B Swaminathan
Dubai: With sweeping changes to its regulatory environment, the United Arab Emirates has achieved another milestone in its remarkable two-decade transformation, attracting more foreign investment and jumpstarting its economic recovery after the coronavirus pandemic.
How the Middle East is transforming:
Fahad Muhtasib, Chief Operating Officer at Tasheel Information Technology calls this as the most important phase of every organization. According to him, most organizations had never anticipated such a situation and are moving towards digital-first.” According to him, one of the key changes, he noticed is the way businesses are moving towards work-from-anywhere. “In the pre-COVID era, many businesses were not comfortable in critical aspects like remote support. However, we see a change in their mindset on adopting the latest technologies and being on par with the other regions”, he says further adding that his organization, headquartered in KSA, is planning to expand the services in other parts of the world too.
Listing out the new trends the market is facing, Rajendran Duraiswamy, Sr Technical Consultant of Alpha Data, says COVID had made even non-IT organization rethink their business models. He is a veteran in understanding the nuances of customer problems and giving them solutions across the Middle East region.
According to him, the top three changes he notices in the Middle East market after COVID are
- Enterprises are eager to learn new technologies and are ready to implement them in their organizations without any second thoughts which were not earlier.
- Next, I notice an increase in understanding the importance of cyber security across the board. Not just the IT team, but all the stakeholders involved are having a better knowledge of cyber security and are willing to invest more in securing digital assets.
- Every business wants to go closer to their customer. When I mean that, most businesses are trying to find avenues that will help them engage their customers closely be it a mobility or RPA, etc.
Best practices in procuring IT:
Rejeesh Kumar, Director, Mindfire Technologies, one of the leading solution providers in the Middle East region, predicts that the coming days will be ruled by services. “I see the trend where the consumers are slowly getting used to pay-per-use mode. You name a solution, perpetual models are slowly fading away and consumers prefer to have any solution at their convenience”.
In his suggestion for best procurement, Rajeesh adds that many IT decision-makers are confused about the procurement standards and processes, thanks to the competition. “I would always prefer the IT decision-makers to look at the effectiveness of investments that they make. Ideally more than the features, the decision makers should look at the long time effect a solution can bring after implementation.”
Key things before selecting a cyber security solution:
Seconding his views, Majid Khan, Director of Architecture and platforms, Help AG, a leading solutions partner in the Middle East region predicts that the concept of cyber security as a service will increase and there will be a drastic mind shift towards the approach towards cyber security. “If my guess is right, in the coming days, cyber security will be 90% service-driven and only 10% will be a solution”, he says.
While many CISOs would have gone through many solutions, here are the top things to keep in mind before finalizing a cybersecurity solution.
- Business owners and IT decision-makers should understand that the concept of cyber security is slowly changing and what used to be perimeter-driven security will now be identity-driven post-COVID. Because an individual will be a perimeter.
- Industries should look at convergence while selecting their solutions. As many solutions are coming together, business owners should consider this factor seriously.
- Not just prevention, but also prediction mechanism is becoming strong in the cyber world. Thus CISOs should follow, 1. Prevention 2. Deduct if any attack 3. Respond and recover faster for the smooth functioning of the business and then predict better to avoid any further issues.
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