ARCON at the GEC Security Symposium
Almost after a year and a quarter, it was great to be back at one of the keenly anticipated events — GEC Security Symposium.
ARCON sponsored and participated at the GEC Security Symposium. The leading IT players and solution providers along with IT heads from the Middle-east region gathered at the event to engage in knowledge sharing sessions, focused especially on the modern-day emerging IT vulnerabilities. This year, ARCON was the privileged access management partner.
Organized at Palazzo Versace, Jaddaf Waterfront, Dubai, the GEC summit is an annual event that takes place in this vibrant city.
The GEC Security Symposium and CISO Awards 2021, presented by Cyber Sentinels, explored the real context of end-to-end security in today’s IT environment. The organizers recognized the leading players in the industry who are relentlessly into R&D to solve the emerging IT security threats and are developing cutting edge solutions that meet all the enterprise IT security demands. The event offered an excellent platform for collaboration between the IT heads from leading organizations and leading IT security vendors from across the world.
GEC Security Symposium & Cyber Sentinels Future Security Awards
The IT security community believes that the remote work culture and remote workplace would increasingly be a norm as many companies are prioritizing employee health and wellness amid uncertainty arising from the pandemic.
Nevertheless, the remote workplace poses unprecedented security challenges for the organizations. To mitigate the emerging cyber risks, especially secure remote access, organizations are left with no choice but to implement transparent and comprehensive IT security policies and take proactive measures to ensure business data safety and integrity.
In the last fifteen months, it has been observed that organizations worked remotely where the privileged users accessed critical applications/ systems and confidential databases as a part of daily IT operations.
How can we ensure security of business data in remote work conditions?
ARCON’s Privileged Access Management (PAM) addresses the challenges with the help of robust security tools. ARCON developed a host of robust security tools such as Application Streaming Server, End-user Behaviour Monitoring (ARCON PAM’s UEBA agent that leverages AI/ML to detect endpoint risks on real-time basis, Just-in-time privileges capability among many that offered secure remote access on ‘need-to-know’ and ‘need-to-do’ basis.
The solution prevents malicious insiders and other access management associated risks while working remotely. ARCON also bridges the gap between low-friction and high security identity management requirements which raises end-users’ productivity.
The cyber threat landscape is increasingly getting vulnerable every day. There is no limit to betterment when it comes to upgrading the enterprise security posture.
Keeping that in mind, the Cyber Sentinels Future Security Awards 2021 recognized the security vendors, VADs, System Integrators and Resellers who have walked the extra mile to meet the security needs with innovations and customizations of their solutions. The value for money as per security offerings have also been taken into consideration.
ARCON received the coveted award for Privileged Access Management and received a big round of applause from the audience. The global CIO Forum recognized ARCON’s contribution towards securing global organizations’ information assets with the help of its highly-mature Privileged Access Management (PAM) solution.
While receiving this award, Mr. Nikhil Sanghvi, Director Sales & BD, and Regional Head, Middle East, ARCON, said,
“We would like to thank GEC Media and Global CIO Forum for recognizing our efforts and rewarding us. This only shows that we are on the right track of our relentless work of serving every global organization with their IT security needs.”
GEC Security Symposium: Live Chat and Speaking Session
Cyber Sentinels also had an exclusive live chat and speaking session by ARCON’s Chief Mentor and Thought Leader, Mr.Anil Bhandari. With the topic of “Next gen Approach to Digital Identities and Vaults”, Mr. Bhandari shared his views on how Footprints of the (Digital) identities are moving out of the premise and converging into the cloud. While discussing his views on digital identities, here are some of the key extracts that attracted more attention from the chat session.
- What are Digital Identities?
As the world is embracing more digital technologies, every individual identity is converging into digital forms. These identities are digital identities that are likely to explode exponentially in every sphere of industries.
- What are the threats associated with these digital identities?
There are multiple threats associated with digital identities. The footprints of identities are moving out from the homes and are converging themselves into the cloud. For large organizations, the entire technology structure is likely to reside in the cloud. Hence, the identities suddenly move from on-premise to cloud data centers. All kinds of identities are exploding including OS databases, human identities, and machine identities top the list. Once the digital footprints are compromised, the cyber criminals literally take away the digital lives of the victims because each and every activity would no longer remain secret.
- Why are digital identities the core of cyber security?
Because it is omnipresent. The larger footprints of the identities, the ever-increasing number of identities, and the vulnerabilities of the identities – everything poses a huge risk. This is because we never come to know who is spying on or trying to compromise which identity at what point of time. For that reason, digital identities have to be the core of cyber security protection programs and very closely monitored.
- Will that say “Digital World” is phenomenal and thus the digital identities are under risk?
Absolutely! As digital identities are entering every complex infrastructure, even in the cloud, these identities need to be protected. Otherwise, the privacy of an identity that we speak about, would be compromised. Hence, the privacy control mechanisms have to go to the next level.
- Do demographics really matter in managing privacy of digital identities? Especially for the UAE, what do you think about it?
Well, whether it is UAE, USA or any other country, the demographics do make a difference to the threat vectors that are coming in. For example, in developed countries like the USA, where lots of digital identities are floating around everywhere, there could be all kinds of cyber attackers coming after these identities. For countries like the UAE, there could be a large number of nation state actors coming after the individuals because of the local habits of the organizations regarding maintenance of privacy. In a country like Japan, as the community is closely guarded by the Government initiatives with even the smallest of security aspects, any incident, even if unexpected, fails to create a big impact. Hence, geographies and the geo-political arena definitely have an impact on controlling identity threats and understanding what kind of threats are coming around.
- Is the UAE the first point of hacking incidents?
Not really, but there are continuous and concentrated attempts to dismantle manufacturing, financial services, and other industries in that region. So the security mechanism adopted in that region should include monitoring and securing the privacy of digital identities.
- What proactive measures should be taken to stay resilient to cyber threats?
Well anything and everything that is adopted should be less complex and more result-oriented. However, the most important thing should be to build up a resilient framework where responses are automated for any signal that is received. Technology like User Behaviour Analytics (UBA) helps to get into the logs of the identities quickly and in the right manner to analyze the risk factor. Today, it is no more important to invest in the best of the best technologies but the problem statement has to be clear and a relevant solution has to bring in.
- That should include the identities too?
Well, not necessarily, but identities are the gateways to confidential business assets. Hence it should be on the priority list even if not as the top-most priority. For example, user authentication and user authorization are the mechanisms that could ensure that the right user is accessing the right system at the right time for the right purpose. Eventually, it ensures data security.
- ARCON has already gone global? What is your learning from the UAE market?
In the UAE, as per my experience and learning, there has to be analysis on deeper security aspects as this country has invested a lot on modern IT technologies to enhance and enrich each business. It includes cyber security and cyber control tools which most of the SMEs take quite seriously. There is no doubt on the awareness, there is no doubt on staying more advanced. The question is just to align the IT security requirements as per demand and ensure business continuity at the same time through continuous re-designing and re-thinking.
- On the ending note, one suggestion that you would like to give to the IT professionals today.
For the CISOs specially, I’d suggest all to stay focused on the automation as much as possible. Not only that, rigorous testing of that automation process is very very important. At the same time, we shouldn’t get blown away by excessive automation because we need to have false positives. It could result in unsuccessful projects or even hindrance in day-to-day operations. There has to be a robust security mechanism that would help them to detect the real problem statement and take immediate action to resolve it. Hence rigorous testing of the use cases is highly critical.
GEC Security Symposium, thank you; and ARCON will be back next year!!!
ARCON whole-heartedly thanks Global CIO Forum and GEC Media for organizing this prestigious Security Symposium and CISO Awards 2021 in Dubai. ARCON is really proud to be recognized as the Cyber Sentinels Security Awards 2021 winner for Privileged Access Management and thanks Global CIO Forum for recognizing the efforts of Team ARCON.
With this award as another ‘feather in the crown’, ARCON, as a brand, would look to give a bigger business push in the Middle East region, a region where ARCON is an undisputed leader.
ARCON would like to thank all the other participants, visitors and the organizing team as well for making this award function a successful event!
