John Spoor, the Regional Director Emerging Markets & APAC at Secunia, speaks to Channel Post about the solutions his company plans to launch at GITEX this year and the channel strategies in place
Tell us about the latest technology trends in the Middle East and Africa market.
In the past months, we have witnessed the below technology trends which tie directly with cyber-security in the Middle East and Africa region.
- Diversification of technology devices: In fact, the region is finding it challenging to maintain secure and safe environments for sensitive data. This is also true since the levels of protection vary from one device to the other as well as the type of data saved on that device.
- Consumerization of IT has rendered the use of conventional methods for IT security rather out-of-date. For example, anti-virus is a reactive technology that deals with detection of issues after they have arisen, and as such it certainly plays a role in securing devices. However, anti-virus cannot stand alone as an “only line of defence.” To protect systems and devices, corporations need to take a pro-active approach to security, and protect their infrastructure from being breached in the first place.
- BYOD on the rise: With one of the highest penetration rates of smartphone devices in the world, companies are advised to control and classify the corporate data that employees can access from their corporate and private devices.
- Business cloud migration: The region is seeing a great uptake on more cloud initiative and business migrating to the cloud. As such, more data is subject to security breaches and falling into the wrong hands.
On one hand, these present challenges to companies which fail to address IT security issues and its impact on their business needs and growth. On the other hand, enterprises which do take a proactive approach to security have the opportunity to rise over competitors by leveraging the latest technology to keep their data safe and secure.
With the sophistication of cyber-attacks and use of various methods to capture sensitive data, IT security can no longer be disregarded.
How has the regional ICT market grown over the past few years?
Recent attacks have caused both CIOs in the region to consider investing more in IT security awareness, and governments to devise and implement national information security strategies. Examples include the National eSecurity Center in Saudi Arabia, NESA and aeCERT in the UAE and QCERT and ictQatar in Qatar.
The Middle East Cybersecurity market is estimated to grow from $5.17 billion in 2014 to $9.56 billion in 2019, which represents an estimated compound annual growth rate of 13.07%, according to a study by MarketsandMarkets. The proliferation of mobile and business applications and the explosion of smartphone penetration have not only provided companies with insights into consumer behaviour but also allowed hackers to increase their attacks.
Therefore, IT and cyber-security companies are required to invest further in security intelligence, deploy more resources to adapt to the market needs and proactively uncover vulnerabilities present in their network. Finally, enterprises of all sizes have to make cyber-security a business priority by focusing heavily on pre-emptive and preventive methods.
When it comes to end-users, how’s the technology market shaping up? What are the hottest technologies in demand today?
End-user experience and productivity are only a few examples of elements affected following data breaches. Financial damages is another. It is estimated that losses in the UAE and Saudi Arabia – the biggest IT markets in the region – reached about $3 million on average per company in year 2013. CIOs are starting to give considerable attention to pro-active measures when devising and implementing their security strategy as to provide end-users with safe and enhanced end-user experience.
For example, Vulnerability Intelligence is an integral element of any successful strategy. Secunia is indeed the most reliable and accurate source of vulnerability intelligence testing, verifying and validating public vulnerability reports, and meticulously coordinating vulnerability disclosure with vendors.
If we look closely at how the technology market is shaping up, we realise that end-users are becoming game-changers as never before. In today’s world, everything is interconnected from the employee’s smartphone device, to the chief executives’ tablets, to the company’s server, etc. thus every device has to be carefully secured.
What do you plan to achieve through GITEX Technology Week and GITEX Shopper this year? Can you please share your plans?
This year, Secunia, the leading provider of IT security solutions, is participating in GITEX Technology Week to reaffirm its expansion in the market as to meet the increasing security demands.
The company will be present at the event to highlight its commitment to this region and shed the light on the accomplishments of the Secunia Research Team driving Secunia’s leadership in the area of vulnerability management and patch management. GITEX Technology Week 2014 will provide us with a platform to connect with stakeholders in the Middle East, gain in-depth understanding of the MEA organisations’ requirements and appropriate our commercial offerings accordingly.
Given the uptake of this region on innovative technologies, we were very keen to offer our free consumer patch management solution, the Personal Software Inspector (PSI), in Arabic to the regional customer base. In addition, we will share the Secunia security vision with interested parties from the region. We will leverage this great event to network with customers, partners and other vendors as we are determined to continue acquiring bigger shares in the Middle Eastern cyber-security market.
Do you plan to launch any new products or technologies at GITEX Technology Week and GITEX Shopper this year?
Secunia will be participating at GITEX Technology Week to liaise directly with its customers and introduce them to its solutions and the work Secunia Research does to verify and discover vulnerabilities. There are no product launches at GITEX. Instead, we will be showcasing our entire portfolio of solutions, and we regard our participation at the event this year as a perfect opportunity to raise awareness about the company and our solutions.
Our solutions apply to any organization that has to protect critical company information. Secunia moves in the mid-market and enterprise space – with the Vulnerability Intelligence Manager (Secunia VIM) solution geared towards the security side of the IT organization, and the Corporate Software Inspector (Secunia CSI) geared towards the operations side of the business.
What sort of channel strategies are you going to follow this year?
This year, we will continue strengthening our exclusive partnership with EMT our Distribution, our partner for the Middle East, covering the GCC, Levant and certain parts of North Africa. In fact, we will be present together at GITEX to drive further our business growth.
Secunia is a highly partner-centric organisation but we are not looking for a critical mass of partners; we focus on partners who are able to position the solutions correctly, who appreciate our value proposition and have the ability to communicate it to end-users as well.
Do you have any specific engagements for your channel community this year at GITEX?
We see this as a great opportunity to meet potential new partners, understand their business and discuss how they can add value to our offering in this region. And Gitex is of course an excellent opportunity to catch up with existing partners, to discuss input and ideas. In the past 6 months, Secunia recruited around 25 partners which tend to be Tier 1 System Integrators and specific security consultancy organisations.
