Assad Arabi
Qatar’s relationship with technology has always been symbiotic. In October 2008, when the General Secretariat for Development Planning launched Qatar National Vision 2030, technology – and cloud computing in particular – was an integral pillar of the initiative’s central aim to transform Qatar into “an advanced society capable of sustaining its development and providing a high standard of living for its people”.
The rest of the world took notice of the ambitious Gulf nation’s impressive progress towards this goal. An example is of Cloud providers that are investing to bring their datacenters to the country which is a testament to Qatar’s digital ambitions and forward-looking strategy.
When the COVID-19 crisis erupted, Qatar enhanced this reputation by initiating a US$23 billion stimulus, while implementing remote working and distance learning, in addition to other health and safety measures. And to further business continuity, several organizations moved to the cloud, to innovate their way out of the crisis.
Economic steadiness was the order of the day and private enterprises knew that resilience could best be achieved through the cloud. And they were eager to develop disaster-recovery strategies to become more adaptable in the face of any future crises.
But while the cloud offered undeniable benefits for COVID-hit enterprises, it presented a double-edged sword. Bad actors lost no time in taking advantage of the many different inroads presented by remote employees authenticating to corporate environments through untamed devices and propagating proprietary data across multiple networks, emails, and endpoints.
Such problems arise from many factors. Broadly, the overall shape of the IT environment does not allow for ideal visibility. Overwhelmed security teams cannot detect some of the worst vulnerabilities – those that are easily exploited and lead to high business impact. Being under-resourced and inundated with false-positive flags leads to a less-than-optimal use of resources and a poor defense posture. Multi-vendor solutions and siloed operations are simply not up to the task of catering to hybridized digital fiefdoms.
In response, security teams need a fresh “more advanced” approach. An approach that goes beyond extended detection and response (XDR) to deliver complete visibility, risk, and threat intelligence with cross layers detection model. This enables them to spot complex attacks which were missed in siloed solutions, while filtering and reducing alert fatigue and seeing only those threat insights that need attention. And with purpose-built protection and capabilities for every layer; integration within existing infrastructures; as well as simplified management, all within a single console – this new approach provides a holistic threat defense platform that organizations need in the new normal.
And it gets better. Enterprises struggling with overwhelmed security teams or lack of skilled staff, can also avail managed services by leveraging resources and expertise of the security provider to identify, investigate and better respond to threats. This helps maximize effectiveness across multiple security vectors and frees up time for security teams to focus more on innovating, while the provider guards their digital estates.
Qatar’s government has fomented a richly competitive environment for businesses to innovate. And adopting a new threat posture can empower organizations to concentrate on core business competencies, thus accelerating a secured journey to pursue their digital transformation ambitions.
The writer is the Managing Director of Trend Micro Gulf Cluster.
