Threat intelligence and security analytics solutions are key to assisting CIOs in detecting potentially malicious network activities, according to experts.

The issue was highlighted by Arbor Networks, a leading enterprise protection services provider, alongside its sister-company, Fluke Networks, a global provider of network performance and diagnostics solutions at a press briefing yesterday (April 21) at Emirates Towers Hotel in Dubai, UAE.

Through an interactive and engaging briefing, the security firms delivered insights into drivers and trends in the IT security market, threat intelligence in Middle East, transformation of networks today and its impact on end-user experience.

Arbor Networks recommended effective global threat intelligence for CIOs to proactively “hunt” for signs of compromise or breach before they impact the organizations.

Referring to the latest Industry Report on IT Security Trends in the Middle East supported by Arbor Networks and Fluke Networks, the briefing uncovered potential IT security spending in the region and highlighted points of perceived concerns amongst IT and professionals in regards to current and future security threats.

The briefing also established the pertinence of effective security intelligence that not only identifies attacks, but understands and catalogs the attack infrastructure, methods and other indicators so that broader, more proactive measures can be taken with confidence.

“The trend for DDoS attacks is not favourable for enterprises as volumetric attacks are growing,” said Mahmoud Samy, regional director - High Growth Markets (Russia/CIS & Middle East), at Arbor Networks.

“The increasing popularity of amplification/reflection attacks is adding a new layer of complexity. Modern day DDoS attacks now employ a combination of volumetric, TCP-state exhaustion and application-layer attack vectors.

“Arbor CloudSM DDoS Protection for Enterprises (Arbor Cloud) provides cloud-based traffic scrubbing services tightly integrated with on-premise DDoS mitigation defence. This multi-layered approach to DDoS protection is an enterprise must-have for mitigating today’s spectrum of DDoS threats. Though this layered protection, Arbor delivers a comprehensive, industry-leading DDoS protection solution for businesses,” he added.

The briefing also focused on borderless enterprise and how the expansion of the borderless enterprise is increasing the difficulty for IT to ensure the end-user experience and business of its workforce.

“There’s a significant urgency in the borderless enterprise model, where users access applications, development platforms and network infrastructure as a service over the Internet,” said Werner Heeren, regional director, Middle East, Africa and Turkey, Fluke Networks.

“These are things IT departments don’t always control, but are expected to fix if something goes wrong. Therefore, it’s important that IT and the business work together to establish a process and methodology that orchestrates the adoption of SaaS applications into the enterprise.”

“Security analytics solutions are pertinent too as they move the security analyst massively forward in the attack lifecycle, to the point where proactive analysis is almost part of security operations,” Samy concluded. – TradeArabia News Service