GEC NEWS WIREGitex 2014 was a good place where vendors demonstrated their products and solution to a larger audience so also did FireEye
Mohammed AbouKhater, Regional Manager (META) Defence &Intelligence FireEye
Ray Kafity, Vice President – Middle East Turkey and Africa (META) FireEye
Are your Apple solutions inspired by the latest buzz about apple devices being safe no more as thought to be ?
I think it was a myth that Apple devices are 100% secure and bullet-proof against attacks. Now hackers are becoming so innovative that they can breach the Apple OS and all the applications associated with it.
If you look at enterprises, 50% of them use Apple, which means a hacker would have to spend 50% of his time to develop some sort of new attacks or new mechanisms to penetrate some networks. What we have done now is something unique in the industry. We are probably the first or the only vendor who are protecting all the three operating systems. This is a door opening for so many business partners in the market because it is a key differentiator for them in front of their customers. When you as a partner you sit in front of your top customers, you need to have that relationship so that the customer considers you as his trusted adviser. With our recent innovations, we are basically adding that missing element to the partner community.
How is your Android security different in the over-crowded android protection market ?
Most solutions look up for signatures; we took a different approach. We totally depend on signature less detection engine and that’s the key differentiator we are bringing to the market. Market share of Android is massive; more and more people are using mobile phones, tablets etc. for their day to day activities. That brings more risk to the organizations. Hence we focussed on Android protection.
Do you think trade shows and exhibitions are not that important as they earlier used to be ?
For our technology, it is very important to be a part of GITEX. First, it’s a good platform for us to create more awareness about the technology. Reports show that people are still spending lots of money in traditional security thinking that it resolves problems. Hence, more awareness is required. GITEX is a great platform for customers, end users and partners to know more about advanced threats, targeted attacks, etc.
Are you collaborating with Govt. agencies as well ?
We are collaborating with various Governments across Middle East because each one of them has an initiative for e-governance to their citizens. A lot of Governments are also providing nation-wide initiatives to protect critical infrastructures from any cyber attack; so yes we are working ith them to provide protection from the NEW threats.
How informed do you think the enterprises are when it comes to cyber security ?
The statistics are showing that we are still far behind the hackers for various reasons. They are well-organized, well-funded. There are solutions in the market that can resolve the issue. Awareness requires more of collaborations and intelligence to come up with the right defence mechanisms. We do see enterprises investing in security, roping in consultants for penetration testing and services. But still, lots more need to be done.
Fire Eye is distinct due to the intelligence it has that helps in connecting the dots which can’t be possible by mere deployment of equipments and software. We gather intelligence from various locations globally which give us much broader picture on the state of affairs. One key thing about protection is early detection. Fire Eye helps there and gives the edge when it comes to protecting one’s data from next-generation threats.
