ALE, operating under the Alcatel-Lucent Enterprisebrand, has announced that it will host Connex20, its global partner conference, in Dubai from February 4-6, 2020. It is the first time ALE is hosting the global Connex in the Middle East. Over 1000 ALE partners from across the globe will attend the three-day summit. 

The company recently celebrated its 100-year anniversary and now moves confidently into the new decade with the Connex20 partner conference in the UAE. The conference will feature speakers including ALE CEO, Jack Chen, and Rukmini Glanard, Executive Vice President Global Sales and Marketing, and other senior ALE leadership members who will share the company’s 2020 strategy and vision, product roadmap, and channel growth opportunitieswith the ALE global partner community.

“The Middle East is one of our fast growing, dynamic and demanding markets. The UAE especially is leading the way with rapid modernisation and technology adoption to fuel economic growth,” says Rukmini Glanard. “With the region on the cusp of leading a global digital revolution, choosing the UAE to host our global partner summit is a demonstration of our support towards building a technology-driven economy that will benefit organisations as well as individuals.”

During the summit, executives will host dedicated sessions to share best practices, supported by use cases and customer wins, to demonstrate the global use of ALE innovations across verticals. Product specialists will present the roadmap for new ALE solutions designed to help partners solve growing key business issues for customers. The company will also lay out its plans to support ALE partner community success with Cloud, Network and Communications solutions tailored to key vertical markets. During the prestigious Connex event, ALE will also recognise and honour the outstanding partners who accomplished an impressive expansion of their ALE business in 2019. 

“ALE has evolved in line with shifting modern-day communications requirements. We are committed to delivering innovation and helping organisations prepare for an era of growth fueled by digital transformation. We know that our partners’ commitment will help us fulfil this vision,” added Glanard.

ALE has a robust regional partner network with over 100 partners across the Middle East. With customers from education, hospitality, healthcare, retail, transportation and government, the company has maintained a strong market share for its Cloud, Networking and Communications solutions. 

With Expo 2020 set to attract over 20 million visitors to the UAE and the broader Middle East region, this promises to be a bumper year for the hospitality sector. As high-quality audio plays a pivotal role in elevating guest experiences across private rooms, restaurants, meeting and conference halls and common areas, Sennheiser sees tremendous potential for its solutions to deliver the all-essential differentiating edge that hotels require to capitalize on the influx of travellers. 

Highlighting that luxury hotels and 4-star properties account for 59% of Dubai’s total inventory, Mig Cardamone, Director of Sales and Marketing at Sennheiser Middle East said, “It’s clear that the Emirate is geared towards attracting and serving travellers who expect premium experiences. Being spoilt for choice, breath-taking aesthetics, personalized service and even technological innovations such as high-speed, seamless Wi-Fi connectivity have become ‘expected luxuries’ for these guests. This is where we at Sennheiser have a role to play as our solutions can greatly enhance the auditory experience, which can sometimes be lacking in this sector.”

Providing an example, Cardamone elaborated on how business-travellers can benefit from Sennheiser’s audio conferencing solutions. “Most business people can relate to the frustration of attending a conference, event or meeting that has been marred by low volume, audio drop-outs, feedback and echo. On the other hand, crystal-clear audio – as is made possible by our SpeechLine Digital Wireless solution – ensures presenters and attendees can engage seamlessly, keeping the focus on content rather than technical inconveniences.”  Sennheiser SpeechLine Digital Wireless features automatic frequency and interference management and can be conveniently controlled and managed by the company’s easy-to-use Sennheiser Control Cockpit software solution. 

In meeting rooms, the company’s TeamConnect Wireless and TeamConnect Ceiling 2 audio conferencing solutions empower guests to reliably connect with colleagues across the world with an assurance that remote participants can enjoy the highest speech intelligibility and sound quality. 

Sennheiser also believes there’s plenty of innovation that can be brought to guests’ in-room experiences as well. With its ability to deliver a fully immersive 3D audio experience – without the hassles of complicated wiring and a host of aesthetically unappealing speakers – the company’s AMBEO Soundbar is perfectly suited to installation in hotel rooms and suites. Sennheiser even has an ultra-premium offering for hotels looking to cater to the most discerning of guests. “With its striking design, perfect engineering and unparalleled audio quality, our HE 1 is well deserving of its status as the best headphones in the world. There is no doubt that offering these in premium suites will translate to unforgettable experiences for VIP guests,” said Cardamone.

Sennheiser is set to demonstrate these and other audio solutions to key stakeholders within the Middle East hospitality industry at the upcoming 2020 Stakeholders Conference, being held in Dubai from the 28th to the 30th of January 2020.

The Video Surveillance market in the Middle East region continues to grow in double digit figures, driven by the rise of security concerns accompanied by strict government regulations. To keep up with the challenges imposed by these concerns and regulations, a reliable, always-on and secure network capable of delivering quality high resolution videos is imperative to keep organizations safe.

The Middle East is one of the fastest growing markets for video surveillance systems. Research firm MarketsandMarkets reports that a big driver for the increasing use of video surveillance systems globally is in large part due to the increasing concerns for public safety and security, prompting deployment at airports, malls, schools, office buildings, public places and so on. Nevertheless, the market dynamics are rapidly changing with security cameras being more and more integrated with the IoT architecture to solve for business use cases alongside security use cases, while Artificial Intelligence continues to enable security capabilities related to behaviors and object recognition that have never been possible before. These dynamics are raising the criticality of the video surveillance systems and consequently the criticality of the network infrastructure that interconnects the ecosystem together. 

Rabih Itani, the Middle East region security business head at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company says, “Gone are the days, where the video surveillance networks get the least attention during the design phase, but ironically the first to blame when the video streaming disconnects or suffers jitter or hackers get through. Organizations are beginning to realize the importance of connecting their video surveillance systems to secure and future-proof networks that they can simply trust.”

Aruba, a long term leader in providing secure network infrastructures, understands how to build mission critical networks, and as such it is aggressively positioning its life time warranted^[1]Aruba 2930 family of network switchesto regional organizations who do take security seriously. Aruba 2930 family solves for current connectivity requirements and prepares for future ones with its smart rate ports, 40Gbps uplink options, and 60W Power-over-Ethernet as mandated by specific devices such as the PTZ cameras. In terms of security, this family of switches furnishes built-in secure-boot hardware and built-in network security capabilities^[2]and when additional network edge security and control is needed, these switches integrate bi-directionally with Aruba Clearpass Network Admission Control to authenticate the connecting cameras while authorizing the right access permissions for each. Moreover, Aruba Clearpass Device Insight can be plugged in to leverage Machine Learning in order to accurately profile the connecting devices, while continuously monitoring any profile changes. It is important to note that Aruba can enable trust to be adaptive, as trust can be revoked at any time based on how devices behave while on the network.

“Video surveillance cameras, which are essentially IoT devices, are a major target themselves for cybercriminals or are used by them as an easy door to access weakly secured networks. This pushes networks to move from being merely a connectivity provider for the cameras, to be first line defenders. This is where Aruba shines,” concludes Itani. 

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^[1]Life Time Warranty extends for as long as the original end user owns the product and includes coverage of any built-in fans and power supplies for the entire warranty period.

^[2]Security capabilities include both switch autonomous features plus features integrated with external systems such Network Admission Control, Security Analytics, and more.

Fortinet Teams Up with ABB Formula E Championship Team BMW i Andretti Motorsport, Reinforcing Commitment to Acceleration, High Performance and Energy Efficiency

News Summary 

Fortinet® (NASDAQ: FTNT), a global leader in broad, integrated and automated cybersecurity solutions,has joinedBMW i Andretti Motorsportas the official partnerfor their Formula E team as part of Fortinet’s commitment to accelerate innovation, high performance and energy efficiency. 

John Maddison, EVP of products and CMO at Fortinet

“Fortinet’s involvement in Formula E is a natural fit as it strongly aligns with our focus on engineering and high performance. To accelerate the processing of security and networking functions, we design our own unique security processors. These purpose-built Fortinet SPUs radically increase the speed, scale and performance of our solutions, setting industry Security Compute Rating records. We’re excited to be part of Formula E and to join forces with BMW i Andretti Motorsport team.”

The ABB FIA Formula E Championship is the world’s first racing series for fully-electric single-seater cars. These electric cars deliver immense acceleration and performance while pushing the development of e-mobility forward. Like Formula E, Fortinet drives digital innovation through our breadth of offerings that make up the Fortinet Security Fabric.Fortinet’s products powered by Fortinet SPUsare engineered with the same emphasis on acceleration, high performance and energy efficiency. Given these synergies, Fortinet has partnered with the BMW i Andretti Motorsport team, marking the most significant engagement with a motorsports team in the company’s history.

Accelerating CPU Performance with Fortinet SPUs 

Similar to the Formula E series, Fortinet continues to digitally innovate and set industry records for performance and speed. Fortinet SPUs outpace what is available in the market with the highest Security Compute Ratingsfor the following benchmarks:

• Stateful Firewall throughput
• IPsec VPN performance
• Concurrent sessions
• Sessions per second 

The Fortinet Family of SPUs are specially designed security processors that provide unmatched performance at a fraction of the cost of traditional CPUs, providing accelerated network security, accelerated graphics rendering and accelerated AI in the cloud. Fortinet’s FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall appliances are powered by the following security processors:

• Content Processor 9 (CP9): The CP9 protects applications while optimizing user experience with the least performance degradation. The CP9 works as a CPU co-processor, taking on resource-intensive security functions such as SSL/TLS decryption – including TLS1.3 – IPS and antivirus.

• System-on-a-Chip 4 (SoC4): Fortinet’s SoC4 is a purpose-built security processor that has achieved the highest Security Compute Ratings in the industry to support customers’ WAN Edge transformation. SoC4 consolidates network and content processing functions on a single chip to deliver fast application identification, steering and overlay performance. 

• Network Processor 6 (NP6): Fortinet’s NP6 works with FortiOS functions delivering superior firewall performance for IPV4, IPV6 and multicast traffic with ultra-low latency down to three microseconds.

Armani Dubai to be the venue for talks on how to generate business out of IoT, AI, ML and Intelligent automation as the adoption of IoT is expected to accelerate over the coming years

An impressive line-up of speakers will be addressing how to manoeuvre the IoT landscape for higher profits at the 5th Internet of Things 2020, held at Armani Hotel Dubai on the 24th of February, 2020.

The cross-industry C-level conference aimed at decision-makers in both the private and public sector focuses on the business aspects of digital transformation. The event brings together forward-thinking experts sharing insights on business, technology and organizational transformation to leverage new business and new eco-systems.

Attendees have the rare opportunity of networking with experts, discussing the optimization of company revenue, reducing costs, changing business models, opening up new services and markets for key stakeholders and disruptive new entrants.

According to Johan Ehrstrom, CEO of 5th IoT Middle East 2020, “Collaboration is the new competition and eco-systems will replace traditional industry boundaries. New tech like AI and ML needs the data of IoT to deliver accurate analyses and output. IoT adoption is hence expected to grow by two-digit numbers and reach $18 billion in MEA related IoT investments by 2023, as both governmental and private sector companies ramp up their digital transformation capabilities.”

“The 5th Internet of Things 2020 is a game-changing platform, attracting over 400 attendees yearly, addressing the business relevance of technology across multiple verticals. IoT Middle East 2020 is for all who are less interested in the tech-aspects, but eager to future proof strategies, grow the bottom-line impacts and set the direction for the new decade.” 

Over 30+ international and regional speakers, including executives from PwC, Evoteq, du, McKinsey, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, London Business School, Cigna, Iqvia, Haltian and PTC will take the stage and highlight novel utilization of technologies designed to shape the foundation of the future success stories. 

Participants can register on www.iot-dxb.com. Registration is now open for USD 745 for individual tickets, ask for group and management team tickets discounts.

By Derek Manky, Chief Security Insights & Global Threat Alliances, Fortinet 

Imagine what you would have done differently in your network if you could have just seen a few years into the future. Would you have been quicker to embrace the cloud? What about the time and money spent on technologies that you now don’t really use? Every wiring closet has a number of expensive boat anchors sitting on a shelf somewhere gathering dust. Of course, if your organization has ever been the victim of a serious breach, it’s easy to guess how you may have prepared differently for that.

Predicting the Future

The truth is, that last one isn’t really just wishful thinking. Cybersecurity professionals, myself included, have been warning organizations about the threats just around the corner for years. Some require years of experience to understand threat actor trends and malware trajectories. But others just stare you in the face. For example, much of the recent success of the cybercriminal community has been due to their ability to successfully exploit the expanding attack surface and the resulting security gaps resulting from digital transformation that are not being properly closed. This shouldn’t be news to anyone.

While predicting what cybercriminals are going to do next can be tricky, the reverse isn’t true. When it comes to the cyber arms race, the criminal community has always had a distinct advantage in knowing what’s coming next. Organizations are constantly looking for new ways to squeeze more value out of their networks, or gain that sliver of competitive edge through the use of new technologies. And cybercriminals can predict with a high degree of certainty where many of those organizations will also neglect to apply proper security to those efforts.

According to one report, cybercriminals cost the global economy a total of $1.5 trillion last year. And the rate of growth for cybercrime looks likely to continue for some time unless organizations make a significant paradigm shift as to how they think about and deploy security.

Gaining the Upper Hand

To get out ahead of the traditional cycle of buying new cybersecurity solutions in response to the latest threat trends, organizations need to begin using the same sorts of technologies and strategies to defend their networks that criminals are using to compromise them. That means adopting an intelligently integrated approach that leverages the power and resources of today’s enterprise.

Much of this is detailed in a Fortinet’s Security Predictions report for 2020. In addition to my usual predictions around the tactics and technologies that cybercriminals are likely to develop and adopt over the next few years, this year’s report focuses extensively on ways organizations can successfully gain the upper hand when it comes to their cyber adversaries. And that strategy relies heavily on two things: the development and deployment of solutions built around machine learning and artificial intelligence, and shifting to a security-driven networking strategy that takes the principle of “look before you leap” to a new level.

The Evolution and Future of AI

One of the objectives for a security-focused AI strategy is to develop an adaptive immune system for the network similar to the one in the human body. In the body, white blood cells come to the rescue when a problem is detected, acting autonomously to fight infection. In the network, Artificial Intelligence can potentially perform much the same task by identifying threats and initiating and coordinating a response. A quick review of its history can help us predict its trajectory.

The first generation of AI is already in place in some sectors. Leveraging artificial neural networks and massive databases, systems using machine learning can rapidly sift through mountains of data to provide analysis and determine a proper course of action, all at network speeds.

The next generation of AI, currently running in labs and some production environments, is able better able to detect patterns by distributing learning nodes across an environment. This enhances its impact on things like access control. Some AI systems are now able to identify individuals using complex bio-footprints such as typing patterns or heartbeat rhythms, and detect even the most subtle deviations in normal network traffic to identify malicious actors and malware. Implementing this in today’s networks will require deploying regional AI-enhanced learning nodes that can collect and process local data for quick responses to events, and also share that data back to a central AI brain to deeper correlation to not only better detect suspicious patterns of behavior, but also immediately respond in a decisive manner before an attack can even be fully formed.

The third generation of AI, however, is where things begin to get really interesting. AI will still require a central brain, but rather than a hub and spoke model, it will instead exist as an interconnected web of even more intelligent regional learner nodes, much like an organic neural network. Direct information sharing between nodes will not only play a pivotal role in identifying threats in true real time, but also ensure that central protections and controls match local requirements and variations.

Getting from Here to There

Of course, none of this will matter if security isn’t deployed where cybercriminals strike. Today, different segments of the networks can’t see or talk to each other and collected threat intelligence often exists in isolation. The result is a fragmented security implementation that cybercriminals are all too eager to exploit. And this challenge is being compounded as more and more organizations rush headlong into adopting new technologies – today it’s the cloud and tomorrow it will be 5G and edge computing – without first properly considering all of the security ramifications. And that has to include prioritizing how the security to be deployed in new areas of the network will interoperate with existing systems.

Getting from where most organizations are today, to the sort of integrated and distributed security that the future will require, underscores the need to take a new approach. To start, organizations need to focus on interconnectivity and deep integration between their security devices. For machine learning systems to be successful, they not only need access to critical security information, but that data will need to be seamlessly and instantly shared across the network so can be adapted to each networked environment’s unique configuration. This will also require taking a security-first approach to new network expansions to ensure that all network and security systems and devices are visible and consistently controllable from anywhere in the network.

The ability for machine learning and AI systems to take over many of the menial and detail-oriented tasks previously assigned to human resources will take a significant bite out of the growing cybersecurity skills gap. By shifting responsibilities to autonomous self-learning processes that function similarly to human autoimmune systems – hunting for, detecting, and responding to security events autonomously and in true real time – valuable cybersecurity professionals will be able to focus their unique skillsets on higher-order planning and strategy. This transition will be critical as organizations move to adopt the advanced security-driven network strategies that will help their businesses succeed in the digital marketplace of tomorrow.