By: Amr Alashaal, Regional Vice President – Middle East at A10 Networks

CSOs, CIOs and CISOs have never had it so tough. Alongside their traditional responsibilities of safeguarding the corporation’s physical assets on a day-to-day basis and preparing crisis management strategies, they must now face a cybersecurity threat environment that is growing exponentially.

Today, ransomware has become one of the greatest network security threats organisations have to deal with. Increasingly sophisticated and distributed at a high speed via the internet and private networks using military-grade encryption, today’s ransomware attacks demand multimillion-dollar ransoms.

But ransomware is only one of the many threats organisations have to deal with. There are also distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, Man in the Middle (MitM) attacks, social engineering, insider threats, malware, and advanced persistent threats (APTs) to contend with – and those are just the most common network security threats.

Below are seven strategies to make cybersecurity professionals’ organisations safer from the countless network security threats they’ll be facing in the near future:

1. Create a “Security-first” Culture

The problem for CSOs is that, while most employees have some basic knowledge of cybersecurity best practices, that is pretty much all they have. Without ongoing training, knowledge testing and awareness, staff behaviour is one of the biggest cybersecurity risks that organisations face.

A study by Accenture revealed that less than half of new employees receive cybersecurity training and regular updates throughout their career. Just four in ten respondents said insider threat programs were a high priority.

Organisations must look to create a robust and distributed digital immune system with a radical re-engineering of staff behaviour. Business leaders need to have accountability for cybersecurity; security teams need to collaborate with business leaders to create and implement  policies that will actually work, and those policies need to be routinely re-evaluated and tested.

2. Create a Continuous Security Education Program

A “security-first” culture requires that all members of the culture appreciate the concept of network security threats. For this to actually have an impact on culture, however, staff must be trained routinely to ensure that their knowledge is current.

3. Implement a Zero-Trust Model Throughout the Business

Well-trained staff and a monitored environment are crucial to the successful protection of any organisation but without a foundational Zero Trust environment, defences will be intrinsically weak.

The Zero Trust model is a strategy for preventing network security threats that all enterprises and governments should be using to defend their networks. It consists of four components:

• Network traffic control: Engineering networks to have micro-segments and micro-perimeters ensures that network traffic flow is restricted and limits the impact of overly broad user privileges and access. The goal is to allow only as much network access to services as is needed to get the job done. Anything beyond the minimum is a potential threat.
• Instrumentation: The ability to monitor network traffic in-depth along with comprehensive analytics and response automation provides fast and effective incident detection.
• Multi-vendor network integration: Real networks aren’t limited to a single vendor. Even if they could be, additional tools are still needed to provide the features that a single vendor won’t provide. The goal is to get all of the multi-vendor network components working together as seamlessly as possible to enable compliance and unified cybersecurity. This is a very difficult and complex project but keeping this strategic goal in mind as the network evolves will create a far more effective cybersecurity posture.
• Monitoring: Ensure comprehensive and centralised visibility into users, devices, data, the network, and workflows. This also includes visibility into all encrypted channels.

At its core, the Zero Trust model is based on not trusting anyone or anything on the company. This means that network access is never granted without the network knowing exactly who or what is gaining access.

4. Implement SSL Visibility – “Break and Inspect”

TLS/SSL inspection solutions that decrypt and analyse encrypted network traffic are key to ensuring policy compliance and privacy standards in the Zero Trust model.

Also called “break and inspect”, TLS/SSL inspection bolsters Zero Trust in three major ways. It allows for the detection and removal of malware payloads and suspicious network communications, prevents the exfiltration of sensitive data, and enables the Zero Trust model to do what it’s supposed to do – provide in-depth and rigorous protection for networks from internal and external threats.

For any organisation that hasn’t adopted a Zero Trust strategy combined with deep TLS/SSL traffic inspection, now is the time to start rethinking their cybersecurity posture.

5. Review and Test DDoS Defences Regularly

Routine testing against a checklist of expected configurations and performance standards, as well as random tests of security integrity, is crucial to detecting a distributed denial of service attack.

Network performance testing should be executed daily because a distributed denial of service attack isn’t always a full-bore assault. It can also be a low-volume attack designed to reduce, but not remove, connectivity.

6. Secure all Inbound and Outbound Network Traffic Using SSL/TLS Encryption

When users’ computers connect to resources over the internet, SSL/TLS creates a secure channel using encryption, authentication, and integrity verification. Encryption hides data communications from third parties trying to eavesdrop, while authentication ensures the parties exchanging information are who they claim to be. The combination ensures the data has not been compromised.

Any un-secured traffic must be constrained to specific secured network segments and monitored closely.

7. Establish and Test Disaster Recovery Plans

A key part of a disaster recovery plan involves backups. However, it is surprising how often restoring from backup systems in real-world situations doesn’t perform as expected. It’s important to know which digital assets are and are not included in backups and how long it will take to restore content.

CSOs should plan the order in which backed-up resources will be recovered, know what the start-up window will be, and test backups as a routine task with specific validation checks to ensure that a recovery is possible.

Staying Secure

The CSO’s job isn’t getting any easier, but solid planning using the seven strategies will help ensure an organisation’s digital safety. In addition, partnering with top-level enterprise cybersecurity vendors will ensure that critical security technology and best practices are central to the organisation’s cybersecurity strategy.

Solution Gives Remote Workers the Complete In-Office Connectivity Experience by Extending SD-WAN and SASE Security Services – All Through a Single Access Point, No Gateway Or Agent Required

Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company (NYSE: HPE), today introduced its new EdgeConnect Microbranch solution, an industry-leading home office and small office networking solution for hybrid work environments that securely provides remote personnel all of the traditional services workers receive in-office via a single Wi-Fi access point (AP) – with no gateway, agent or additional hardware required at the remote site. With EdgeConnect Microbranch, IT departments can ensure the employee experience is consistent no matter where workers are located. EdgeConnect Microbranch enables this by delivering the full range of on-campus connectivity services to remote workers, accelerating troubleshooting, and maintaining corporate protections by seamlessly extending on-campus Zero Trust and Secure Access Services Edge (SASE) security frameworks to the home office/small office.

EdgeConnect Microbranch, part of Aruba ESP (Edge Services Platform), comprises APs and a new suite of SD-WAN services and builds upon Aruba’s legacy of delivering robust connectivity, security, and zero touch onboarding experiences to the home office through its popular Remote Access Points (RAPs).

SD-WAN has been added to large branches and campuses to deal with the increasing demands for higher application performance, reliability, and security. Now, as hybrid work becomes the norm, home and small remote offices need the automated, policy-based traffic management and cloud-based SASE security of Aruba SD-WAN to efficiently, robustly, and securely support a workforce that increasingly is remote. In fact, IDC estimates that 70% of G2000 organizations will deploy remote or hybrid-first work models, redefining work processes.^[1]

For organizations, the key to successfully enabling flexible and remote work is the ability to provide hybrid workers with the same access to tools, applications, and functionality at home as in the office. The new EdgeConnect Microbranch solution does this by adding new SD-WAN and SASE services to the connectivity, identity-based access control, management, and analytics capabilities users have enjoyed with Aruba RAPs – without the need for additional hardware on premises or agents on devices. Not needing additional hardware is an important factor in space-constrained home offices, small offices, and ad-hoc locations unstaffed by IT, such as retail pop-ups, kiosks, and mobile clinics.

EdgeConnect Microbranch services address common challenges associated with remote work, such as the need to guarantee the performance of latency-sensitive applications like unified communication and collaboration while ensuring proper security and contending with a higher density of bandwidth-hungry devices that may be on the network. New EdgeConnect Microbranch services such as policy-based routing, which enables IT to optimize how application traffic is routed to a destination, complement existing services such as Air Slice, which dynamically allocates AP radio resources to specific applications. For example, video conferencing call quality can be improved by prioritizing that traffic over video entertainment, and then routing the video conferencing traffic directly to the trusted SaaS vendor, bypassing an unnecessary trip to the data center for inspection.

“EdgeConnect Microbranch gives organizations a modern, scalable approach for enabling remote work and making the home office experience equivalent to being in-office,” said Larry Lunetta, VP of Solutions Portfolio Marketing at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. “While some may believe that the only network service that can be extended to the home office AP/router is security – and even that requires an extra box, – EdgeConnect Microbranch demonstrates that, with a cloud-based approach, all critical network services can be extended to the home office solely through an access point.”

By extending the already robust RAP in-home experience with key SD-WAN features, EdgeConnect Microbranch is now an ideal solution for hybrid operations like contact centers, telehealth, and IT management, where uptime and security are critical.

EdgeConnect Microbranch is an industry-leading solution that improves upon typical approaches that require extensive hardware footprints within the small and home office to deliver SD-WAN and SASE services, as well as consumer-grade hardware and single-purpose appliances that lack robust manageability and functionality.

New SD-WAN Features and Benefits – No On-Premises Gateway Required

• Policy-based routing: Allows IT to deliver application performance and security based on automated rules to meet service-level agreements (SLAs) for specific applications, websites or types of users
• Tunnel and route orchestration: Optimizes network performance by orchestrating VPN tunnels on demand and automatically rerouting traffic to the network path that will provide the best performance
• SASE integration: Provides secure connectivity to cloud security services such as Zscaler directly via the AP and with Aruba Central providing orchestration of tunnels and unified configuration management
• Enhanced WAN visibility: Accelerates troubleshooting and improves the user experience by providing near real-time updates on WAN availability, utilization, and throughput by detecting latency, jitter, and other connectivity issues impacting the ISP that have traditionally been hidden from IT teams

These features build upon existing capabilities of Aruba’s remote access solutions, including:

• Traffic prioritization: Assigns radio resources to an application and dynamically changes assignments as application sessions begin or end
• Massive scalability: Supports zero touch deployment and consolidated management for tens of thousands of remote workers via Aruba Central’s cloud-based services and AOS 10
• Improved uptime and reliability: Provides for LTE backup via a USB interface should the home or small office lose ISP connectivity

“As remote working continues to expand, IT departments are facing an increasing number of challenges, such as ensuring visible, easily managed, and highly secure access for all workers – no matter where they are located – to business-critical applications and data,” said Chris DePuy, technology analyst at 650 Group. “Being able to extend Zero Trust and SASE security frameworks to home and remote offices will play an important role as enterprises move their hybrid work initiatives forward.”

Pricing and Availability

The Aruba EdgeConnect Microbranch solution is available in Early Access and will be generally available in March 2022 for any AP running ArubaOS 10 with a Foundation AP License (including qualified APs customers already own and manage in Central.) Aruba Central Foundation Licenses are available for $145 per AP. AP pricing varies per model and starts at $575.00 US for the Aruba 303H Series.

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[1]IDC, IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Future of Work Predictions, November 2021

Cohesity, a leader in next-gen data management, today announced the appointment of James Worrall as head of EMEA channels. Worrall has extensive experience in building sales channels, having been in leadership roles for networking, enterprise IT and technology startups over the last 20-plus years. In his role at Cohesity, he will report into the Cohesity global partner organisation, led by Mike Houghton. Worrall has responsibility for scaling the company’s EMEA partner ecosystem while advancing the company’s go-to-market strategy in the region.

Before joining the team at Cohesity, Worrall was vice president of EMEA channel at F5 Networks and EMEA channel sales lead at Juniper Networks. In these and previous roles, Worrall held responsibility for developing the overarching channel program and strategy, with a focus on incentivising partners, simplifying processes, and making the technology easy to understand and resell. Worrall is based north of Oslo, Norway, but traces his sales roots back to his youth in Bolton, UK, where he worked in door-to-door sales.

“Cohesity is already helping numerous organisations throughout EMEA transform how they back up, protect, secure and derive value from data through next-gen data management, but I believe we’ve only scratched the surface of what’s possible and the opportunity for partners is immense,” said Worrall. “I am outrageously optimistic about what Cohesity can do working hand-in-hand with exceptional partners throughout the region. The future of our business is in the channel and I’m focused on continuing to grow, scale, and nurture our partner ecosystem and in the process empower more customers to reap the benefits of modern data management.”

“James is full of energy and ideas and has been instrumental in building world class channel programmes for other IT vendors,” said Mike Houghton, vice president, global partner organisation, Cohesity. “As enterprises throughout the EMEA region are looking to deploy next-gen data management technologies, James will play a key role in the EMEA organisation, ensuring our go-to-market strategy and local partner ecosystem are scaling and evolving to capture these opportunities while helping partners differentiate and positively impact their bottom line.”

By: Anas Al-Hammouri, Regional Sales Manager, Telco and SPs, Middle East & Turkey at Infoblox

Fifth Generation wireless (5G) signifies a vast improvement over current cellular wireless technology in terms of speed, response time, reliability, number of supported device types and device density per square kilometer. The technology has the potential to transform cell phone usability. 5G’s potential applications go beyond cell phones to the Internet of Things (IoT) and sensors, enabling innovations in mobile health, telesurgery, automated manufacturing, smart cities, e-sports, VR/AR gaming and connected vehicles.

Network Operator Requirements and Challenges

The transition to 5G and accompanying industry impact will create numerous technical challenges for network operators and service providers, especially with the core network services vital to 5G connectivity: DNS, DHCP and IP address management (DDI). Among the most pressing challenges are:

• Ultra-low DNS latency to enable real-time applications
• Auto-scaling DDI for network slicing
• Distributing DDI services to the network edge for multi-access edge computing (MEC) in the smallest possible footprint

With 5G—Latency Matters More Than Ever

At 5 milliseconds, current DNS latency is too high to support many 5G applications. For example, in 5G deployments, AR/ VR, gaming, connected cars, and telesurgery will require end to-end latency of 1-10 milliseconds. Clearly, current DNS latency is unacceptable. The pervasive connectivity of 5G will increase reliance on edge computing, which brings cloud resources compute, storage, and networking—closer to applications, devices, and users. 5G implementations will require greater use of small cell stations at the very edge of the network, so data need not travel long distances to a cloud or data center. To ensure unhindered traffic flow at the edge, DNS services must also be positioned at the edge.

A New Variable: Encrypted DNS

New encrypted DNS standards have emerged that, while protecting the privacy of DNS requests and the integrity of responses, Communications Service Providers (CSPs) can lose some of the control needed to govern DNS usage within their networks unless they provide their encrypted DNS services. DNS over TLS (transport layer security) or DoT, and DNS over HTTPS or DoH, work by encrypting the DNS communication between your operating system’s stub resolver or a local application and your recursive DNS resolver. Both technologies ensure data privacy and authentication by encrypting communications between DNS clients and servers. However, in doing so, many solutions are changed to point to external DNS resolvers, allowing client devices to access DNS services outside of the provider’s control and exposing the subscriber to potential security risks and negative customer experiences.

Providers need to reduce the risks these technologies pose. Implementing encryption through the DNS resolver on the network allows service providers to remain in control of their subscriber’s network experience. It will enable providers to continue to provide security, content filtering and other critical on-net services.

As HCI Lays the Foundation for Hybrid Multicloud Success, Nutanix is Recognized for its Completeness of Vision and Execution in HCI Solutions

Nutanix (NASDAQ: NTNX) a leader in hybrid multicloud computing, announced today it has been named as a Leader in Gartner, Inc.’s November 2021 Magic Quadrant for Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) Software[1]. This is the fifth year in a row that Nutanix has been named as a Leader in this report. Nutanix believes its continued recognition as a Leader can be attributed to its expanded and enhanced HCI software capabilities and its customer support that has earned an average 90 Net Promoter Score (NPS) for the past seven years.

“Nutanix is no stranger to driving new innovation to ensure that our HCI solutions are meeting our customers where they are on their cloud journeys,” said Rajiv Mirani, Chief Technology Officer at Nutanix. “Businesses are increasingly embracing hybrid multicloud strategies and we’ve seen customers rapidly adopt HCI solutions to simplify datacenter modernization efforts while capitalizing on the added automation, ease of use, agility and full software stack capabilities that HCI enables. We believe that our continued recognition in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Hyperconverged Infrastructure Software demonstrates Nutanix’s commitment to providing expanded solution capabilities and support that results in the success of our customers.”

As organizations plan for the future, businesses are continuing to adopt cloud operating models and modernize on-premises infrastructure. This enables organizations to respond in real time to the ever-changing IT landscape, with hybrid multicloud solutions offering the benefits of both public and private clouds. HCI solutions have emerged as an effective tool to deliver datacenter modernization as well as cut down on the cost and complexity that accompany hybrid multicloud deployments. According to Gartner, “HCI stacks can be turnkey hybrid clouds, providing infrastructure management and cloud services both on-premises and in hyperscale public clouds. They have effectively replaced build-it-yourself hybrid cloud technologies such as OpenStack[2].” Gartner also notes that, “the most advanced HCI stacks provide the full stack of software-defined infrastructure — compute, storage and networking. SDI is a key enabling technology for automation, hybrid clouds and edge infrastructure².”

“In terms of maturity, Nutanix was far ahead of all of the other HCI players,” said Dan Lewis, Associate Director of Operations and Infrastructure Services at the USC Marshall School of Business. “We were really impressed with Nutanix, and how quickly we could get everything set up in a compact environment without sacrificing any performance. That was the gating factor for us, because if we were going to switch to an all-in-one system, it had to be powerful and resilient. The solution had to be able to survive node failures, but also block failures and network failures. Nutanix Cloud Platform was the only platform that met all of our requirements.”

With HCI at its core, the Nutanix Cloud Platform offers unified management, with application, data and license portability between multiple clouds, whether private or public. Nutanix has recently added enhancements to its HCI software capabilities to break down silos in multicloud operations, including built-in enterprise-grade virtualization, virtual networking, security, business continuity and disaster recovery. Nutanix also added new capabilities in the Nutanix Cloud Platform to simplify data management and optimize database and big data workload performance for the most critical applications. This includes expanded unified storage capabilities with a focus on performance, scale, mobility and governance for objects, files and databases. Additionally, Nutanix database service Era delivers one-click storage scaling and rich role-based access control for database management across hybrid multicloud environments.

Additionally, Nutanix continues to strengthen its platform for cloud native applications and recently announced a strategic partnership with Red Hat to deliver open hybrid multicloud solutions. This partnership enables customers to run Red Hat OpenShift on Nutanix’s AHV hypervisor and utilize the storage, networking, management, and security capabilities built into Nutanix’s HCI solution for a best-in-class Kubernetes environment. Nutanix Cloud Platform and AHV are also certified for Red Hat Enterprise Linux allowing customers to deploy virtualized and containerized workloads on a hyperconverged infrastructure, building on the combined benefits of Red Hat’s open hybrid cloud technologies and Nutanix’s hyperconverged offerings.

For more information on Nutanix and to view a complimentary copy of the report are available at, please visit: http://nutanix.com/go/gartner-2021-magic-quadrant-for-hyperconverged-infrastructure-software

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[1] Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Hyperconverged Infrastructure Software, Jeffrey Hewitt, Philip Dawson, Julia Palmer, Tony Harvey, November 17, 2021.

[2] Gartner, Inc, Solution Criteria for Hyperconverged Infrastructure, January 27, 2021, Paul Delory, Simon Richard

FortiGate-VM Integration Enables the Convergence of Security and Networking in the Cloud

News Summary

Fortinet® (NASDAQ: FTNT), a global leader in broad, integrated and automated cybersecurity solutions, today announced the expansion of its collaboration with Microsoft to deliver the industry’s first next-generation firewall (NGFW) and Secure SD-WAN integration with Microsoft Azure Virtual WAN. Customers can now – for the first time ever from any vendor – apply advanced security policies to virtual WAN traffic and extend Secure SD-WAN into the Azure virtual WAN hub. The result is the convergence of advanced security and networking capabilities in the cloud for an even more simplified, automated, and secure cloud on-ramp and SD-WAN experience. The integration also allows enterprises to more effectively interconnect with applications and workloads running Azure with the rest of their hybrid and multi-cloud deployments.  

John Maddison, EVP of Products and CMO at Fortinet said, “Partnering with Microsoft Azure gives our joint customers the best of both worlds combining Azure’s secure infrastructure with Fortinet’s industry-leading next-generation firewall capabilities and best-in-class Secure SD-WAN solution. The integration of FortiGate-VM extends the Fortinet Security Fabric into Azure Virtual WAN and enhances our ability to secure any application on any cloud and to secure the cloud on-ramp into, between, and within the cloud.”

Secure Traffic Into, Out of and Through Azure Virtual WAN with Fortinet

Companies are increasingly looking to utilize Azure Virtual WAN as a global transit network architecture, providing seamless connectivity between endpoints. While Microsoft has long provided secure access to the Virtual WAN Hub, until now, it has been difficult to provide the same security policies with the same security tools within Azure Virtual WAN and across clouds and data centers. The integration of FortiGate-VM and Fortinet Secure SD-WAN into Azure Virtual WAN empowers organizations to achieve their desired digital innovation outcomes in the cloud while reducing complexity.  Specifically, this integration enables IT and security professionals to easily configure networking and security in Microsoft Azure and delivers the following benefits:

• Advanced Security for Virtual WAN Traffic: FortiGate-VM allows security policies to extend to traffic within the Azure Virtual WAN hub to enable better, more secure application experiences for users and branch offices by supporting encrypted data transports, granular segmentation and application-layer protection against advanced threats, and seamless overlay network with uniform policies across multi-clouds.
• One-Click Deployment: Azure Virtual WAN integration provides one-click deployment and easy scalability for FortiGate-VM in Azure. With this integration, customers can select, configure and deploy FortiGate virtual machines directly from the Azure Marketplace or from within the Azure Virtual WAN interface, allowing security to be part of the workflow for setting up a Virtual WAN in Azure.
• Securely Interconnect Applications and Workloads Across Clouds: Azure Virtual WAN provides a global network transit backbone for branch-to-branch connectivity readily interconnecting regions together. Customers looking to deploy hybrid and multi-cloud networks that include Azure can now easily and securely interconnect applications and workloads, further extending the benefits of the Fortinet Security Fabric and Fortinet Secure SD-WAN across their entire infrastructure to enable consistent policies and centralized visibility. This simplifies security management, enables global visibility into security events and policies, and improves quality of experience (QoE) for users and customers.

Earlier this month, Fortinet and Microsoft also announced the availability of FortiGate-VM integration with Azure gateway load-balancer, which enables customers to deliver superior experiences for applications and workloads running in Azure.

Secure Any Application on Any Cloud

FortiGate-VM is one piece of the Fortinet Adaptive Cloud Security portfolio of products, services, and industry-leading threat intelligence built to empower customers to secure any application on any cloud. With flexible deployment options, broad integration, and centralized management and visibility, Security and DevOps teams are able to close cloud security gaps while alleviating security management burdens and supporting the rapid release of innovation. Leveraging the broad, integrated, and automated nature of the Fortinet Security Fabric, organizations gain consistent security posture, visibility, and enforcement through uniform security management across multi-cloud and hybrid environments.

“We’re pleased to provide customers with new options for securing network traffic into, between and within cloud deployments thanks to the integration of Fortinet’s FortiGate-VM with Microsoft Azure Virtual WAN.”

– Erin Chapple, Corporate Vice President, Azure Core Products and Design, Microsoft

Fortinet Takes Concrete Action on Environmental Sustainability and Commits to Transparent Disclosure on its Contribution to Climate Change Mitigation

News Summary

Fortinet® (NASDAQ: FTNT), a global leader in broad, integrated, and automated cybersecurity solutions, today announced its environmental sustainability commitment to become carbon neutral by 2030, and the completion of its new net-zero Sunnyvale headquarter campus as part of its broader commitment to social responsibility.

Ken Xie, Founder, Chairman of the Board, and CEO at Fortinet

“Fortinet has led every evolution of cybersecurity innovation over the past two decades. Innovation that drives environmental sustainability is also core to our efforts to making the world a safe and sustainable place to live and work. We believe it is our corporate responsibility to continue to reduce the environmental footprint of our products and continue to adopt responsible approaches in our daily operations. The announcement of our 2030 net-zero target and our new net-zero corporate headquarters are concrete proof points of our commitment.” 

In alignment with the Science-Based Target Initiative (SBTi) methodology and global efforts to reduce carbon emissions, Fortinet will become carbon-neutral by 2030 through the use of renewable energy, energy and carbon efficiency methodologies, and emissions offset programs across its owned operations globally, including offices, warehouses, and data centers.  Currently, Fortinet has measured its Scope 1 and 2 emissions and will capture the inventory of its Scope 3 emissions in 2022. This information will be disclosed in Fortinet’s first sustainability report to be published by mid 2022.

Fortinet’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) includes delivering on our company vision – a digital world you can always trust – by innovating sustainable security technologies, diversifying cybersecurity talent, and promoting responsible business across our value chain. Through its CSR approach, Fortinet remains committed to respecting the environment and complying with evolving guidelines and regulations related to environmental sustainability, as overseen by its Social Responsibility Committee—a board-level committee created to oversee the company’s objectives, strategy and risks relating to sustainability and corporate social responsibility, including Environmental, Social and Governance matters.

A proof point of Fortinet’s dedication to environmental sustainability is the development and completion of Fortinet’s new corporate headquarters building, which is on-track to become LEED-Gold Certified. The Sunnyvale campus is an honoree in the “Office/R&D Build” category of the 2021 Silicon Valley Business Journal Structures Awards and uses 30% less energy than a standard building. Key features in the building that help reduce environmental impact include photovoltaic panels and a radiant cooling system that conserves energy and will save 76,600 gallons of water per year. These environmental-minded features, such as the use of solar panels and purchased renewable energy in the company’s owned facilities across North America and Europe, align with Fortinet leadership’s long engagement in the concept of sustainability.  

Climate change continues to pose a significant threat, and all business and public organizations around the globe must do their part to address it. Further to efforts in its own operations, Fortinet is focused on reducing the environmental footprint of its customers by innovating highly efficient, integrated appliances and cloud-based security solutions.

Years of dedicated innovation and the development of the industry’s only security-focused processors built for unparalleled power and efficiency, have allowed Fortinet to integrate multiple security and networking functions into a single appliance,

saving on energy, space and cooling. As a result, Fortinet’s FortiGate security appliances provide its customers with power consumption that is 3 to 16 times lower than its competitors’ solutions and unequalled product environmental sustainability impact.

Ephesoft, Inc., a leader in intelligent document processing (IDP), automation and data enrichment solutions, presented Kodak Alaris with an award for the Most Innovative Property Management Solution. The accolade was bestowed during Ephesoft’s Hackathon event, where partners were invited to come up with a creative use case for Ephesoft Transact IDP platform. After six weeks, they presented their solution to the Ephesoft Decision Committee, which includes Ephesoft’s CEO, CTO and VP of Product Marketing.

The integrated offering is a result of a global alliance between Kodak Alaris and Ephesoft. Together, we are helping organizations all over the world to simplify and automate their digitization processes through a combination of intelligent document processing software, best-in-class scanners, and professional services. The combination of technologies enables instant data capture from a variety of document types, with automatic separation, classification, extraction, and validation of all data, for seamless delivery into business processes and systems.

The award recognizes an innovative technology collaboration between the two companies, which helps real estate agents to quickly transform physical documents into usable digital data, making it faster and easier to process their clients’ property-related bills.

Real estate agents are required to manage large amounts of paper-based bills linked to rental properties on behalf of their clients. This can be a time-consuming and labor-intensive process. Each billing company has its own document templates, and the inconsistency and varying document quality often presents a data processing challenge.

To streamline this process, Kodak Alaris leveraged the INfuse Smart Connected Scanning Solution to create an automated solution that extracts payment data from property bills and exports it into a desired format. Once captured, documents are transferred to a central point where the information is processed by Ephesoft Transact, enabling payments to be made through the real estate agency’s preferred financial institution. The ability to automatically extract critical data from documents, combined with machine-learning technology for indexing and classification, significantly reduces the time required to process bills.

“We are thrilled to receive this award, which is a tangible endorsement of the value this partnership brings to our customers,” said Vanilda Grando, Global Business Development Director at Kodak Alaris. “This global alliance provides organizations with access to best-in-class solutions to help them drive digital business. The integration of our intelligent capture technologieswith Ephesoft is helping companies across many industries to automate paper-based manual processes, improve data accuracy, and significantly increase operational efficiency.”

Stephen Lee, Vice President of Sales, APAC, Ephesoft added: “The fully integrated KodakINfuse Smart Connected Scanning Solution and Ephesoft Transact offering, provides organizations with a best-in-class solution for image enhancement, capture, classification of varying document types and extraction. The joint solution can be used across many areas to help businesses automate their document-centric processing and provide true ROI, scalability and efficiency improvements. Our combined offering is a perfect fit for organizations looking to modernize their existing legacy applications as well and implement something that is lightweight, easy to use and will drive productivity with minimum maintenance.”

For more information, please visit the Kodak Alaris website.

By Jadd Elliot Dib, Founder and CEO of Pangaea X

Climate change affects every country, disrupts economies and natural habitats, and puts the future of the planet at grave risk. Even though some damage is irreversible, it is still possible, with the use of a wide variety of technological measures, to control the increase in temperature globally.  Addressing environmental concerns and operating in a sustainable manner are becoming increasingly important to businesses as they adapt and contribute to the growing governmental and societal drive for sustainable development.

Big Data can generate useful insights towards fostering environment sustainability.  . Mining Big Data is essential to predict, plan, manage, and control environmental processes. Artificial Intelligence (AI), Geographic Information Systems (GIS), modelling, simulation, and user interfaces, are key tools for environmental sustainability that can also be used to improve green infrastructure and to optimise energy use, water consumption, and reduce waste and pollution, For example, big data can provide new and powerful ways of studying and improving environmental, social, and economic systems to enhance urban sustainability by allowing scientists to discover, analyse, and better understand environmental changes from a micro to global scale. 

Data science can also help the corporate world to optimise resource consumption.   . Governments can now adopt insights from real-time environmental quality data. The data output can then be used monitor the emissions of large utility facilities, and adjust if the data shows detrimental effects to the environment.

Big data can also illustrate how sustainability and cost saving go hand in hand. Sophisticated technology, including AI, can monitor and organisation’s energy expenditures, and highlight energy wastage, which, in turns saves money on energy costs.

There are infinite ways in which big data can enhance our ability to live sustainably. The first step, however, is for organisations to adopt data capture and analysis as a regular practice. 

According to a recent Gartner report, business leaders must explore a combination of big data analytics and advanced AI to provide a richer context for accurate business decision-making. This will also help with the predictive analytics aspects that are increasingly becoming the front and centre of any sustainable business initiative.