logo
NEC XON earns XMDR Partner Status with Palo Alto Networks across EMEA

NEC XON earns XMDR Partner Status with Palo Alto Networks across EMEA

Zawya6 days ago
NEC XON, a leading pan-African systems integrator and cybersecurity innovator, has officially achieved Palo Alto Networks XMDR (Extended Managed Detection and Response) Partner Status in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), joining an elite group of partners globally recognised for advanced threat detection, response capabilities, and strategic cyber defence.
This achievement validates NEC XON's deep alignment with Palo Alto Networks' Cortex XDR platform and its ability to provide proactive, scalable incident response services on behalf of Palo Alto Networks — a capability shared by only a select few providers worldwide.
More than just a partnership status
"XMDR gives us the ability to execute incident response on behalf of Palo Alto Networks, showcasing a unique partnership capability held by very few companies globally," says Armand Kruger, Head of Cybersecurity at NEC XON.
"It's more than just a status — it's a validation of our architecture-first approach, our deep technical skills, and our ability to defend customers across hybrid and complex environments."
The XMDR status provides NEC XON's Managed Detection & Response (MDR) team with the ability to deliver truly integrated, preventative cyber protection across cloud, network, endpoint, and identity attack surfaces.
'The Palo Alto Networks XMDR designation gives our MDR team the power to help customers actively disrupt cyber adversaries, protect their environments proactively, and ensure long-term business sustainability,' says Ryno Le Roux, NEC XON's Head of Cyber Operations. 'It's a game-changer in how we deliver cyber resilience at scale.'
Delivering world class threat protection
Through this recognition, NEC XON is further empowered to deliver world-class threat detection, rapid containment, and expert-led response services using Palo Alto Networks' AI-driven Cortex XDR and XSOAR technologies.
With a focus on continuous innovation and a customer-first mindset, NEC XON continues to set the benchmark for what a modern, business-aligned cybersecurity partner should look like — delivering not only defence but strategic resilience.
About NEC XON
NEC XON is a leading African integrator of ICT solutions and part of NEC, a Japanese global company. The holding company has operated in Africa since 1963 and delivers communications, energy, safety, security, and digital solutions. It co-creates social value through innovation to help overcome serious societal challenges. The organisation operates in 54 African countries and has a footprint in 16 of them. Regional headquarters are located in South, East, and West Africa. NEC XON is a level 1-certified broad-based black economic empowerment (B-BBEE) business. Discover more at www.nec.africa.
About Palo Alto Networks XMDR Program
The XMDR partner program recognizes top-tier partners with the technical capabilities and operational maturity to deliver advanced Managed Detection and Response services using Palo Alto Networks technologies. It ensures customers receive best-in-class threat protection, powered by elite expertise
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Trend Micro Named a Leader in IDC MarketScape for CNAPP
Trend Micro Named a Leader in IDC MarketScape for CNAPP

Zawya

timean hour ago

  • Zawya

Trend Micro Named a Leader in IDC MarketScape for CNAPP

HONG KONG SAR - Media OutReach Newswire - 2 July 2025 - Trend Micro Incorporated (TYO: 4704; TSE: 4704), a global cybersecurity leader, today announced it has been named as a Leader in the IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) 2025 Vendor Assessment (doc #US53549925, June 2025). To read the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) 2025 Vendor Assessment excerpt, please visit: Rachel Jin, Chief Enterprise Platform Officer at Trend: "For as long as our customers have been leveraging the cloud for strategic advantage, we've offered comprehensive protection for their hybrid environments. Those two decades of experience show in these results. Customers value our cloud security capabilities and effective risk management across the entire attack surface. Security is a true business enabler." The CNAPP category has evolved and expanded over the years to include everything from anti-malware and application control to configuration management, app developer tools, and coverage of virtualized datacenters alongside cloud-native apps/workloads. Trend Vision One™ Cloud Security pushes the boundaries even further by offering enterprise customers AI-powered threat prediction, protection and response—including continuous monitoring to enhance exposure management and resilience as well as streamlined incident response. Trend offers flexible licensing that enables customers to increase or decrease their workloads dynamically. This approach ensures that customers only pay for what they use, making it a cost-effective solution that can adapt to changing business needs. Trend Micro was positioned in the Leaders Category alongside four other worldwide vendors out of a total of 13, evaluated according to current capabilities and 3-5-year strategy, and how well these align with customer needs. Key benefits of Trend Vision One™ Cloud Security include: A comprehensive range of capabilities including cloud risk management, extended detection and response (XDR), server and workload security, container security, file security, and code security Agentless capabilities for streamlined deployment/coverage Strong industry partnership with major cloud players (AWS/Google/Azure/GCP etc) to maintain a cutting-edge advantage Continuous, proactive monitoring of security posture, managed via a centralized dashboard Zero trust architecture Backing from a global network of 500 researchers, analysts and data scientists, and a Zero Day Initiative community of 18,000 external threat researchers According to the IDC MarketScape: "The Trend Vision One™ CNAPP offers multilayered security by centralizing findings and cross-correlating data from various layers, powered by AI, ensuring robust protection against complex attacks. Features like holistic threat detection, risk assessment, and a flexible pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) billing mechanism provide a cost-effective solution that adapts to changing business needs."Hashtag: #trendmicro #trendvisionone #visionone #cybersecurity #cloudsecurity #cnapp The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. About IDC MarketScape IDC MarketScape vendor assessment model is designed to provide an overview of the competitive fitness of technology and service suppliers in a given market. The research utilizes a rigorous scoring methodology based on both qualitative and quantitative criteria that results in a single graphical illustration of each supplier's position within a given market. IDC MarketScape provides a clear framework in which the product and service offerings, capabilities and strategies, and current and future market success factors of technology suppliers can be meaningfully compared. The framework also provides technology buyers with a 360-degree assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of current and prospective suppliers. Trend Micro Trend Micro, a global cybersecurity leader, helps make the world safe for exchanging digital information. Fueled by decades of security expertise, global threat research, and continuous innovation, Trend Micro's cybersecurity platform protects hundreds of thousands of organizations and millions of individuals across clouds, networks, devices, and endpoints. As a leader in cloud and enterprise cybersecurity, the platform delivers a powerful range of advanced threat defense techniques optimized for environments like AWS, Microsoft, and Google, and central visibility for better, faster detection and response. With 7,000 employees across 65 countries, Trend Micro enables organizations to simplify and secure their connected world. Trend Micro

Fearless female entrepreneur rises from UAE with game connecting back to African roots
Fearless female entrepreneur rises from UAE with game connecting back to African roots

Al Etihad

time8 hours ago

  • Al Etihad

Fearless female entrepreneur rises from UAE with game connecting back to African roots

2 July 2025 00:32 KUUMAR SHYAM (ABU DHABI)Born in Ethiopia, raised in the Netherlands, and now thriving as a serial entrepreneur in Dubai, Kanessa Muluneh has built a career by spotting overlooked problems and transforming them into profitable latest project, Rise of Fearless, is a made-in-UAE, Africa-focused blockchain game that combines history, economic empowerment, and cutting-edge technology – and it's already gaining traction across the continent and diaspora.'I always knew that Africa, the Middle East, and Asia had potential,' Muluneh says. 'Western media often paints a negative picture, but when you come here, you see growth, innovation, and resilience.'Moving to Dubai three years ago was more than a change of scenery for Kanessa; it was a return to her roots. Having spent her childhood in Europe as an immigrant, she visited Ethiopia again as an adult and reconnected with her heritage in a profound way. 'The smell, the feeling, the sound, the language – everything just clicked. It felt like answers to questions I didn't even know I had,' she visit coincided with her networking with the UAE business community in trying to grow her fashion brand Mulu. 'I saw that UAE nationals were the largest investors in Ethiopia. They taught me about the African infrastructure, how things worked – including the challenges, like hard currency shortages or delivery nightmares.'Even if she would not have been told, she would have noticed anyways. And her solution, go eyes are always on the lookout for problems. After all she made her first couple of millions – the proverbial most hardest challenge – by finding a problem and solving it, all at the age of 20 in her first job as a fresh medical the hospital, she found that many female medical workers had to leave work to care for sick family members. She proposed a system where doctors could consult from home by redirecting hospital calls and accessing medical files by colleagues, she invested 8,000 euros in rerouting and file inventory. By 22, she sold that company for over €1.2 million. Her father immediately advised her to invest half of it for future and spend the other half wisely. Yet she couldn't resist splurging away the rest, so much that she had to plead with father to dip into the saved money for paying instalments for the luxury car she had brought. TikTok to Tech Her medical job was only to appease her parents. But technology excited her more. Muluneh started educating others – and herself – through a TikTok account in her mother tongue. While improving her language fluency, she shared lessons on blockchain, NFTs, and crypto. That platform evolved into a successful along she began investing in small African ventures – some as little as $500 – which later developed into full-fledged businesses. Eventually, the idea emerged to build a play-to-earn game to inspire Africa's younger generation. 'They don't want to be doctors or lawyers anymore,' she says. 'They want to be content creators, business owners. We wanted to give them a platform for that.'Muluneh found developers from the Filipino blockchain gaming community and began building her team – now more than 10 strong – in Dubai with roles spanning from game developers to marketers. 'Every business I build is about marketing first. If it doesn't sell, it's not a business,' she result: Rise of Fearless, a free-to-play, mobile-first Web3 game, deeply embedded in Ethiopian history. 'The game is based on the Battle of Adwa – when Ethiopians defeated the Italians. That moment shaped the African Union,' the founder wear traditional attire and resemble real Africans – a deliberate move to challenge the western-centric design in mainstream games. 'Current game characters for Africans don't look like us. This one does.'It is not just about Ethiopia as Kanessa has launched the game in South Africa and Kenya, with plans to expand to Ghana, Rwanda, Nigeria, and Mauritius. 'People say I'm limiting myself by focusing on Africa,' she says. 'But Africa has 1.5 billion people – and it can connects with the population largely in Asia too.'Rise of Fearless is built on blockchain, with plans for its own tokenomics and NFT system. Players can buy, sell, and trade in-game items – including rare NFT outfits – with real monetary value. 'For example, let's say there's only one rainbow-colored outfit in the whole game. If your character has it and becomes popular, its value increases – just like in real markets.'She also launched Mulu, a plus-size fashion brand that thrived during COVID. 'Sales were crazy,' she says, thanks to online fitness classes and socially distanced meetups – all cleverly used to market her products. She's now relaunching Mulu in the UAE, expanding it from plus-size to all sizes, focusing on family the end of 2025, Kanessa aims to compete with giants like Fortnite. 'That game donated $20 million in two weeks during COVID – from a free-to-play model. That's the potential we're looking at.' With Rise of Fearless, she's doing more than building a game – she's helping build a digital economy for Africa with global potential from the confines of UAE.

North Africa: Green Climate Fund approves a record $300 million for Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)-designed projects in Papua New Guinea, Saint Lucia and the Sahel
North Africa: Green Climate Fund approves a record $300 million for Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)-designed projects in Papua New Guinea, Saint Lucia and the Sahel

Zawya

time8 hours ago

  • Zawya

North Africa: Green Climate Fund approves a record $300 million for Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)-designed projects in Papua New Guinea, Saint Lucia and the Sahel

The Green Climate Fund (GCF) has approved projects worth more than $300 million that will protect forests in Papua New Guinea, promote sustainable fisheries in Saint Lucia, and help grow Africa's Great Green Wall. The initiatives, designed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), were greenlighted at the 42nd meeting of the GCF Board, held in the Papua New Guinea capital from June 30 to July 3. It represents the highest-value batch of such approvals to date. 'Through sustainable forestry management, fisheries transformation and land restoration, these FAO-designed projects will make a significant difference to the lives and livelihood of these vulnerable communities, especially in the current global context of overlapping and complex crises due to climate extremes and other shocks,' said FAO Director-General QU Dongyu. 'FAO appreciates the unwavering trust that the GCF and Member Countries place in FAO's professional capacity to provide the required technical expertise to strengthen resilience and safeguard the livelihoods of the most vulnerable,' he added. 'The FAO-GCF partnership continues to be critical for the climate investments in agrifood systems required to deliver science-based concrete solutions to countries and communities where they are needed most, leaving no one behind.' All three approvals were outcomes of successful FAO-led GCF readiness projects, as well as other long-standing technical collaborations, which unlocked the resources countries needed to pursue more ambitious climate projects. Papua New Guinea FAO has supported the country to design a high-impact climate project, within the framework of GCF's pilot programme for results-based payments, that will direct investments worth $63.4 million into Papua New Guinea's sustainable forest management activities. This substantial GCF investment recognizes the Government's achievements in reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 17 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO₂e) during the 2014-2016 period – comparable to taking over 3 million cars off the road for a year. Funding for the project falls under the initiative known as REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation), and will support the Government's efforts to conserve forests and implement the National REDD+ Strategy 2017–2027. Papua New Guinea has been an advocate for the REDD+ global process since its very inception in 2008. The country has kept forest conservation and reducing emissions from the forest sector high on the national and global agenda including through support from FAO and the UN-REDD programme. The investments seek to promote a virtuous cycle of emission reductions by promoting agroforestry, sustainable fuelwood and charcoal production, community pole and timber plantations, the restoration of natural forest, and more. The project will place special emphasis on the social dimension, prompting benefit sharing, encouraging stakeholder engagement, and strengthening both local and national capacities. Papua New Guinea's tropical rainforests – of which three-quarters are primary forests – cover 78 percent of the country's land, making it a global biodiversity hotspot. The forests are home to 191 species of mammals, and 750 species of bird. They also serve as vital carbon sinks, storing large amounts of carbon in above-ground biomass and soil. Saint Lucia The FISH-ADAPT project in Saint Lucia, with an investment of $16.7 million, has been designed to reduce the risks that climate change poses to the fishing and aquaculture sectors in this Small Island Developing State located in the eastern Caribbean Sea. The project aims to transform Saint Lucia's fisheries sector by making fishing safer and more productive despite a changing climate. It will foster a circular economy to help reduce waste, enhance resource efficiency, and promote livelihood diversification for more resilient communities. Fish value chains and markets will be strengthened; coastal fish grounds and aquaculture systems will become more climate resilient; and fishers will have more diversified incomes. The initiative will put in place agrifood solutions that build sustainability and resilience to improve efficiency, safety and productivity in the fisheries sector. These include empowering fishers and aquaculture farmers by enhancing access to weather data, upgrading landing sites and promoting sustainable offshore fishing. Saint Lucia's geographic position and socio-economic dependence on the fisheries sector make it especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Fisherfolk who rely on the sea for their livelihoods are finding it increasingly difficult to adapt to a changing climate and declining fish stocks. Increased air temperature and changing rainfall patterns have also been affecting inland aquaculture. Considering these challenges, FISH-ADAPT will target approximately 75,000 beneficiaries – about 41 percent of the population – including marine fishers, sea-moss farmers, fish vendors and processors, and inland aquaculture farmers. The Sahel The Scaling-Up Resilience in Africa's Great Green Wall (SURAGGWA), with an investment of $222 million, will support livelihoods of agropastoral and pastoral communities living in the Sahel's semi-arid regions, who are extremely vulnerable to climate change. The initiative is FAO's first multi-country proposal and the largest funding request ever submitted on behalf of its Member Countries. It builds on the extensive work done by FAO on the Great Green Wall initiative, in particular the Action Against Desertification Programme. The initiative will seek to scale up successful land restoration practices using a diversity of native species to increase livelihood resilience while also sequestering carbon. It will develop value chains for climate-resilient and low-emission non-timber forest products, supporting the livelihoods and food security of vulnerable communities. Another key aspect of the project will be to strengthen national and regional Great Green Wall institutions to ensure the sustainability and coordination of interventions and monitoring of restoration results as well as mobilizing additional resources including through climate change adaptation and mitigation financing mechanisms. The SURAGGWA Programme will advance the African Union's ambitions to transform Sahelian landscapes by restoring 100 million hectares of degraded land and creating 10 million jobs. Working with smallholder farmers and pastoralist communities, it will also build resilience and contribute to climate change mitigation through carbon sequestration in restored lands across the eight participating countries (Burkina Faso, Chad, Djibouti, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal). A quarter of the 100 million people who live in the Sahel rely on pastoralist livelihoods. Poverty, social tensions, and climate change put additional strain on herders and farmers who already compete for limited resources and land. Agriculture, livestock and forestry activities are the foundation of their economies and more than 70 per cent of rural communities depend directly on rainfed agriculture. The FAO–GCF partnership The new approvals raise FAO's GCF portfolio to over $1.8 billion, with climate investments delivering sustainable agrifood system solutions to the countries and communities where they are needed most. You can read more about FAO's partnership with GCF here. Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store