a competitive advantage on the hardware components and unlock extended capabilities and offer the users the possibility to activate extra services.

And then we will have an impact even on affiliated sectors, with the insurance companies, for example, being able to customize their policies on the basis of the data collected through the connected vehicles.”

The concept of cars will completely change and so is the way we deisgn, produce and distribute them according to Alfonso Fuggetta, Ceo Cefriel, an Italian center for digital innovation that creates and rethinks products, services and processes, participates to national and international research, and develops digital skills and culture. Cooperation, agility and a stratup attitude are crucial for the industry to accelerate the process of innovation and to rethik the mobility products.

Talking about the combination of tradition and innovation, Livia Cevolini, CEO Energica Motor Company S.p.A, the first Italian manufacturer of high-performing electric motorcycles, said “We are the perfect example of the combination between past and future. We do believe that that’s the best way to also face the new challenges of the new mobility. Having big roots in strong and mature skills, like we have in the Italian Motor Valley, makes you different compared to the sisters that for example we have in Silicon Valley, where software houses have great, incredible skills in the new challenges of the digitalization and connectivity, but not enough.

We are doing mobility, that means also mechanical engineering; what makes a difference and what is for us the winning choice, is to combine the aggressive push for innovation on digitalization and new mobility with the perfect mechanical engineering that we have in Italy, where we have a big history in the automotive field.”

Commenting about the role of hydrogen in accelerating the energy transition in the mobility sector, Alberto Litta Modignani, VP Hydrogen Nextchem, a company for green chemistry and energy transition, said “Hydrogen is an enabler of the energy transition in many sectors, including mobility. In mobility it can serve as a fuel directly into fuel cells and it can be used also to produce synthetic fuels, combining hydrogen and CO2. This can be done in a green way in areas of the world where there is availability of renewable power and renewable sources, like sun and wind, enabling the production of green hydrogen for the decarbonisation of those sectors.”

The Innovation Talks are a platform to foster the dialogue between Italy and UAE initiated by the Embassy of Italy to the UAE last year with InnovItaly and that will continue after Expo2020. Each talk feature highly-regarded personalities from both Italy and the UAE invited to discuss issues related to Expo 2020 Dubai’s weekly themes and the trade fairs ITA is participating in around the Emirates.

To watch the registration of the Innovation Talks, please visit the official YouTube channel of

Italy Expo 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duU_Ia-CdG4

For latest news and updates, please follow @ITAdubai on Twitter, @ITAdubai on Instagram, ITA – Dubai Office on LinkedIn, and Italian Trade Agency on YouTube.

Organisations across the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa will be able to ensure proximity and governance of data through new Azure region

Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW), the Data Cloud company, today announced its increasing presence in the UAE with general availability on the Azure region in Dubai. The new deployment meets increasing regional customer demand for Snowflake’s Data Cloud, enabling local enterprises to maintain proximity to their data, while enabling strict compliance with local data regulations.

“We launched in the region knowing the importance of local data residency for organisations in UAE and ensuring that data held locally is met with the utmost governance protocols,” said Mohamed Zouari, General Manager, Middle East, Turkey, and Africa, at Snowflake. “Our Dubai office launch, matched with the latest regional Azure cloud deployment,  signals  our commitment to the region’s data innovators, who can now mobilise their data through  Snowflake’s Data Cloud, to drive both business value and agility.”

Customers using Snowflake’s Data Cloud can discover and securely share data, as well as execute diverse analytic workloads. The platform is a cloud-native powerhouse of business intelligence capabilities, including data warehousing, data lakes, data engineering, data science, data applications, and data sharing. Snowflake uses an innovative, per-second pricing model, enabling customers’ access to almost limitless capacity while only paying for the resources they consume.

Snowflake UAE is focusing on local and global systems integrators that are building data strategies and platforms that leverage the power of its Data Cloud. Chosen to spearhead the strategy, the local team focuses are public sector, finance, retail, telecom, media, gaming, fintech, insurance, healthcare and oil and gas. The Snowflake Middle East team is supported by local channel partners to bring Snowflake’s Data Cloud capabilities to a wider set of organisations across those key industries.

“With Snowflake, every company can finally become a data-driven enterprise,” Zouari said. “Many customers such as banks, telecom providers and governmental organizations are tapping into Snowflake’s Data Cloud to accelerate their digital transformation with data at the very heart of this. Data collaboration across these organisations will help achieve their goals of delivering the best citizen experience in the world.”

Snowflake’s rapidly growing customer base of leading regional enterprises includes Emaar, PropertyFinder, Kitopi, Mondia, and ArabyAds.

New offering in the United Arab Emirates, running on Microsoft Azure, will help meet the country’s growing demand for cloud data protection that complies with local regulations

• Barracuda Cloud-to-Cloud Backup sales grew by 55% in the past 12 months, and the new services in the UAE, France and India will support this growth further.
• Customers dealing with strict regulatory, industry, and data requirements in these three areas can now take advantage of innovative technology from Barracuda to store and restore their data in their own region.

As it looks to meet the growing demand for data protection in the Emirates and better serve its Middle East customers, Barracuda Networks, Inc., a trusted partner and leading provider of cloud-first security solutions, today announced that its Cloud-to-Cloud Backup solution will now be delivered to customers in the United Arab Emirates from Microsoft’s local cloud data centres. This makes a total of 10 regions for the solution, and customers’ Office 365 backup data will be stored locally within the country, a key requirement for customers operating in regulated industries, and in complying with local regulations.

In a recent study conducted by Barracuda, organisations disclosed that data protection is both a security and regulatory concern for them. A full 69% of respondents said they are concerned about storage of the data being backed up outside their geography (geo residency), and more than 7 in 10 respondents are concerned about compliance with data privacy requirements.  

With the UAE’s landmark personal data legislation that places new regulations around the processing of personal data for individuals in the UAE coming into effect this year, such concerns around geo-residency will no doubt be amplified for businesses in the country.

“At Barracuda, we continue to invest in our global infrastructure in order to help local organisations get access to protection against emerging threats,” said Chris Ross, SVP International, Barracuda. “As more organisations move to the cloud, they are looking to protect their data, while being able to handle and store data locally. Microsoft advises customers to use a third-party backup and recovery provider, and with these new regions, we will be able to serve our customers while helping them comply with data regulations and policies.”

Barracuda’s latest version of Cloud-to-Cloud Backup delivers a fast search and restore experience for Office 365 data, including Teams, Exchange Online, SharePoint, and OneDrive. Compared to traditional backup and recovery solutions, it is a cloud-first solution that provides scale and resiliency, fast performance, and wide global coverage to protect Office 365 data born in the cloud.

Necip Ozyucel, Cloud and Enterprise Business Group Lead, Microsoft UAE added, “We are excited about Barracuda making Cloud-to-Cloud Backup available on the Azure UAE Regions to provide data residency. Barracuda Cloud-to-Cloud Backup provides a flexible and scalable backup solution with its cloud native features running on our local datacentre regions in the UAE.”

By: John Maddison, EVP Products & Solutions at Fortinet

Today’s hybrid workers require access to distributed applications deployed in the datacenter, multi-cloud environments, and SaaS locations. Digital acceleration involves adopting and implementing new technologies and practices to improve business agility and employee productivity. But it is also redefining the network edge—especially in today’s Work-from-Anywhere world where users move between on-premises locations, interconnected branch locations, home offices, and temporary locations during travel—thereby expanding the attack surface and exposing the business to new, advanced threats.

Unfortunately, most traditional network architectures were built using disparate and statically deployed point products that provide implicit access to all applications. However, such an approach is no longer effective at providing secure access to critical resources at scale, especially as users, devices, and applications are in constant motion. And the inevitable rerouting of traffic to fixed security points for inspection severely impacts user experience, especially when those tools cannot adequately examine encrypted application, data, and video streams. Far too often, the default response in many organizations has been to bypass security to not impact critical business operations. And the result has been disastrous, with ransomware, phishing, botnet, and other criminal activity now at an all-time high.

What’s needed is a secure Digital Acceleration strategy that ensures that new technologies can be adopted and new, highly dynamic edges can be established without compromising the protection of critical data or the security of users and devices. Zero-trust is based on the principle that every device or user is potentially compromised, and therefore every access request must be authorized and continuously verify. And even then, users and devices can only access those resources required to do their job and nothing more.

This same approach is now being applied to the remote edges of the network, a strategy known as the “Zero Trust Edge.” This new zero-trust approach to securing the expanding edges of today’s networks helps ensure that Security-Driven Networking – the critical convergence of security and networking – is everywhere. This enables security to seamlessly adapt to dynamic changes to the underlying network infrastructure, including connectivity, while providing explicit access to applications based on user identity and context.

Security-Driven Networking from Fortinet

Forrester recently described a solution they have dubbed the “All-In-One Zero Trust Edge” in the Now Tech Report published in December 2021. In that report, they described the future of next-generation networking infrastructure as bringing together networking and security in any combination of cloud, software, and hardware components, securely interweaving users, data, and resources using essential zero-trust principles.

Fortinet is recognized in this report. We believe that’s because we uniquely bring together all components needed to converge networking and security and can then deploy them on premises and in the cloud, including SD-WAN, NGFW and ZTNA. This ensures that we can deliver consistent convergence and zero implicit trust everywhere. We call this Security-Driven Networking.

Fortinet’s Security-Driven Networking approach starts with FortiOS-based innovations, including our on-premises SD-WAN and next-generation firewall secure access solutions, which also includes built-in ZTNA. It continues in the cloud with Fortinet’s cloud-based secure web gateway, CASB, and ZTNA solutions for remote users. 

Figure 1: Fortinet’s Security-Driven Networking approach to Zero Trust Edge

What is a Zero Trust Edge Solution?

Fortinet’s Security-Driven Networking innovations deliver the industry’s most complete Zero Trust Edge solution:

1. SD-WAN: Providing better path and user-experience to applications and services using SD-WAN is foundational for any Zero Trust Edge solution. Fortinet was the first vendor to blend advanced security and connectivity into a unified solution. Our Secure SD-WAN solution securely interconnects all offices to every datacenter, multi-cloud, and SaaS environment. And in addition to reliable connectivity and cloud on-ramp, it includes a full suite of advanced security, enables dynamic segmentation to prevent lateral threat movement for East-West protection, and maintains superior user experience through digital experience monitoring.

2. Hybrid Convergence of Networking and Security: Zero Trust Edge must also support today’s highly dynamic networks. Legacy security solutions struggle to provide consistent policy distribution, orchestration, and enforcement when the underlying network is in constant motion. Integrating security and networking into a unified system is essential for deploying consistent security everywhere, both for on-premises and remote users. Fortinet is the only vendor to deliver networking and security convergence powered by the same operating system (FortiOS) to offer seamless policy distribution and orchestration. We also provide the industry’s highest security performance using our purpose-built security ASICs, enabling the inspection of encrypted traffic, including streaming video, without impacting user experience.

3. Secure Remote Access: Cloud-delivered security that securely connects all remote users is essential to any Zero Trust Edge solution. Comprehensive web security from the cloud must provide multiple layers of defense with AI-driven web filtering, video filtering, DNS filtering, IP Reputation, Anti-botnet service including the ability to address data loss prevention and protect mobile users with in-line CASB integration.

4. ZTNA Everywhere: Finally, Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) is essential for securing access to the critical applications and resources today’s hybrid workforce demands. However, protecting a hybrid workforce that may be in the office one day, working from home the next, and traveling another requires a ZTNA solution that is available everywhere users or devices are located. Unlike traditional VPN, ZTNA provides explicit access to users per application based on identity and context. Fortinet is the only vendor with a ZTNA solution designed to protect access from any edge, not just a few edges.

Fortinet’s Security-driven Networking Approach to Zero Trust Edge

Fortinet’s innovative approach to Zero Trust Edge converges enterprise-class security and networking everywhere across the network. This unique ability ensures secure access to critical applications and resources, whether users are on-premises or accessing resources through the cloud. Our Security-Driven Networking approach—including our unique combination of exclusive purpose-built ASICs, cloud-delivered security solutions, and integrated networking capabilities—enables superior user experience combined with coordinated threat protection for every network edge.

Zero Trust Edge resolves one of the most enduring challenges facing today’s IT teams: extending enterprise-grade security and granular access control to remote workers. Fortinet’s Security-Driven Networking approach provides a unique solution to overcoming user experience, siloed and disconnected networking/security technologies, and implicit trust challenges that create obstacles for today’s organizations serious about digital acceleration and implementing an effective—and secure—work from anywhere strategy.