GEC News Wire

Author: GEC NEWS WIRE

  • Rasmala Expands UK Real Estate Portfolio Through Strategic Acquisitions

    Rasmala Expands UK Real Estate Portfolio Through Strategic Acquisitions

    Rasmala has announced the successful investments of three major assets in the UK for its Rasmala Long Income Fund. The acquisitions include the Asda supermarket in Gillingham (Dorset), the Travelodge hotel in Kingston Upon Thames, and the Quora Retail Park in Doncaster, reinforcing its strategic focus on essential retail and long-income assets that can deliver stable, inflation-linked returns for investors.

    • The ASDA supermarket in Gillingham is an essential retail asset that integrates with the digital economy, offering ‘Click & Collect’ and ‘Home Delivery’ services to cater to the growing demand for convenient shopping experiences. This reflects Gulf investors’ increasing interest in stable, global assets that hedge against regional market fluctuations.
    • The Travelodge hotel in Kingston Upon Thames is leased on a long-term, inflation-linked agreement. The property also offers future potential for alternative uses, such as co-living or student accommodation, which enhances its long-term value. These investments support regional economic initiatives, such as Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, by providing investors with access to diversified international assets that contribute to economic diversification.
    • Similarly, the Quora Retail Park in Doncaster, leased primarily to Aldi and B&M Retail, benefits from long-term, inflation-linked income, reflecting Rasmala’s combination of local expertise and global reach.

    Rasmala’s acquisitions of these assets highlights its expertise in high-quality cross-border UK real estate investments, creating unique opportunities for investors in the Gulf to participate in high-yield investments. By securing these assets, Rasmala continues to build a diversified portfolio that delivers both income stability and growth potential.

    “These strategic acquisitions are aligned with Rasmala’s long-term approach to investing in income-generating assets with the potential for significant long-term capital appreciation,” said Zak Hydari, Group CEO of Rasmala Holdings.

  • IFS Accelerates Industrial AI Reality with Release of IFS Cloud 24R2

    IFS Accelerates Industrial AI Reality with Release of IFS Cloud 24R2

    IFS unveils new IFS.ai-powered features being introduced in the IFS Cloud 24R2 release, focusing on delivering maximum value to asset and service-intensive industries and elevating the user experience to drive Industrial AI adoption at scale.

    New feature highlights include:

    Home is a new, dynamic, AI-powered homepage for IFS Cloud providing live project status visibility, fuelling productivity and efficiency. Anomalies are automatically detected, and corrective actions suggested, saving time and increasing accuracy of project analysis. This unique and intuitive experience combines the new context aware IFS.ai Copilot uses cases with a growing ecosystem of interactive widgets that help users plan, manage, build and service assets faster, smarter and safer.

    IFS.ai Copilot now goes deeper than ever, surfacing insights from across the organization. The context aware Copilot has preconfigured industries capabilities gets even more powerful when integrated with customer data sources, and it knows where users are in IFS Cloud and provides accurate insights related to it. For example, service leaders and dispatchers can now maximize field service delivery and future planning efficiency with AI-driven accelerated, accurate decision making, and obtain instant contextually relevant answers to questions.

    Within the Asset Applications module, the new IFS.ai Copilot for FMECA (Failure Modes, Effects, Criticality Analysis) feature drives optimized asset availability while reducing maintenance costs and mitigating risks.  It provides detailed analysis of how an asset might fail, the probability, and consequences of making or adjusting maintenance strategies. AI supports FMECA by unlocking insights from unstructured information such as manuals and maintenance reports to support and refine the analysis.

    New Prompt Libraries in Copilot empower users to take the lead with AI by storing contextually relevant prompts, eliminating repetition and boosting productivity.

     

    IFS.ai can take unstructured data from, for example, a new manufacturing customer PO and auto create a new order so the production process can be accelerated. The impact of this new order onto the shop floor can then be modelled and analyzed with the new Manufacturing Scheduling Optimization (MSO) Simulation capability. IFS.ai does the heavy lifting, enabling production managers to improve capacity planning and meet customer demand.  Meanwhile, asset managers can use the Simulation capabilities to more accurately predict and plan essential asset maintenance based on different scenarios.

    Christian Pedersen, Chief Product Officer at IFS, said, “All new features and enhancements within IFS Cloud 24R2 are guided by IFS’s strategic themes. They are tailored to help customers unleash their full potential – both in terms of operational effectiveness and profitability – by leveraging IFS.ai to unlock and use the secret weapon from across supply chain and operations: their data.”

  • Mastercard Boosts Saudi Arabia’s Digital Payment Ecosystem with Local Tech Launch

    Mastercard Boosts Saudi Arabia’s Digital Payment Ecosystem with Local Tech Launch

    Mastercard announced the launch of world class technology infrastructure in Saudi Arabia that will enable the processing of ecommerce transactions locally, providing a seamless and secure payments experience for both Mastercard partners and consumers, supporting the acceleration of the Kingdom’s digital commerce.

    As part of its efforts to empower the digital transformation, drive economic diversification and empower innovation in Saudi Arabia, and under the patronage of The Saudi Central Bank  (SAMA), the local establishment of Mastercard Gateway widens the technology company’s footprint in the region and underlines Mastercard’s commitment to contributing its expertise as a trusted technology partner and enabler of Saudi Arabia’s digital economy and future goals.

    Mastercard Gateway is a single touchpoint that powers payment and digital acceptance solutions across new and existing markets and channels, locally and globally. Merchants benefit from support for 30+ different payment methods and risk management solutions such as fraud detection and prevention, while customers enjoy advanced, secure protection from cybercrime.

    This innovative infrastructure asset bundled with tailor-made applications and services will enable the processing of local ecommerce transactions efficiently and securely.

    “As a company that is powering economies and empowering people, we understand the importance of a world-class payment infrastructure. We are proud of our long legacy in the Kingdom and the unveiling of our secure technology infrastructure in the Kingdom is a landmark moment that reinforces our commitment to digitization and diversification. We will continue to work closely with local leadership to collaboratively fuel the payments ecosystem in Saudi Arabia as we empower its people and businesses,” said Adam Jones, Division President, West Arabia at Mastercard.

    In line with Saudi Vision 2030, the project has been launched to build stronger payment platforms and ecosystem, drive digital transformation, and strengthen the national economy through locally relevant technology.

    Through its long-term commitment to the Kingdom, Mastercard has seen extensive growth in digital payments acceptance in Saudi Arabia by providing secure payment choices for consumers and businesses. The rapid evolution in payments is bolstering the financial ecosystem by providing innovative new solutions in fintech, cybersecurity, retail, and e-commerce.

    Mastercard Gateway technology paired with the global network of more than 200 acquirers give over 500 thousand merchants access to ongoing innovation, and more than 110 million acceptance locations. In 2023, Mastercard Gateway processed more than 950 million payments in Saudi Arabia, across all payment methods, supporting the growth of digital commerce in the market.

  • Qualys Debuts Industry’s First Risk Operations Center (ROC) in the Cloud

    Qualys Debuts Industry’s First Risk Operations Center (ROC) in the Cloud

    Qualys has announced the launch of the industry’s first Risk Operations Center (ROC) with Enterprise TruRisk Management (ETM). The solution enables CISOs and business leaders to manage cybersecurity risks in real time, transforming fragmented, siloed data into actionable insights that align cyber risk operations with business priorities. The application consolidates both Qualys and non-Qualys security risk data, including from technology alliances like Forescout, Identity Threat Protection with Okta AI, Microsoft, Oracle, and Wiz across cloud, on-premises and hybrid environments.

    Organizations are facing an ever-growing volume of risk findings spread across multiple, disconnected top 10 dashboards. This fragmented view results in conflicting analyses, duplicate work, missed threats, and strategies that fail to fully protect the organization. As a result, companies struggle to get a clear understanding of their true, overall risk, hindering their ability to make informed remediation decisions.

    To overcome these challenges, businesses need an integrated approach that combines heterogeneous risk factors from various asset management tools and disparate cybersecurity solutions into a single platform with remediation and mitigation capabilities to reduce risk quickly. That is why Qualys is launching the world’s first ROC with Enterprise TruRisk Management designed to unify asset inventory and risk factors, apply threat intelligence, business context, risk prioritization, and orchestrate remediation, compliance and reporting through a single interface.

    “With IT environments growing more complex and potential risk exposures more numerous, organizations need a holistic and proactive cybersecurity management platform that brings all cyber-risk exposures to one place, unifies scoring and simplifies prioritization and reporting,” said Michelle Abraham, research director at IDC.

    Qualys Enterprise TruRisk Management enables enterprises to operationalize their ROC –

    • Ingesting Qualys and Non-Qualys Data for an Accurate Measure of Business Risk: Enterprises are able to measure their TruRisk score, by aggregating and unifying dispersed risk factors – such as vulnerabilities, security postures, asset exposures, and identities – generated by their security toolset across the full stack of cloud, on-premises, or third-party applications. This data is correlated with over 25 threat intel sources and business context to precisely highlight key risk exposure indicators, enabling proactive risk management for business entities, processes or applications.
    • Aligning Risk to Business Value to Communicate Financial Impact of Cyber Risk: CISOs are expected to communicate the return on investment (ROI) and outcomes of existing and future cybersecurity investments in terms of reduction of business risk. By aligning business value and potential losses from cyber risks, ETM enables cyber risk quantification (CRQ) for CISOs and risk teams to communicate the business impact of TruRisk for critical applications, entities and processes, shifting the focus from technical issues to understanding the financial impact of security threats. ETM also allows teams to recognize the contribution of risk factors produced by individual cybersecurity tools, toward overall enterprise-wide TruRisk scores impacting the business, to justify cybersecurity tool investment and better prioritization.
    • Automated Remediation Workflows to Reduce Cyber Risk: Security and Risk Operations teams can leverage personalized risk reduction plans with Qualys TruRisk Eliminate to intelligently patch or mitigate the prioritized exposure indicators, such as vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, asset and software risks, by balancing risk reduction with business continuity. ETM also supports rule-based integrations with ITSM tools, such as ServiceNow and JIRA, to automatically assign prioritized tickets of unified exposures to the right remediation teams and orchestrate active remediation through integrated zero-trust, firewalled solutions to rapidly reduce risk, which helps reduce time to communicate and mean time to remediation.
  • A10 Networks Outlines Blueprint to Secure and Deliver AI Applications and Help Increase Cyber Resilience

    A10 Networks Outlines Blueprint to Secure and Deliver AI Applications and Help Increase Cyber Resilience

    A10 Networks is delivering security and AI-based solutions to help customers increase their cyber resilience and harness the power of AI to secure and manage their infrastructures to lower cybersecurity risks, improve user experiences and performance, and simplify their IT infrastructure.

    Supporting AI Adoption with an AI-ready Platform

    A10 is continuing to enhance its proprietary Advanced Core Operating System (ACOS), with a completely integrated AI stack. This release of ACOS, planned for later this year, will allow A10 solutions to interface with customers’ AI Inference and GenAI environments. A10 is also exploring further integrations with AI Inference that will allow its solutions to load-balance and offload some of thecomputationally intensive tasks in providing AI Inference server CPUs and GPUs the ability to deliver the highest throughput and lowest latency available in the industry.

    Centralised Management and Analytics with A10 Control

    A10 Control is a centralised management platform that manages both A10 Thunder ADC and A10 Defend portfolio of products from a central location. Available later this year, A10 Control will allow customers to seamlessly migrate from their existing A10 management consoles to A10 Control and simplify their operations. They will be able to automate A10 device upgrades, manage flexible licenses, monitor system health, all from a single dashboard that provides visibility across all traffic.

    AI-powered Bot Protection

    A10 continues to broaden its cybersecurity solution portfolio. In addition to A10’s web application security, DDoS detection and mitigation and DDoS threat intelligence solutions, A10 Defend will now include AI-powered bot protection. This solution will help customers protect their applications from bot threats and is in early trial phase.

    Enterprise-Ready DDoS Protection

    The A10 Defend DDoS protection portfolio protects some of the world’s largest service providers. A10 has been expanding capabilities to meet large enterprise requirements for mitigating multi-vector and volumetric DDoS threats. This offering complements existing A10 Defend on-premises DDoS protection with the ability to mitigate large volumetric attacks in the cloud, adding enhanced protection against attacks that exceed the size of internet links or on-premises capacity.

    Together, the A10 Defend and A10 infrastructure portfolios help both enterprise and service provider customers simplify their IT operations, reduce cyber security risk and deliver a better customer experience.

    “For over 20 years, A10 has helped businesses efficiently achieve their connectivity and security goals with technology innovation. The technology landscape continues to rapidly evolve as our customers are increasingly harnessing AI to power their infrastructures making our differentiation even more relevant,” said Dhrupad Trivedi, president and CEO, A10 Networks. “A10 is on this journey with our customers, and we continue to innovate around enabling their current and future business outcomes.”

  • Rapid Growth and AI-Driven Cybersecurity Solutions

    Rapid Growth and AI-Driven Cybersecurity Solutions

    Terence Liu, CEO and co-founder of TXONE Networks, reflects on the remarkable journey of his company, celebrating five years of exponential growth with a staggering 50-fold increase in revenue

    How is the business performing under your leadership as CEO?

    The business has been thriving. TXONENetworks is a relatively new company, having celebrated its five-year anniversary this year.

    In just five years, our revenue has grown exponentially—by 50 times—indicating a strong demand for our services.

    As a cybersecurity firm, we distinguish ourselves from others by focusing not just on office and cloud security but on protecting machines in the age of AI and machine learning. Many manufacturers and critical infrastructure operators are equipping their machines with advanced intelligence, generating vast amounts of data for personal analysis.

    This data often needs to be sent to local or remote clouds, which is beneficial for technological advancement. We address the challenges associated with this process.

    Participating in this event has been extremely productive, as numerous critical infrastructure operators from the GCC region are in attendance. It provides us with the opportunity to connect with many VIPs, showcase our solutions, and share insights from our experiences worldwide. This exchange allows everyone to learn from each other, particularly in the realm of machine protection.

    How are you incorporating AI in your solutions?

    That’s an excellent question. When it comes to AI, we need to consider how to handle AI-generated data. The rise of AI is significantly increasing the demand for cybersecurity solutions among manufacturers and critical infrastructure sectors.

    Conversely, cybercriminals are also leveraging AI technologies, for instance, to craft more convincing phishing emails aimed at deceiving enterprises and organizations. As cybersecurity vendors, we are also utilizing AI to detect and mitigate these threats. It’s clear that everyone needs to adapt to this evolving landscape.

    This situation presents a wealth of opportunities. The protection of IoT devices and shop floor operations has been a prominent topic for the last decade. However, previously, many organizations were hesitant to embrace cybersecurity solutions, particularly in critical infrastructure, due to concerns that these technologies might disrupt their valuable operations.

    While they have used various technologies to map asset inventories and assess associated risks, this approach doesn’t fully address the security challenges. To truly protect machines, security must be integrated directly with them.

    At this event, we are showcasing our networking and polling solutions designed to secure machines on the shop floor without disrupting operations. Thank you for the opportunity to share our insights. It’s been a pleasure! 4o mini

  • Zscaler’s Annual Ransomware Report Reinforces the Need for Zero Trust in Healthcare, Education and the Public Sector

    Zscaler’s Annual Ransomware Report Reinforces the Need for Zero Trust in Healthcare, Education and the Public Sector

    Zscaler published its annual Zscaler ThreatLabz 2024 Ransomware Report, which analyzed the ransomware threat landscape from April 2023 through April 2024. Findings in the report uncovered an 18% overall increase in global ransomware attacks year-over-year, with healthcare and education industries among the hardest hit sectors and the public sector also experiencing a substantial year-over-year increase.

    “Ransomware defense remains a top priority for CISOs in 2024 and beyond. The increasing use of ransomware-as-a-service models, along with numerous zero-day attacks on legacy systems, a rise in vishing attacks and the emergence of AI-powered attacks, has led to record breaking ransom payments,” said, Deepen Desai, Chief Security Officer at Zscaler.

    Sectors like healthcare, education, and government are particularly vulnerable, as a single attack can cripple critical operations, expose sensitive information, and, in the most severe cases, put lives at risk. Not surprisingly, the healthcare sector emerges as the second-most targeted industry by ransomware attacks behind manufacturing. The sensitive and critical nature of healthcare data, combined with the sector’s reliance on medical devices and timely access to patient records, render it especially attractive to ransomware threat actors.

    Educational institutions face mounting pressure as the fourth-most affected sector by ransomware. Between April 2023 and April 2024, educational organizations were hit by 217 ransomware attacks, marking a year-over-year increase of more than 35%. This surge highlights a troubling trend: cybercriminals are progressively targeting schools, colleges, and universities—and their troves of sensitive student data. The financial stakes for these institutions are enormous as they not only face ransom payments, but also grapple with significant costs associated with data recovery efforts and system restoration. Several factors contribute to the education sector’s heightened vulnerability, with one of the most critical being limited cybersecurity budgets. However, as ransomware increasingly targets educational institutions, the pressure is mounting to invest in robust security solutions to safeguard against the costly repercussions of ransomware attacks.

    Government organizations experienced 95 ransomware attacks between April 2023 and April 2024. This 48% year-over-year spike in ransomware attacks is a clear signal that government organizations must strengthen their ransomware protection strategies. As ransomware groups evolve their tactics, it is crucial for all public sector entities to fortify not only their internal networks but also the interconnected digital ecosystems that include third-party contractors.

    The latest findings from the ThreatLabz 2024 Ransomware Report are a wake-up call for healthcare, education, and public sector organizations. These sectors are fundamental to the fabric and functioning of society, yet they are among the most vulnerable to ransomware attacks due to the sensitive data they handle, often outdated systems, and the critical services they provide.

    “Organizations operating within these essential sectors in MEA are well advised to take decisive action“, said Saeed Agha, VP EMEA Emerging Markets at Zscaler. “Reevaluating the current security posture and reinforcing defenses to combat ransomware starts with the adoption of a zero trust architecture.”

  • Gartner Forecasts 85 Million Electric Vehicles Will Be on the Road by End of 2025

    Gartner Forecasts 85 Million Electric Vehicles Will Be on the Road by End of 2025

    By the end of 2025, 85 million electric vehicles (EVs) – cars, buses, vans and heavy trucks – are expected to be on the road, according to the latest forecast by Gartner, Inc.

    “Despite several hurdles affecting the EV market over the past few months, we are projecting the number of EVs in use globally to total 64 million units in 2024 and increase 33% in 2025,” said Jonathan Davenport, Sr Director Analyst at Gartner. “Many companies overestimated how quickly the switch to EVs would occur. This caused those companies to delay launching new EV models. The growth in 2025 will be driven primarily by higher EV sales in China (58%) and Europe (24%), which together are projected to represent 82% of total EVs in use worldwide.”

    Globally, battery electric vehicles (BEVs) in use are forecast to total almost 62 million units by the end of 2025, an increase of 35% from 2024. Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) are expected to grow at a slightly slower rate and reach an installed base of 23 million units in 2025, up 28% from 2024.

    Regionally, the ownership of EVs in China is projected to continue to dwarf the rest of the world’s combined installed base through 2025 and likely the next decade. Demand for EVs will steadily grow in Europe and North America, which is projected to account for 36% of global EVs in 2024. By 2025, Gartner estimates 49 million EVs will be on the road in China, compared to 20.6 million EVs in Europe and 10.4 million EVs in North America.

    By 2030, Automakers Will Enable the Recycling of 95% of Batteries from EVs to Mitigate the Risk from Raw Material Shortage

    With EV sales expected to rise year-over-year, a shortage of raw materials will not be easy to resolve. “A robust recycling effort to take advantage of materials in spent batteries and scrap from the manufacturing production process, which, together with EU efforts to mandate battery recycling, could reduce the need for more mineral excavation,” said Davenport.

    “Because concentrations of rare metals in batteries are higher than in natural ores, spent batteries can be seen as highly enriched ore,” said Davenport. “If recovered at large scale, the spent batteries could support the overall commercial viability of EVs by bringing battery prices down. There would be the additional benefit of batteries not ending up being disposed of in unethical manners or put into landfill sites.”

  • GBM and Splunk Partner to Drive Digital Innovation and Strengthen Cybersecurity Offerings in the Gulf

    GBM and Splunk Partner to Drive Digital Innovation and Strengthen Cybersecurity Offerings in the Gulf

    Gulf Business Machines (GBM) and Splunk has announced a partnership whereby the two companies will collaborate to deliver work within the UAE, Oman, Kuwait, and Bahrain markets.

    The agreement was signed during GITEX Global 2024 by Bassam Rached, General Manager – Technology at GBM and Ahmed El Saadi, Area Vice President Middle East & North Africa at Splunk. The collaboration underscores GBM’s commitment to bringing innovative solutions to meet the digital transformation needs of its regional customers.

    As a Splunk partner GBM will offer customers a complete portfolio of Splunk’s industry-leading solutions. These include the Splunk platform, and its security and observability solutions.

    The integration of Splunk’s advanced data analytics, cybersecurity, and observability capabilities with GBM’s extensive digital infrastructure and security services will help to empower businesses to secure critical systems and empower customers in their resilience and digital transformation journeys. Furthermore, by incorporating real-time data monitoring tools, customers should find it easier to gain deeper visibility into their IT environments to proactively address issues and optimize performance.

    As per the agreement, Splunk will be able to tap into GBM’s extensive regional footprint and existing partnership with Cisco to create new opportunities for growth and expansion. GBM’s role as Cisco’s long-standing partner forms a natural bridge to strengthen ties with Splunk.

    For GBM’s channel ecosystem, the partnership will help enable them to deliver value to end users while accelerating their own growth. The combined expertise of both companies aims to raise industry benchmarks by fostering innovation through collaboration and cutting-edge technologies.

    Ahmed El Saadi, Area Vice President Middle East & North Africa at Splunk said, “Today, organizations are increasingly seeking advanced solutions to address their complex digital transformation challenges. Our partnership with GBM comes at a crucial time as businesses strive to remain competitive in an increasingly connected world. By integrating Splunk’s advanced security and observability platforms with GBM’s expertise and market reach, we aim to help organizations enhance their digital resilience and unlock the full potential of their data.”

    Bassam Rached, General Manager – Technology at GBM, said, “Our partnership with Splunk is a significant step forward in our mission to deliver comprehensive digital solutions to our regional customers. Splunk’s state-of-the-art platform, combined with our extensive local experience, will enable our customers to tap into new growth opportunities, strengthen their cybersecurity posture and drive business excellence in a digital-first world. Together, we are well-positioned to drive operational efficiency and insight-based decision-making for our clients across the Gulf markets.”

  • BCG Riyadh Expands to New, Larger Office Space, Reinforcing Long-Term Commitment to Saudi Arabia

    BCG Riyadh Expands to New, Larger Office Space, Reinforcing Long-Term Commitment to Saudi Arabia

    Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has moved its Riyadh office from Al Olaya Tower to a larger space in the King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD), nine years after opening its first office in 2015. The new two-floor, 4,262 square meter location will serve as a hub for BCG’s operations in Saudi Arabia, emphasizing sustainable growth and local talent development.

    BCG has been active in Saudi Arabia for years, building strong client relationships and delivering impactful results for public and private organizations. The firm’s expansion in Riyadh reflects its dedication to supporting the country’s ambitious economic diversification plans. BCG aims to contribute significantly to Saudi Arabia’s transformation journey by leveraging its global expertise and investing in local resources.

    Philippe Cornette De Saint Cyr, Managing Director & Senior Partner, and Riyadh Office Lead stated, “Our new office in KAFD represents BCG’s continued investment in Saudi Arabia. Our new space will allow us to better serve our clients and partners in the Kingdom. We look forward to playing a role in the Kingdom’s evolution, bringing our global insights and digital capabilities to support Saudi Vision 2030 and help drive sustainable economic growth.”

    This expansion strengthens BCG’s footprint in Saudi Arabia and connects to its well-established network in the broader GCC region. As Saudi Arabia continues diversifying its economy beyond the Oil & Gas sector, BCG is positioned to provide valuable expertise across various industries, supporting its long-term goals and vision for the future.