Value Journal - April-May 2021

ners as they respond to disruption and
new opportunities. This acquisition
represents the latest step in Micro-
soft’s industry-specific cloud strategy.
Nuance is a pioneer and a leading pro-
vider of conversational AI and cloud-
based ambient clinical intelligence for
healthcare providers. Its products in-
Issue 54 // April-May 2021
Redington Value is a value added distributor for the following brands in parts of Middle East & Africa
The acquisition will combine solutions and expertise to deliver new
cloud and AI capabilities across healthcare and other industries.
Microsoft Announces Nuance Acquisition
Microsoft and Nuance Communica-
tions have entered into a definitive
agreement under which Microsoft
will acquire Nuance for $56.00 per
share, implying a 23% premium to
the closing price of Nuance in an all-
cash transaction valued at $19.7 bil-
lion, inclusive of Nuance’s net debt.
Nuance is a trusted cloud and AI
software leader representing decades
of accumulated healthcare and enter-
prise AI experience. Mark Benjamin
will remain CEO of Nuance, reporting
to Scott Guthrie, executive vice presi-
dent of Cloud & AI at Microsoft. The
transaction is intended to close this
calendar year.
Microsoft has accelerated its efforts to
provide industry-specific cloud offer-
ings to support customers and part- >> Continued on page 5
The new partnership will advance digital transformation initiatives for enterprises.
Software AG Appoints Redington
Value As Middle East Distributor
Satya Nadella, Microsoft

Sayantan Dev, Redington Value
Sayantan Dev, President, Redington
Value, said, “With more and more
companies relying on data to capital-
ise on opportunities, we’re excited to
work closely with Software AG as an
entity that helps numerous businesses
turn their data into value and connect
customer journeys to core data. We’ve
chosen to work with Software AG
given its diverse portfolio of market
leading data integration solutions for
enterprises that continue to empower
customers by unlocking the power of
digital technologies and create ecosys-
tems of tomorrow. We will offer our
longstanding experience of strategic
synergies and enable and service DX
enterprise solutions to a partnership
founded on mutual growth and digi-
tisation beliefs.”
cloud image
Vlad Postelnicu, Director Alliances &
Strategic Partnerships, Software AG
added, “The business world has wit-
nessed many disruptions in the last
year alone. Technology has emerged as
the single most driver in transforming
businesses and keeping them resilient
during these disruptive times. Sym-
biotic partnerships have been at the
forefront to foster growth in a system-
atic manner by leveraging collective
strengths and business knowledge.
Together with Redington, we onboard
this journey of shared beliefs and a
long-term vision to cater to increased
demand created by changing business
scenarios. As a joint force, we aim to
accelerate digital transformation ef-
forts in the country, staying competi-
tive and result oriented.”
management, IoT and analytics and
business transformation via its local
channel partner network.
The agreement was signed by Rami
Kichli, Vice President, Levant and Gulf
Region, Software AG, and Sayantan
Dev, President, Redington Value. The
appointment will see Redington Value
as a focal point acting as the interme-
diary between channel partners and
other system integrators for enterprise
customers and resellers. Under the
agreement, Redington Value will gain
official distribution rights to Software
AG’s portfolio of software solutions
that cater to enterprises. In addition,
Redington’s resellers will gain access
to resources and tools within Software
AG’s partner network.
S
oftware AG has appointed
Redington Value, a leading
value-added distributor in
the Middle East and Afri-
ca as its strategic distribution part-
ner in the Middle East to distribute
its integrated product portfolio and
accelerate digital transformation ef-
forts in the region. The partnership
will provide end customers with a
comprehensive suite of Software AG’s
solutions across integration and API

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3
Dell Technologies: UAE and Saudi Arabia
Lead in Digital Transformation
Latest findings revealed in Dell Technologies’ third biennial Digital Transformation Index.
Dell Technologies has released the
results from its ‘Digital Transfor-
mation Index 2020’, revealing that
organisations in UAE and Saudi
Arabia are two steps ahead of the
rest of the world when it comes to
digital transformation.
According to the study, 90 percent of
organisations in UAE and Saudi Ara-
bia have fast-tracked, at least, some
of their digital transformation pro-
grams this year – accomplishing in
a few months, what would normally
have taken years. This is compared
to the global benchmark of 80 per-
cent, suggesting that organizations
across the region have shifted their
digital transformation programs into
high gear. In fact, 85 percent of orga-
nizations in UAE and Saudi Arabia
admitted to re-inventing their busi-
ness model as a result of disruption
– which is 6 percent ahead of organi-
sations globally (79 percent).
When comparing the results from
the last Digital Transformation In-
dex in 2018 to this year, UAE and
Saudi Arabia saw a 6 percent rise in
the number of Digital Leaders (the
most digitally mature organization)
last year. Digital Adopters (the sec-
ond most digitally mature group)
grew from 27 percent in 2018 to 31
percent in 2020.
This can be attributed to the level of
digital transformation acceleration
happening in the UAE and Saudi Ara-
bia, and hence, it is no surprise that
the 2020 Digital Transformation Index
also recorded a fall in the number of
least digitally mature groups – namely,
the Digital Laggards and Digital Fol-
lowers – since 2018. These organiza-
tions are moving up, into the Digital
Adopter and Digital Evaluator groups,
which have expanded in tandem.
The study also shows that organiza-
tions in UAE and Saudi Arabia are
keeping pace with global investment
levels in the newer technologies in-
cluding Edge and AI. In addition, or-
ganizations in UAE and Saudi Arabia
are a solid 6 percent ahead of their
global competitors when it comes to
investing in 5G infrastructure demon-
strating their clear commitment to
develop state-of-the-art connectivity
infrastructure.
Looking beyond 2021, it appears that
organisations in UAE and Saudi Ara-
bia also have high confidence in Edge
computing’s capabilities. As such, Edge
application investment is expected to
be higher (51 percent) among organi-
zations in UAE and Saudi Arabia com-
paredtotheglobalaverage(28percent).
According to the 2020 Digital Trans-
formation Index, organisations across
the region are particularly confident
that the Edge strategies being rolled out
will future-proof their business. The
2020 Digital Transformation Index lists
the top technology investments in UAE
and Saudi Arabia over the next one to
three years as follows – Real-time ap-
plications at the Edge, Artificial Intel-
ligence algorithms, Cybersecurity solu-
tions, Data management tools and 5G
infrastructure.
Nuance
provides the
AI layer at the
healthcare point
of delivery and is a
pioneer in the real-
world application of
enterprise AI.”
Using a curve visual, the DT Index plots global digital transformation progress
vs digital transformation progress in UAE/KSA from 2016 till 2020.
>> From page 1
Microsoft...
clude the Dragon Ambient eXperience,
Dragon Medical One and PowerScribe
One for radiology reporting, all lead-
ing clinical speech recognition SaaS
offerings built on Microsoft Azure.
The firm’s solutions work seamlessly
with core healthcare systems, includ-
ing longstanding relationships with
Electronic Health Records (EHRs), to
alleviate the burden of clinical docu-
mentation and empower providers to
deliver better patient experiences.
By augmenting the Microsoft Cloud
for Healthcare with Nuance’s solu-
tions, as well as the benefit of Nuance’s
expertise and relationships with EHR
systems providers, Microsoft will be
better able to empower healthcare
providers through the power of am-
bient clinical intelligence and other
Microsoft cloud services. The acqui-
sition will dou-
ble Microsoft’s
total addressable
market (TAM)
in the healthcare
provider space,
bringing the
company’s TAM
in healthcare to
nearly $500 bil-
lion. Nuance and
Microsoft will
deepen their ex-
isting commit-
ments to the extended partner ecosys-
tem, as well as the highest standards of
data privacy, security and compliance.
“Nuance provides the AI layer at the
healthcare point of delivery and is a
pioneer in the
real-world ap-
plication of en-
terprise AI,” said
Satya Nadella,
CEO, Microsoft.
“AI is technolo-
gy’s most import-
ant priority, and
healthcare is its
most urgent ap-
plication. Togeth-
er, with our part-
ner ecosystem,
we will put advanced AI solutions into
the hands of professionals everywhere
to drive better decision-making and
create more meaningful connections,
as we accelerate growth of Microsoft
Cloud for Healthcare and Nuance.”
Beyond healthcare, Nuance provides
AI expertise and customer engage-
ment solutions across Interactive
Voice Response (IVR), virtual as-
sistants, and digital and biometric
solutions to companies around the
world across all industries. This ex-
pertise will come together with the
breadth and depth of Microsoft’s
cloud, including Azure, Teams, and
Dynamics 365, to deliver next-gen-
eration customer engagement and
security solutions.

4
Aruba Accelerates Digital
Transformation on Microsoft Azure
Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise
company, in collaboration with Micro-
soft, announced two new solutions that
enable organisations to accelerate their
digital transformation from edge-to-
cloud by delivering deeper integration
between Aruba ESP (Edge Services
Platform) and Microsoft Azure. An-
nounced at Microsoft Ignite 2021, the
first solution is Aruba IoT Transport
inates the need for an intermediate
gateway, server, or application, thus
reducing processing latency. Addi-
tionally, the solution allows customers
to run IoT systems and services over
their existing Aruba infrastructure,
thus reducing the time, cost and risk of
developing homegrown or customised
solutions. This frees customers to focus
on instrumenting facilities, achieving
hyperawareness, and deriving deeper
insights from their business processes.
The Aruba IoT Transport for Azure was
designed from the grounds up with se-
curity as a cornerstone. Flexible, built-
in credential management and authen-
tication policies protect against security
threats on both the northbound data
plane and southbound control planes.
Aruba ESP combines unified infra-
structure for IT, IoT, and operational
technology (OT) devices, a Zero Trust
security framework, and AIOps to de-
New solutions simplify IoT device connectivity and bring Aruba ESP to Microsoft Azure.
for Azure, a service that enables IoT de-
vices connected to Aruba access points
(APs) and controllers to bi-direction-
ally communicate with the Azure IoT
Hub. In addition, the company an-
nounced the introduction of the Aruba
Central cloud management platform
hosted on Azure, bringing Aruba’s en-
terprise-grade cloud networking solu-
tion, with more than 1 million devices
already under management, to Azure.
Working closely with Microsoft, Aru-
ba developed the Aruba IoT Trans-
port for Azure service – the first of its
kind for general purpose applications.
The Aruba IoT Transport for Azure
multiplies the power of Aruba ESP by
seamlessly enabling the secure, bi-di-
rectional movement of data from IoT
devices connected to Aruba APs and
controllers, enabling customers to take
advantage of the vast array of services
and applications available in Azure.
Aruba IoT Transport for Azure elim-
The new data center is scheduled for operation by end of June 2021 and will serve customers
in the European Union (EU) and the Europe, Middle East, Africa and Russia (EMEAR) region.
Cisco Announces New Data Center
to Serve Collaboration Customers
“There is no doubt: the future of work
will be hybrid. Collaboration technol-
ogies play a key role in enabling dig-
ital workers, regardless of geography,
language or proficiency in technolo-
gy. The velocity of innovation in this
area is staggering. At Cisco, we have
launched over 400 new enhancements
for Webex since September 2020, un-
derpinned by the security and privacy
principles that are core to our tech-
nologies and processes,” said Reem
Asaad, Vice President, Cisco Middle
East and Africa.
In 2021, Cisco is scaling and unifying
Cisco Webex data centers to provide
customers with more flexibility. The
new data center in Frankfurt, Ger-
many is part of this effort and com-
plements existing data centers in the
region, providing additional opportu-
nities to host data in the EU.
Cisco has announced that it is bringing a
new data center to Frankfurt, Germany,
to serve customers using its Collabora-
tion platform Webex in the European
Union(EU)andtheEurope,MiddleEast,
Africa and Russia (EMEAR) region. The
newdatacenterinFrankfurtisscheduled
for operation by end of June 2021.
Cisco’s new data centre in Frankfurt
is a showcase of the company’s latest
technologies. This includes the Cisco
ASR routing platform that provides a
high-throughput connectivity into the
liver an automated, cloud-native plat-
form that continuously analyses data
across domains to predict and resolve
issues at the network edge.
A critical element of Aruba ESP, Aru-
ba Central is a cloud-native service
designed to unify management of
campus, branch, remote and data cen-
ter networks. Aruba Central on Azure
will allow IT administrators to manage
and optimize the network from a sin-
gle point of control.
“Edge networking and IoT have had
a profoundly positive impact on busi-
nesses, however, their recent conver-
gence has surfaced interoperability
challenges across platforms, applica-
tions, and systems,” said Michael Ten-
nefoss, Vice President of IoT and Stra-
tegic Partnerships at Aruba, a Hewlett
Packard Enterprise company. “Simpli-
fying the integration of edge IoT and
cloud services using the advanced
cloud capabilities of Aruba ESP with
the extensibility and power of Micro-
soft Azure overcomes these challeng-
es. And it does so without sacrificing
security, manageability, or reliability.”
Aruba IoT Transport for Azure and
Aruba Central on Azure will be avail-
able in Spring 2021.
At Cisco, we have
launched over 400
new enhancements
for Webex since
September 2020,
underpinned by
the security and
privacy principles
that are core to our
technologies and
processes.”
Reem Asaad, Cisco
Michael Tennefoss, HPE Aruba
data center, ideal for high bandwidth
applications, such as streaming audio
or video, or video conferencing.
Within the data center, the Cisco Ap-
plication Centric Infrastructure (ACI)
connects all components in a secure
and highly scalable way, and it also
offers capabilities for ease of manage-
ment and troubleshooting. The other
key component of the architecture is
the Cisco Unified Computing System
(UCS) that combines industry-stan-
dard, x86-architecture servers with net-
working and storage. UCS provides all
the server capacity needed for the solu-
tion and can offer automated comput-
ing scalability based on user demand. In
addition, Cisco ThousandEyes’ internet
and cloud intelligence platform is used
for visibility and insights into the digital
delivery of applications and services.
The complete architecture is protect-
ed end-to-end by Cisco Firepower
for enhanced Security. The highly
resilient data center will incorporate
Cisco products and technologies that
improve energy efficiency, including
power supplies, internal components,
and cooling systems, and run on 100%
renewable energy.

5
Tableau Business Science Brings
Powerful Data Science Capabilities
Tableau has introduced Business Sci-
ence, a new class of AI-powered analyt-
icsthatlowersthebarriertodatascience
techniques, enabling business users and
analysts to make smarter decisions fast-
er. Business Science empowers more
people with data, with simplified model
creation, predictions, what-if scenarios,
forecasting and other analytical meth-
ods – all using clicks, not code.
Tableau will deliver Einstein Discovery
in its 2021.1 update later this month,
that power is limited to a few select
people within an organization,” said
Francois Ajenstat, Chief Product
Officer, Tableau. “To build truly da-
ta-driven organizations, we need to
unlock the power of data for as many
people as possible. Democratizing
data science will help more people
make smarter decisions faster.”
Customers can use Business Science
to improve supply chain efficien-
cy, predict likelihood of purchase
or maximize delivery of goods or
services, for example. Data science
could help with vaccine research and
development, while Business Science
could help with distribution and get
shots in people’s arms.
Additional capabilities available in
2021.1 include:
· New Microsoft Azure Connec-
tivity Improvements allow people
to connect to their data in Azure
SQL Database (with Azure Active
Directory) and Azure Data Lake
Tableau 2021.1 delivers AI-generated predictions, insights and automated explanations to help democratize data science.
the first major release enabling Busi-
ness Science. Integrating Einstein Dis-
covery’s trusted, real-time predictions
and recommendations into Tableau will
help people go beyond understanding
what happened and why it happened,
to explore likely business outcomes and
inform proactive action. Business Sci-
ence will elevate the work of both data
scientists and advanced analysts.
“Data science has always been able
to solve big problems but too often
Gen 2. Tableau also now supports
Azure Active Directory in two exist-
ing connectors, Azure Synapse and
Azure Databricks.
· A new Extension Gallery helps
people easily search for and dis-
cover connectors and dashboard
extensions within Tableau. From
the gallery, customers can easily
discover and install connectors
and dashboard extensions that add
functionality to their dashboards
and connectors that enable Tab-
leau to access additional databases
and applications, within their Tab-
leau workflow.
· A redesigned notification experi-
ence displays a Tableau user’s shares,
comments, extracts and prep flows
together in one dedicated space. This
communicates all important changes
across the organization. People can
choose where to receive these notifi-
cations — directly in Tableau, email
or both — ensuring they’re aware of
important alerts or updates.
Oracle Announces Cloud Lift Services
New and existing customers receive free cloud engineering resources and tech
support to streamline migration of their workloads to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
“Our customers want a seamless
path to the cloud with the right
guidance, solution architecture, and
hands-on help we can provide,” said
Vinay Kumar, Senior Vice President,
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. “Ora-
cle Cloud Lift Services is just one of
several changes we are implement-
ing to accelerate customer success
on Oracle Cloud.”
Oracle’s new program provides a
single point of contact for all tech-
nical delivery and removes critical
expertise barriers for adoption of
OCI services, speeding time to val-
ue and creating faster opportunities
to innovate. With Oracle Cloud Lift
Services, customers get access to
Oracle cloud engineers and premier
technical services that have acceler-
ated migrations to OCI for enterprise
engineering resources to quick-
ly migrate workloads to Oracle
Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). Ora-
cle now offers these resources, at
no additional cost, to all existing
and new Oracle Cloud customers
worldwide.
One of the biggest pain points
of cloud adoption is the cost and
effort of migration. To ease the
process, the latest launch of new
Oracle Cloud Lift Services gives
Oracle customers expanded ac-
cess to technical tools and cloud
customers including Seattle Sound-
ers FC, Cargill and Rice Universi-
ty. As part of the program, customers
will have access to cloud engineering
resources for activities ranging from
performance analysis, application
architecture, hands on migrations
and go-live support. Oracle will work
with customers until their workloads
are in production and help train their
staff on best practices so they have
the expertise to run the environment
moving forward.
According to the company, custom-
ers and partners are already seeing
value in this new program and are
getting through migrations faster,
with more of their IT budget intact
for more valuable operational ser-
vices and major digital transforma-
tion projects.

6
Okta Launches Customer Identity Risk
Ecosystem and Workflow Integrations
Okta Workflows for Customer Identi-
ty is now generally available, and the
Okta Integration Network has grown
its suite of new pre-built integrations
to support no-code automation needs.
Hubspot, Mixpanel, SendGrid, and
other connectors are now available
to help meet complex digital trans-
formation use cases. The new Okta
Workflow connectors within the Okta
Integration Network make it possible
for organizations to support a wide
range of customer experience use cas-
es, including registration, analytics,
privacy and consent, and customer
relationship management. Using Okta
Workflows for Customer Identity, or-
ganizations can seamlessly integrate
and leverage identity across a core set
of technologies spanning the custom-
er experience tech stack. The new con-
Identity provider Okta has an-
nounced the expansion of the Okta
Integration Network across four main
areas including risk and fraud, cus-
tomer data orchestration, data priva-
cy and compliance, and the software
development lifecycle. Generally
available now, these new integrations
leverage identity to help solve highly
complex digital transformation chal-
lenges from securing transactions to
digital onboarding.
Diya Jolly, Chief Product Officer,
Okta, said, “We see a massive op-
portunity to expand the role Okta
Workflows can play to benefit user
experience. Workflows can serve
as a real-time data orchestration
tool, automating identity-centric
processes throughout the customer
journey tech stack. Together, our
best-of-breed approach and deep in-
tegration catalog across risk signal-
ing and the customer journey open
up all sorts of opportunities for Okta
customers to build robust, secure,
digital experiences.”
New catalog of integrations addresses digital transformation challenges in
security, customer experience, application development, and data privacy.
ization journey with speed, simplici-
ty, and better security. With VMware
Cloud Universal, customers make a
single purchase and gain the ability to
deploy apps across any environment,
then move them as business or appli-
cation requirements change.”
VMware Cloud is the platform for both
on-premises and cloud with unified
security and operations; supporting
traditional and modern applications;
connecting to all native cloud services;
and meeting the requirements of both
developers and IT operators. With
VMware Cloud, customers gain the
simplicity of a single cloud operating
model for their multi-cloud reality,
and gain portability to help minimize
to help address the challenges of single
cloud silos.
With the new VMware Cloud Univer-
sal subscription, customers gain greater
flexibility and portability to adopt cloud
at their own pace and benefit from a
VMware Cloud Accelerates App
Modernization Through Multi-Cloud Services
single operating model across clouds.
It is ideal for customers committed to
a hybrid cloud architecture; that have
extended or variable cloud migration
timelines; that have cloud bursting re-
quirements; or desire an OPEX model
for on-premises infrastructure.
Supporting this new subscription is
VMware Cloud Console, delivering
end-to-end visibility and control of all
VMware Cloud infrastructure across
on-premises, cloud, and edge environ-
ments. Cloud Console is an integrated
portal where customers can allocate,
manage, and better optimize all VM-
ware Cloud resources.
The new VMware App Navigator ser-
vice engagement helps organizations
prioritize app modernization initiatives
and deliver results faster. App Naviga-
tor uses automated tooling and hands-
on experimentation to plan just enough
to get started, then quickly scale app
and cloud transformation initiatives.
New VMware Cloud Universal delivers flexible subscription for consuming multi-cloud.
nectors along with many others across
the customer experience landscape
are highly discoverable using the re-
freshed Okta Integration Catalog.
Using the new Okta Risk Ecosystem
API, customers can leverage identity
to ingest and centralize various exter-
nal behavioral and transactional risk
signals to help identify legitimate users
and secure digital commerce experi-
ences. New integrations with bot detec-
tion and web application firewall pro-
viders including Signal Sciences (now a
part of Fastly), HUMAN, F5 Networks,
and PerimeterX leverage the new Risk
Ecosystem API to tie fraud-related risk
signals to a specific user. These new in-
tegrations augment Okta’s existing part-
nerships in risk and fraud to further a
vision of a holistic, 360 degree view of
the customer and security profile.
VMwareishelpingcustomersunlockthe
power of multi-cloud and deliver mod-
ern applications at the speed of business
with the VMware Cloud launch.
VMware Cloud is a distributed, multi-
cloud platform that enables organiza-
tions to accelerate application mod-
ernization across the data center, edge,
and any cloud. With the launch of VM-
ware Cloud, the company is announc-
ing new offerings that bring a more
integrated experience to customers –
VMware Cloud Universal: a flexible
subscription that simplifies the pur-
chase and consumption of VMware
multi-cloud infrastructure and man-
agement services.
VMware Cloud Console: a single
monitoring and management environ-
ment for VMware Cloud infrastruc-
ture regardless of where it’s deployed.
VMware App Navigator: a new offer-
ing for assessing and prioritizing app
transformation initiatives across an
entire application estate based on the
value of each app.
Raghu Raghuram, Chief Operating
Officer, Products and Cloud Services,
VMware, said, “VMware Cloud is the
only cloud solution today that custom-
ers can use in the data center and on
any cloud, accelerating their modern-
Diya Jolly, Okta
Raghu Raghuram, VMware

7
Email security and cyber resilience
company Mimecast Limited has
announced the publication of its
new ‘The Year of Social Distanc-
ing’ global report. With data from
the Mimecast threat intelligence
team, the latest report explains
how threat actors targeted remote
workers during the first year of the
Mimecast Publishes Report on Threat
Actor Attacks During COVID-19
The report also examines the cyber
habits of at-home workers, which
revealed some alarming facts, in-
cluding:
• A 3x rise in unsafe clicks in
March 2020, right when the work-
from-home trend began.
• In the UAE, 61 % of the respon-
dents admitted to opening suspi-
cious emails, while 50% do not re-
port suspicious emails to their IT
or security teams.
• 87% of UAE respondents exten-
sively use their company-issued
device for personal matters, with
two-thirds (66%) admitting to an
increase in frequency since starting
to work remote.
Even though vaccine rollouts have
begun, and organisations may soon
start making plans for people to re-
turn to offices in the months ahead,
pandemic, March 2020 – Febru-
ary 2021. As per the report, attack
volume surged by 48% during this
time frame, with sudden increases
in volume corresponding to spikes
in COVID-19 infection rates in
April and October 2020.
“Threat actors took advantage of
the pandemic to launch a torrent
of COVID-19-themed social en-
gineering attacks, understanding
that people were under stress work-
ing in the home environment, and
thus more likely to be deceived and
make mistakes,” said Josh Douglas,
Vice President, Product Manage-
ment at Mimecast. “The second
part of that strategy was to ‘flood
the zone’ in security operations
centers. They knew analysts would
also be stressed and stretched thin,
so overwhelming them with a high
volume of threats would increase
the likelihood of their attacks slip-
ping through defenses.”
Company researchers report a 48% rise in threat volume in the first year of the pandemic;
Threat actor attack volume mirrors spiking COVID-19 infection rates in April and October 2020.
Threat actors
took advantage of
the pandemic to
launch a torrent of
COVID-19-themed
social engineering
attacks.”
With Micro
Focus OPTIC,
companies can
transform without
any drama by
harnessing the
platform’s embedded
intelligence and
extending operational
best practices
while retaining cloud
agility.”
Josh Douglas, Mimecast
the Mimecast threat intelligence
team has assessed the likelihood
of threat actors continuing to ex-
ploit the unsettled work situation
as very likely. These exploitation
efforts will likely focus both on re-
mote workers and those returning
to the office – which creates the
possibility of a new ‘unsettled’ sit-
uation that opens the door for the
possibility of new waves social en-
gineering campaigns.
Micro Focus Introduces OPTIC
Micro Focus has announced the re-
lease of OPTIC (Operations Platform
for Transformation, Intelligence and
Cloud), empowering IT operations
with built-in, unlimited-use intelli-
gence at the core and the ability to
optimise the cloud as a full partner.
As companies navigate the shifting de-
mands of the digital economy and seek
to improve productivity for a dispersed
workforce, Micro Focus OPTIC sim-
plifies the complexity of transforming
IT to meet changing expectations.
“An ideal IT platform should not
compound complexity by creating
technical debt for future mainte-
nance, incurring extra cost for AI/
ML or limiting your ability to man-
age across cloud and traditional envi-
ronments,” said Travis Greene, Micro
Focus Sr. Director of ITOM Prod-
uct Marketing. “With Micro Focus
Key capabilities of Micro Focus OP-
TIC include:
• Unified process automation with
embedded ‘best-practice’ content
that improves productivity without
requiring brittle custom code.
• Discovery and topology mapping
for both cloud and on-premises
environments that enable efficient
management based on current
configurations.
• A single interface for user self-service,
backed by smart virtual agents, that re-
duces user frustration while improving
response times and staff efficiency.
• Flexible deployment options—in
the cloud, in containers, as a ser-
vice, or on-premises—and the abil-
ity to switch as needed.
New IT platform unifies the business user experience and improves
operational efficiency by building on existing systems and tools.
OPTIC, companies can transform
without any drama by harnessing
the platform’s embedded intelligence
and extending operational best prac-
tices while retaining cloud agility.”
• Modular building blocks and flex-
ible licensing for on-demand func-
tionality without unexpected costs.
The embedded intelligence at the
core of Micro Focus OPTIC pro-
vides broad analysis as it normaliz-
es, stores and makes sense of all data
produced by the variety of solutions
found across IT environments – in-
cluding most third-party monitor-
ing tools. OPTIC also allows teams
to discover, monitor, manage, and
govern cloud services in tandem
with an on-premises approach—
maximising the customer experi-
ence and business return. With the
cloud as a full partner, companies
can unify performance and avail-
ability management while stay-
ing open to new possibilities with
multi-cloud deployment options.
OPTIC components are licensed
and install with Micro Focus ITOM
products, providing incremental
value to customers as they expand
their use.

8
A new survey released by Cyber-
Ark found that 97 percent of senior se-
curity executives say attackers are in-
creasingly trying to steal one or more
types of credentials. As organizations
move assets to the cloud, increase
third-party access to corporate re-
sources, and enable sustained remote
work models, attackers are targeting
non-traditional user populations that
may not be adequately protected.
Sponsored by CyberArk, “The CISO
View 2021 Survey: Zero Trust and
Privileged Access,” demonstrates con-
sensus around the value of Zero Trust
and a growing sense of urgency for se-
curing privileged access.
The survey revealed a marked shift in
spear-phishing and impersonation at-
tack patterns:
• The most widely reported group
facing increased attacks is end-users
– including business users with ac-
cess to sensitive data. A majority of
respondents (56 percent) report such
users as being increasingly targeted by
attackers.
• Attacks are also on the rise against
senior leadership (48 percent),
third-party vendors and contractors
(39 percent), and DevOps and cloud
engineers (33 percent).
• Widespread increases in credential
theft attempts were reported for per-
sonal data (70 percent) and financial
systems and data (66 percent). This is
clear evidence of attackers’ interest in
gaining “high-value” access – access to
highly sensitive systems that are often
held by end-users rather than admin-
istrators for example.
In response to these shifting attack pat-
terns, security leaders are embracing
Zero Trust models. Eighty-eight (88)
percent of respondents said adopting
more of a Zero Trust approach is “very
important” or “important.” To imple-
ment a Zero Trust model, the top pri-
ority was controls focusing on Iden-
tity and Access Management (IAM),
Ivanti: Remote Work is Sending IT
Security Budgets Out of Control
CyberArk Highlights Credential Theft
Trends for New Types of Identities
chosen by 45 percent of respondents.
Several types of IAM controls were
favored to protect access to sensitive
systems. Just-in-time access controls
were highly valued, with 87 percent of
respondents saying reducing standing
privileges is an “important” or “very
important” aspect of Zero Trust.
Mike O’Malley, Senior Vice President,
Global Marketing, CyberArk, said,
“As new identities multiply across the
enterprise, this survey emphasizes the
importance of a Zero Trust-based ap-
proach to Identity Security. For securi-
ty leaders seeking to mitigate the risks
of spear-phishing, impersonation at-
tacks and other forms of compromise,
we believe the peer experiences cap-
tured in the CISO View reports will
serve as an invaluable tool, no matter
where their organization is on the
Zero Trust maturity curve.”
The study, which polled 400 CISOs
across EMEA, found that the average
IT security budget last year was over
€64 million, and 81% expect this to
increase over the next 12 months.
When pressed on the specific soft-
ware solutions they plan to invest in
during the next year, unified end-
point management (UEM) and bio-
metric authentication solutions came
out on top. Despite CISOs claiming
that over two-fifths (41%) of their
overall security budget was spent on
UEM software in the last year, four
in five (80%) said they expect invest-
ment in specialized UEM software to
increase over the next year. This in-
crease in investment is primarily to
manage and secure the mass influx
of devices attempting to access cor-
porate resources as employees work
from anywhere.
Seven in ten (70%) CISOs claimed
that their organization’s reliance
on biometric authentication to
enable remote access to business
data would increase, with a quarter
(24%) saying it would significantly
increase. The heightened focus on
biometric authentication is like-
ly due to the significant growth in
phishing attacks.
Nigel Seddon, VP EMEA West, Ivan-
ti said, “To better manage IT and
software spending, CISOs should
consider implementing spend in-
telligence technology. Spend intelli-
gence provides insight into software
landscapes and application spend
across all IT environments improv-
ing operational speed, asset visibili-
ty, and can cut costs.
“Spend intelligence, coupled with
a zero trust approach to secure
digital assets from cloud to edge
by verifying each asset and trans-
action ahead of permitting access
alongside biometric authentication,
will create a stronger security stan-
dard, improve the user experience,
control IT security spend, and help
remove pressure from help desks
optimizing IT environments.”
ditional security measures to better
enable and secure employees as they
work from anywhere as the primary
budget growth driver. Four in five
(80%) CISOs also pinpointed the
need to replace passwords with more
secure forms of authentication.
The need for organizations to better manage and secure the devices and
applications that employees are using to access corporate resources in
the new Everywhere Workplace is a primary budget growth driver.
Identity and access management controls are top priority for security leaders interested in adopting zero trust.
Automation platform Ivanti has an-
nounced the results of a survey, which
revealed that IT security budgets
are spiraling out of control as orga-
nizations adapt to the Everywhere
Workplace. Almost all CISOs (92%)
highlighted the need to deploy ad-

9
Hawk is integrated with AWS and
other leading cloud platforms and
tools, providing a unified view
across hybrid infrastructure.
Michael Dickman, Chief Product
Officer at Gigamon, said, “With
Hawk, we enable enterprises to sim-
plify and secure today’s hybrid cloud
networks and feel confident in their
ability to scale for tomorrow’s busi-
ness needs.”
IT complexity, which grew exponen-
tially following the recent acceler-
ation of digital transformation, has
led to a foundational gap in visibil-
ity across the underlying hybrid in-
frastructure. The gap exists because
network tools lack visibility into
cloud traffic, and cloud tools lack
critical network visibility because
they rely solely on application-level
telemetry. Additionally, traditional
visibility solutions cannot be au-
tomated to elastically scale across
a dynamic hybrid infrastructure.
This cloud visibility gap has made it
extremely challenging for IT teams
to effectively manage digital infra-
structure, leading to a poor custom-
er experience, blind spots in security
Gigamon Launches Hawk to
Secure Cloud Adoption
• Cloud visibility for network
tools. Hawk provides traditional
network tools with immediate, agen-
tless visibility into layers 2-7 across
any cloud network.
• Network visibility for cloud
tools. Hawk delivers the “ground
truth” of data-in-motion to cloud
tools, such as visibility into east-
west container traffic and unman-
aged devices, through network ap-
plication metadata.
Thanks to this unparalleled elastic
visibility, Gigamon Hawk radical-
ly simplifies hybrid infrastructure,
eliminates security and compliance
holes and provides IT teams full vis-
ibility of their cloud environments at
scale. Hawk is available in a subscrip-
tion, scale-as-you-grow, business
model including embedded support.
and compliance and challenges in
cloud adoption.
To close this critical cloud visibility
gap, Gigamon is launching Hawk,
the industry’s first elastic visibil-
ity and analytics fabric for all da-
ta-in-motion across any cloud net-
work. Hawk is the only visibility
solution that delivers:
• Elastic visibility for any
cloud. Hawk’s visibility-as-code can
be embedded into cloud automation
to elastically scale-up and scale-out
on demand. A single, consump-
tion-based licensing model operates
seamlessly across any cloud, public
or private.
Hawk, the industry’s first elastic visibility fabric for all
data-in-motion, closes the critical cloud visibility gap.
Check Point Software Announces
Mobile Security Report 2021
New report uncovers the latest threats to enterprise mobile
devices, from malicious apps to ransomware attacks, as well
as, attacks exploiting corporate Mobile Device Management.
• Nearly half of organizations
impacted by malicious mobile
apps: Forty six percent of organi-
zations had at least one employee
download a malicious mobile appli-
cation that threatened their organi-
zation’s networks and data in 2020.
• Mobile malware on the rise: In
2020, Check Point found a 15% in-
crease in banking Trojan activity,
where users’ mobile banking creden-
tials are at risk of being stolen. Threat
actors have been spreading mobile
malware, including Mobile Remote
Access Trojans (MRATs), banking tro-
jans, and premium dialers, often hid-
ing the malware in apps that claim to
offer COVID-19 related information.
Neatsun Ziv, VP Threat Prevention
at Check Point Software, said, “Cy-
bercriminals are continuing to evolve
and adapt their techniques to exploit
our growing reliance on mobiles. En-
terprises need to adopt mobile securi-
ty solutions which seamlessly protect
devices from today’s advanced cyber
threats, and users should be careful to
use only apps from official app stores
to minimize their risk.”
During 2020, Check Point discovered
a new and highly significant attack, in
which threat actors used a large inter-
national corporation’s Mobile Device
Management (MDM) system to dis-
tribute malware to more than 75% of
its managed mobile devices – exploit-
ing the solution, which is intended to
control how mobiles are used within
the enterprise.
Check Point’s 2021 Mobile Securi-
ty Report is based on data that was
collected from January 1st, 2020
through December 31st, 2020, from
1,800 organizations.
themselves against today’s and tomor-
row’s complex mobile threats and how
these threats are likely to be evolving.
The move to mass remote working
during the COVID-19 pandemic saw
the mobile attack surface expand dra-
matically, resulting in 97% of orga-
nizations facing mobile threats from
several attack vectors. With 60% of
workers forecast to be mobile by 2024,
mobile security needs to be a priority
for all organizations. Highlights of the
Check Point Research Mobile Security
Report 2021 include:
• All enterprises at risk from mo-
bile attacks: Almost every organiza-
tion experienced at least one mobile
malware attack in 2020. Ninety three
percent of these attacks originated in
a device network, which attempts to
trick users into installing a malicious
payload via infected websites or URLs,
or to steal users’ credentials.
Check Point Software Technologies
has published its 2021 Mobile Security
Report. The report examines the latest
emerging threats targeting enterprise
mobile devices, and gives a compre-
hensive overview of the major trends in
mobile malware, device vulnerabilities,
and in nation-state cyber-attacks. It also
shows how organizations can protect
Enterprises
need to adopt mobile
security solutions
which seamlessly
protect devices from
today’s advanced
cyber threats.”

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