1. What are your reasons for coming onboard the 43rd edition of GITEX Global, what are your expectations, and who are you hoping to meet at the show?
GITEX Global represents a cornerstone in the Middle East cybersecurity events calendar, and a fantastic opportunity to educate partners, customers and prospects on the cyber-risks facing employees today.
The Middle East continues to experience a diverse threat landscape and organizations in the region, as well as globally, remain at risk. In light of this evolving threat landscape, it’s no wonder that security professionals around the world are worried about what’s next. Proofpoint’s 2023 Voice of the CISO Report found that most CISOs have returned to the elevated concerns about cybersecurity that they experienced early in the pandemic. This year, 75% percent of CISOs in the UAE surveyed feel at risk of a material cyberattack in the next 12 months, compared to just 44% the year before. Sentiments about preparedness levels have also reversed as 57% felt unprepared to cope with a targeted cyberattack, a moderate increase over the previous year.
With this sense of looming risk and unpreparedness in mind, at GITEX Global 2023 we aim to inform organizations in attendance on how to better protect their critical information. Data doesn’t lose itself. People lose data – it doesn’t walk out of the door on its own. It’s 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.
We have been attending GITEX Global for many years now and each year gives us the opportunity to meet with organizations – not only to help them with their fight against cybercriminals, but also to learn the challenges they are facing within their organizations.
2. Are you planning to launch any products or services, demonstrate new technologies, or sign any partnerships during the show? Please provide details to help us amplify your presence.
Proofpoint, a leading cybersecurity and compliance company, recently announced a host of innovations across its Aegis Threat Protection, Identity Threat Defense and Sigma Information Protection platforms, empowering organisations to stop malicious email attacks, detect and prevent identity-based threats and defend sensitive data from theft, loss and insider threats.
The new innovations further enhance Proofpoint’s leading threat and information protection platforms, in addition to its newly formed Identity Threat Defense business (formerly known as Illusive), to help organisations augment and safeguard their productivity investments, such as Microsoft 365, with maximum deployment flexibility.
At GITEX Global 2023, Proofpoint will be showcasing its portfolio of solutions which help protect organizations’ ‘break the attack chain’, including:
Proofpoint Aegis Threat Protection Platform:
Proofpoint Aegis Threat Protection Platform is the only AI/ML-powered threat protection platform that disarms today's advanced attacks, including Business Email Compromise (BEC), phishing, ransomware, supply chain threats and more. With flexible deployment options using both APIs and inline architecture, Aegis delivers advanced AI-powered, cloud-based protection that complements native Microsoft 365 defences.
By combining the company’s proprietary behavioural analytics and threat intelligence, Proofpoint is delivering new capabilities that provide visibility into account takeover-based attacks – from both within an organisation’s environment and outside suppliers.
Proofpoint Identity Threat Defense (formerly known as Illusive):
From ransomware to APTs, 90% of attacks rely on compromised identities. The complexity of managing Active Directory (AD) has resulted in the presence of exploitable privileged identity risks in all organisations at a rate of one in six endpoints. These identity risks include unmanaged local admins with stale passwords, misconfigured users with unnecessary privileges, cached credentials left exposed on endpoints, and much more. When an attacker compromises an endpoint with these privileged identity risks, deploying malicious software and stealing data are easy. Privileged identities represent the keys to the kingdom, which attackers exploit to steal the crown jewels. Unfortunately, most organisations are unaware of this risk – until they are attacked.
Leveraging new advanced identity risk analytics and automated detection, Proofpoint has further bolstered its Identity Threat Defense platform – undefeated in more than 150 red team exercises – to provide organisations with comprehensive identity risk protection and remediation.
Proofpoint Sigma Information Protection Platform:
Proofpoint is the world’ largest Insider Threat Management (ITM) provider, and since its introduction in early 2020, Proofpoint’s information protection business has grown a remarkable 107%, making the company the second largest data loss prevention (DLP) vendor globally and by revenue according to Gartner (Gartner, Inc. Market Share: All Software Markets, Worldwide, 2022). Driven by the accelerated adoption of work-from-anywhere practices, the Proofpoint Sigma Information Protection platform is now deployed to over 5,000 customers and 46 million users worldwide, analysing 45 billion events each month, and trusted by nearly half of the Fortune 100.
Proofpoint’s Information Protection Platform is the only information protection platform that merges content inspection, threat telemetry and user behaviour across channels in a unified, cloud-native interface.
3. How important is GITEX Global for your business, and what is the volume of business growth you anticipate from your participation in the show?
We continue to invest in the Middle East and are excited for our participation at GITEX. The week represents a cornerstone in the Middle East cybersecurity events calendar, and a fantastic opportunity to inform partners, customers and prospects on the cyber-risks facing employees today.
4. How important is the Middle East and Africa for your business, and what is your growth strategy in the region over the coming years?
Proofpoint continues to invest in innovation to secure organizations in the Middle East and beyond.
We are focused on developing security innovations that protect people—wherever they may work—and defend their data from today’s most harmful risks. To stay ahead of the threat actors, we invest hundreds of millions annually into our products and rely on the most advanced AI/ML technologies to defend our customers.
Driven by the accelerated adoption of work-from-anywhere practices, we have made several innovations to people-centric cybersecurity solutions. We will continue to innovate to help protect organisations in the Middle East and Africa.
5. To what extent can the region’s bold digital transformation missions elevate the global tech ecosystem?
The rapidly evolving pace of digital transformation promises new levels of efficiency, agility, and responsiveness for your organization, your supply chain, and your customers. But these opportunities can quickly backfire if you don’t account for a variety of new and evolving cybersecurity risks.
For every incredible new technology platform or solution to make your users more productive, another type of malware emerges to target your data. For every new digital platform you use to enhance customer experience, a new wave of impostors arrives, leveraging your organization’s hard won good name to compromise and defraud, across email, the web, social media, and mobile apps. Not to mention, the biggest, most persistent threat since the digital age began: email fraud and phishing.
It’s simple, really. Digital transformation can’t be successful without taking security, compliance, and fraud risk into account. And it can be especially challenging when you don’t own the infrastructure.
The potential for digital transformation to disrupt business for the better is truly staggering. And like any smart business decision, it requires understanding and managing the risks.
6. Which countries and industry verticals are you targeting as part of your business plan over the next 5-10 years?
No matter the industry, no organization can be 100% secure from cyberattacks. In addition, cybercriminals will chase their end goal – usually financial outcomes – regardless of the type or size of organization they are targeting. With this in mind, Proofpoint will continue to work with organizations from all sectors to help them break the attack chain and protect their data.
7. GITEX Global is accelerating the epic race for AI dominance in 2023: how is your business embracing the AI innovation wave?
For a long time, Proofpoint has used AI and machine learning to give organizations complete and constantly evolving protection against a wide range of external threats. For example, by using AI/ML in email security solutions you can identify URLs and webpages used in phishing campaigns. And you can combat business email compromise by detecting imposter messages to identifying anomalous user activity in cloud accounts. Proofpoint uses NexusAI and its trillions of datapoints to continuously protect your people and your organisation against attackers.
In addition, Proofpoint’s Aegis Threat Protection Platform is the only AI/ML-powered threat protection platform that disarms today's advanced attacks, including Business Email Compromise (BEC), phishing, ransomware, supply chain threats and more. With flexible deployment options using both APIs and inline architecture, Aegis delivers advanced AI-powered, cloud-based protection that complements native Microsoft 365 defences.
8. Aside from AI, what is the world’s next big technology shift and how should government, business, and society prepare for it?
Identity theft is a growing threat in today’s digital landscape. Threat actors now realize it’s more effective, faster, and cheaper to steal credentials and log in than trying to hack through technical controls. Once they have siphoned access details from just one employee, they move laterally, stealing even more credentials, escalating privilege, compromising servers and endpoints, and downloading sensitive organizational data – it’s now far too easy for an attacker to turn one compromised identity into an organization-wide ransomware incident or data breach.
Proofpoint’s 2023 State of the Phish report revealed that among the UAE organizations that experienced an attempted phishing attack in 2022, 86% of these were successful. Of these successful attacks, 26% resulted in credential theft and/or account compromise, where employees invertedly expose their credentials, giving threat actors access to sensitive data and their business accounts.
Privileged identities represent the keys to the kingdom, which attackers exploit to steal the crown jewels. Unfortunately, due to the hard-to-detect nature of these attacks, most organizations are unaware of this risk.
Security teams need to consider the detective tools they have in place to spot compromised users and lateral movements across environments before too much damage is done. Organizations globally must look at the entire attack chain as part of an effective threat protection strategy, covering the threats your people and their identities continuously face.
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