Emile Abou Saleh, Regional Director, Middle East & Africa at Proofpoint, explains how Proofpoint intends to use GITEX as a platform to educate organizations on how to better protect their critical information.
What are Proofpoint’s plans to be part of GITEX this year and why is it important for you to be part of the week-long show?
As a leading cybersecurity and compliance company, GITEX is a key event for Proofpoint. The cyber threat landscape in the Middle East is rapidly evolving, with wider attack surfaces, more access points, and increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks. Therefore, our goal at this year’s edition of GITEX is to educate organizations on how to better protect their critical information. It’s important, now more than ever, to protect against insider threats with the right technological controls in place and employee education on how to identify and action against such threats.
Please highlight the products and solutions that Proofpoint will be showcasing at GITEX?
The key products we will be showcasing at GITEX this year, include:
Proofpoint Information Protection: Information Protection applies to security solutions and other technologies, as well as processes and policies, to secure organizations’ information. They get data protection against accidental mistakes, attacks and insider risk across cloud services, email, endpoint, cloud apps, web, and on-premises and shared cloud repositories. It brings together content, threat and behaviour insights and delivers a people-centric approach to data loss prevention (DLP).
Proofpoint Cloud Security: Organizations can get secure access to the web and cloud services with access control, threat protection, data security, security monitoring, and acceptable-use control.
Proofpoint Email Protection: Proofpoint Email Protection is the industry-leading email gateway, which can be deployed as a cloud service or on premises. It catches both known and unknown threats that others miss. Powered by NexusAI, Proofpoint’s advanced machine learning technology, Email Protection accurately classifies various types of email. It detects and blocks threats that don’t involve malicious payload, such as impostor email—also known as business email compromise (BEC)—using Advanced BEC Defence.
Proofpoint Security Awareness Training: Attackers target people more directly than ever, and 95% of all cybersecurity issues can be traced back to human error. Ensuring users know what to do when faced with a real threat with targeted, threat-guided education is critical. Proofpoint Security Awareness Training empowers people to defend their organization with a holistic solution resulting in fewer clicks on real-world malicious links.
What are the major cybersecurity trends influencing the Middle East?
We are seeing the threat landscape in the Middle East evolving at a rapid pace, from email-based threats, such as Business Email Compromise (BEC), to credential phishing, compromised cloud accounts and debilitating ransomware attacks. Cybercriminals are aware that employees can easily be tricked using social engineering techniques to steal credentials, siphon sensitive data, and fraudulently transfer funds.
Additionally, employees across all job levels and functions can put an organization at risk in numerous ways, from using weak passwords and sharing credentials to clicking on malicious links and downloading unauthorized applications. Middle East organizations can address these emerging risks by deploying a cybersecurity strategy that combines people, processes and technology.
How does Proofpoint enable organizations to enhance their cybersecurity preparedness in the new normal?
There’s been a huge shift in the way people have been working since the pandemic. Hybrid work models have increased organizations’ reliance on collaboration platforms and cloud technologies to maintain business continuity. While employees are working from anywhere, cybercriminals are now targeting people rather than infrastructure. Our recent research shows that 32% of CISOs in the UAE agree that they have seen an increase in targeted attacks in the last 12 months.
To address this, Proofpoint is focused on developing security innovations that protect people—wherever they may work—to defend their data from today’s most harmful risks. Proofpoint invests hundreds of millions annually into our products and rely on the most advanced AI/ML technologies to defend our customers and stay ahead of threat actors.
What message would Proofpoint like to deliver to the customers visiting the show?
People are the number one risk factor for data loss and cyberattacks. Data is either stolen by an external attacker via compromised credentials, lost due to a careless user, or taken by a malicious employee, often to a competitor. This means targeted and adaptive security awareness training is critical so that every member of an organization’s team is in no doubt about the part they can potentially play in exposing sensitive data and information.
We will also be communicating to attendees that with the evaporation of the traditional network perimeter, the old way of protecting data doesn’t work; we need to up our game and adapt data loss prevention (DLP) and insider risk solutions to protect the modern edge – endpoint, cloud apps, email, and the web.
Where can we find Proofpoint at GITEX? (booth and hall number)
Proofpoint will be showcasing its people-centric cybersecurity solutions through ongoing demos at its stand: D20, Hall 2.