Ramzi Itani, Regional Director at Veritas Technologies, talks about the evolving cybersecurity landscape in the Middle East and the challenges organisations face in the region. He also touched upon the experience of participating at GITEX this year, where the company showcased its secure, unified, and cloud-native data management platform, Veritas Alta.
How would you evaluate the cybersecurity landscape in the Middle East?
The cybersecurity landscape is evolving at pace, and this is posing significant challenges for businesses worldwide. Cyber-attacks are surging in frequency and complexity, and the consequences of regulatory non-compliance are high.
In the UAE, our research found that more than half (57%) of organisations believe they are currently ‘at risk’, and 73% have experienced a successful ransomware attack in the last two years. In addition, 39% have said their organisation has suffered due to data security risks, such as ransomware, data loss or data theft, and many believe these risks will continue to increase in the next year. At the same time, AI and emerging technologies are creating huge security risks and cybercriminals are exploiting them to build more sophisticated forms of attack.
However, confidence is rising among UAE organisations, as almost all (98%) feel they now have the staff required to keep their organisations secure. This confidence perhaps comes from the significant investment these companies are making in technology and talent. Data protection spending has increased by a third in the last 12 months, and the average UAE company has hired between 14-16 new staff members across their data protection and data security teams.
How does Veritas help organisations manage, protect, and optimise their data?
The Veritas vision is built on a strategy for Autonomous Data Management, where the solutions use AI and machine learning to self-provision, self-optimise and self-heal. Equipping businesses to be agile and adaptive without putting pressure on human resources. This strategy is founded on Cloud Scale Technology, a containerised, cloud-optimised reimaging of the software underpinning our market-leading NetBackup solution.
If a ransomware attack is a matter of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’, knowing ‘when’ becomes absolutely critical. Veritas’ AI-powered anomaly detection capabilities can quickly alert backup admins of potential issues and suspicious behaviour, while automated recovery processes take immediate action to isolate backups with malware, ultimately minimising the impact of a successful attack.
Recently, one of your studies revealed that organizations in the UAE are grappling with a multitude of data security concerns. Kindly explain how Veritas can address these growing security challenges.
Data security and cybersecurity continue to be big challenges for organisations across all sectors. Despite their huge potential use cases, AI technologies pose huge risks to businesses due to their security vulnerabilities. AI systems are complex and can be vulnerable to complex cyberattacks.
Veritas provides customers with a trusted data protection solution, and we can also help businesses build an AI implementation strategy to protect their information. Having an immutable backup copy of the data will secure business operations after a restore, and with the help of Autonomous Data Management, using AI and machine learning can self-provision, self-optimise and self-heal.
With AI at play, which direction is cybersecurity heading?
In any way that AI can be used for good, it can also be used to create harm. We’re increasingly seeing threat actors exploit these technologies to create more sophisticated forms of attack. Yet, according to our research, the majority (77%) of UAE organisations are also turning to AI technologies to boost security. Given AI’s dual nature as a force for both good and bad, one of the biggest questions going forward will be whether organisations’ AI protection can outpace hackers’ AI attacks.
At the same time, while the true potential of AI is yet to be discovered, we know its applications are highly data-intensive, creating the need for enterprises to manage it efficiently and responsibly. The complexity of such technologies can make them vulnerable to cyberattacks if not managed effectively.
How was your participation at GITEX this year?
Every year, GITEX serves as a melting pot for innovation, fostering partnerships and exploring the emerging trends that are shaping the future of the technology landscape. It was a fantastic opportunity to connect with customers and partners to demonstrate Veritas’ market-leading data management and protection expertise.
We also showcased Veritas Alta, our secure, unified, and cloud-native data management platform, featuring data protection with unmatched ransomware resiliency, enabling customers to manage their entire data protection estate via a single-pane-of-glass console. We demonstrated to customers how Veritas Alta provides the highest levels of application resiliency, application portability across clouds and optimisation of storage consumption and allows enterprises to illuminate and remediate information risks with data compliance as-a-service.