Latest from Channel Post MEA
Channel Post MEA
21 hours ago
- Business
- Channel Post MEA
F5 Announces New Post-Quantum Cryptography Solutions
F5 is helping customers prepare for the foundational cybersecurity shift presented by quantum computing. New comprehensive post-quantum cryptography (PQC) readiness solutions are seamlessly integrated into the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform, equipping organizations with the tools they need to secure applications and APIs while maintaining high performance and scalability. The quantum era presents a significant cybersecurity inflection point, as the previous limits of classical computing will no longer apply. According to Gartner: 'The motivation for IT departments to adopt post-quantum cryptography is grounded in the fact that advances in quantum computing will make asymmetric cryptography unsafe by 2029. By 2034, asymmetric cryptography will be fully breakable with quantum computing technologies.' A Requirement to Rethink Cybersecurity Post-quantum cryptography marks a critical transformation in how sensitive data is secured. Unlike typical upgrades or patches, the transition to PQC represents a fundamental architectural shift in cybersecurity, requiring proactive planning and execution. A poorly managed transition can cause outages and disrupt operations, especially across hybrid, multicloud, and legacy systems. Without the right approach, organizations risk costly downtime, slower applications, compliance issues, and frustrated users. In addition, with widespread traditional cryptographic methods becoming ineffective, malicious actors have already begun employing a 'harvest now, decrypt later' attack strategy, capturing encrypted data today to decrypt when quantum capabilities emerge. Sensitive data—including user records, financial information, personal health details, and intellectual property—faces unprecedented vulnerability. 'Post-quantum threats aren't a distant problem—they're a forcing function to modernize security now,' said Kunal Anand, Chief Innovation Officer at F5. 'Our platform makes PQC adoption practical so enterprises can future-proof their apps, APIs, and trust models without slowing down.' What Sets F5 Apart F5 simplifies the shift to quantum-safe protections as the leading vendor providing a fully integrated, scalable platform for both application delivery and security. With comprehensive PQC support for both server-side and client-side encryption—and seamless integration across hybrid, multicloud, and legacy environments—this platform-based approach protects organizations' apps, APIs, and data while optimizing performance. By combining classical encryption with PQC, customers benefit from interoperability and phased system upgrades without business disruptions. F5 solutions also offer detailed insights into encrypted traffic, enhancing threat detection even during post-quantum cryptography transitions. Key benefits of F5's PQC capabilities include: Trusted Post-Quantum Encryption: NIST-standardized cryptographic algorithms protect customer data, intellectual property, and operational assets without compromising system performance. End-to-End Security: From client-side encryption to backend systems, F5 provides full-spectrum PQC coverage combining high-availability app delivery with encrypted threat protection, access security, high-performance firewall capabilities, and proactive threat intelligence. Operational Continuity: With hybrid and multicloud compatibility, F5 ensures mission-critical apps and APIs remain efficient, secure, and available during every step of the quantum transition. Unified Visibility Across Environments: Centralized management and assessment tools provide insights into all apps, APIs, and encrypted traffic, covering the entire security ecosystem and promoting additive AI, telemetry, and automation capabilities. Simplified Compliance: F5 helps businesses meet evolving regulatory standards, ensuring sensitive data remains protected and compliant during the post-quantum transition. The Path Forward: Accelerating Quantum-Ready Adoption Moving to post-quantum cryptography is not just a technical necessity—it's an opportunity to prepare for the future while driving current innovation. F5 provides organizations with a smooth migration path and full proxy capabilities that allow PQC to be implemented, and further evolved, alongside existing encryption technology. Businesses gain the flexibility to adopt hybrid cryptographic models at their own pace, ensuring minimal risk of downtime or operational challenges. By focusing on the applications and APIs that drive today's digital businesses, F5 helps customers confidently embrace the transformative opportunities of the quantum era. The company's tailored support for hybrid cryptographic models enables organizations to maintain streamlined app delivery while preparing for post-quantum protocols and the future of cybersecurity. Availability Post-quantum cryptography readiness solutions are now available for the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform.
Channel Post MEA
a day ago
- Business
- Channel Post MEA
Bitdefender Launches External Attack Surface Management Solution GravityZone EASM
Bitdefender has announced Bitdefender GravityZone External Attack Surface Management (EASM), a new solution that gives businesses, managed service providers (MSPs) and their customers comprehensive visibility into their internet-facing assets and associated vulnerabilities. GravityZone EASM dramatically reduces threat exposure and strengthens security operations through centralized discovery, monitoring, and management of expanding attack surfaces. The attack surface, encompassing all potential entry points for adversaries, is rapidly expanding due to digital transformation, cloud adoption, remote work, and increased connectivity with third-party infrastructure, including partners and customers. Without centralized oversight, assets such as unused domains, misconfigured cloud instances, and expired certificates often go unnoticed—leaving organizations vulnerable to attackers who continuously scan the internet for exposed systems. According to Gartner®, 'Through 2029, more than 60% of security incidents will be traced to misconfigured technical security controls.'¹ Additionally, a recent survey of 1,200 cybersecurity professionals found that reducing the attack surface is a top priority in their security operations. Bitdefender GravityZone EASM is agentless, requiring no endpoint deployment, and delivers a powerful, proactive approach to identifying and understanding external risks while reducing the attack surface. It continuously discovers, maps, and analyzes internet-exposed assets from an attacker's perspective, enabling organizations to quickly assess risk, identify vulnerabilities, and take action before they are exploited. The solution is available as an add-on to Bitdefender GravityZone, the company's unified security, risk analytics, and compliance platform that delivers advanced endpoint protection (EPP), endpoint detection and response (EDR), extended detection and response (XDR), and cloud-native security. GravityZone EASM scans a wide range of asset types, including IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, IP blocks, email addresses, and domains. From these scans, it delivers comprehensive asset discovery by detecting publicly exposed IPs, expiring or expired certificates, vulnerable public services, open ports, and more—ensuring no asset is overlooked. Key Benefits of Bitdefender GravityZone EASM: Fast internet-facing asset discovery – GravityZone EASM scans and maps all internet-facing assets including devices, domains, subdomains, applications, certificates, third-party connections, shadow IT, and more—in as little as 30 minutes. It delivers comprehensive visibility into a business's attack surface, even for unmanaged or forgotten assets. – GravityZone EASM scans and maps all internet-facing assets including devices, domains, subdomains, applications, certificates, third-party connections, shadow IT, and more—in as little as 30 minutes. It delivers comprehensive visibility into a business's attack surface, even for unmanaged or forgotten assets. Continuous vulnerability monitoring, alerting, and prioritization – GravityZone EASM continuously monitors and detects vulnerabilities and misconfigurations across internal and external assets, including those managed by partners, customers, and supply chain vendors. It delivers immediate, context-rich alerts for exposed systems, expired certificates, and high-risk threats. Alerts are prioritized by severity (e.g., CVE scores) to streamline response and remediation. – GravityZone EASM continuously monitors and detects vulnerabilities and misconfigurations across internal and external assets, including those managed by partners, customers, and supply chain vendors. It delivers immediate, context-rich alerts for exposed systems, expired certificates, and high-risk threats. Alerts are prioritized by severity (e.g., CVE scores) to streamline response and remediation. Unified security, risk management, and compliance – Seamlessly integrated with Bitdefender GravityZone, combining security, risk analytics, and compliance—GravityZone EASM supports both strategic and operational use cases. Security analysts can leverage it for threat analysis and vulnerability prioritization, while administrators benefit from broader security management capabilities such as policy enforcement and access control configuration—all within a single platform. 'Security teams across businesses and MSPs face increasing pressure to keep pace with expanding attack surfaces, driven by digital transformation and complex third-party ecosystems,' said Andrei Florescu, president and general manager at Bitdefender Business Solutions Group. 'Effective defense-in-depth security starts by reducing the attack surface as much as possible before threats reach the detection and response layers. GravityZone EASM is a critical part of our vision for unified security, risk management, and compliance, enabling proactive discovery and control of internet-facing assets that could serve as potential entry points for attackers.' Availability Bitdefender GravityZone EASM is available now for select GravityZone license tiers, and Bitdefender MDR services. For more information, visit here.
Channel Post MEA
a day ago
- Business
- Channel Post MEA
Redington And GitLab Join Hands To Drive DevSecOps In MEA
Redington has signed a Master Partner Agreement with GitLab, the most comprehensive, intelligent DevSecOps platform. As part of the agreement, GitLab authorizes Redington to leverage AWS Marketplace's Channel Partner Private Offer (CPPO) program for customers in the Middle East and Africa, enabling Redington to receive wholesale pricing for GitLab while maintaining direct financial and contractual relationships with customers. Redington can now sell GitLab licenses while providing customers with localized support and specialized expertise. This collaboration enables customers to purchase GitLab's DevSecOps platform through the AWS Marketplace Management Portal, providing a seamless purchasing experience. 'This partnership strengthens our commitment to delivering cloud-native, AI-powered solutions that drive speed, security, and innovation,' said Nehal Sharma, Vice President, Cloud Solutions Group, Redington. 'By offering GitLab's comprehensive DevSecOps platform with AWS infrastructure and our channel ecosystem, we are enabling businesses to modernize DevOps with intelligence and simplicity.' The collaboration further strengthens Redington's cloud and AI portfolio by delivering a tightly integrated DevSecOps solution that leverages GitLab's certified integrations optimized for AWS environments as an AWS Advanced Technology Partner with a DevOps ISV Competency. This aligns with Redington's broader strategy to lead in cloud, data, and AI innovation, while complementing its existing relationships in the AWS ecosystem.
Channel Post MEA
a day ago
- Business
- Channel Post MEA
IFS Acquires TheLoops to Develop Industrial AI Workforce
IFS has announced the acquisition of TheLoops, a cutting-edge innovator in autonomous AI agent technology. By applying TheLoops agentic capabilities in the industrial setting, IFS becomes the first vendor to offer an AI Agentic platform built specifically for the mission-critical assets and processes industries rely on. IFS's acquisition of TheLoops marks a shift from enterprise software that tracks work to software that does the work. It's the first enterprise-grade AI agent platform designed to deliver resilience, productivity, and measurable ROI – not as a co-pilot, but as a co-worker – while keeping security and governance in check from day one. Mark Moffat, Chief Executive Officer, IFS, commented: 'The opportunity AI presents to mission-critical industries is immense, but needs to be structured around real value capture. The agentic capabilities that TheLoops provides our customers will enable them to transform their processes, operational efficiency and how they differentiate in the Moments of Service they provide their customers.' He continued: 'Our customers can leverage intelligent digital teammates who understand their business from day one, agents that speak their industrial language, follow their rules, and operate securely in their workflows. With TheLoops, we're providing a platform that makes Industrial AI agentic, actionable, and available – at scale. This is IFS extending its lead in Industrial AI.' TheLoops acquisition turbocharges the IFS solution, delivering a multi-agent environment where autonomous AI agents are not only composable and governed but also semantically aware of their operating environment. By embedding these AI agents across its industrial suite, IFS is creating a digital workforce purpose-built for regulated, asset-intensive sectors. Combining TheLoops AI agent platform with the IFS industry knowledge creates agents that: Understand the semantics of an industry and business Participate in real enterprise workflows side-by-side with humans Adhere to customer-defined security, data access, and compliance standards Collaborate with specialized agents across integrated domains The result is a new era of automation, where intelligent agents continuously search, reason, and act to streamline operations, increase capacity, and free up skilled workers for higher-value tasks. It goes beyond traditional AI's pattern recognition and prediction to enable truly autonomous decision-making and execution. Somya Kapoor, CEO, TheLoops, said: 'At TheLoops, our mission has always been to deliver AI that drives action, not just insight. By joining forces with IFS, we're taking that vision to a whole new level. Together, we're delivering AI autonomous agents that understand the real-world complexity of industrial environments – what work needs to be done, how to do it, and how to do it securely, ethically, and at scale. This isn't experimental; it's transformational. I'm incredibly excited to bring this innovation to customers around the world.' Aly Pinder, Research Vice President, Aftermarket Services Strategies, IDC: 'AI is disrupting our world, but nowhere is the potential impact more pronounced than in the Industrial setting. IFS's acquisition of TheLoops is addressing a huge opportunity for asset intensive and service obsessed industries, where agentic decision making will enable organizations to rethink their digital workforce, so they can improve the way they serve their own customers. IFS is well-positioned to lead this shift in each of the industries it serves — bringing intelligent automation that's not just smart, but situationally aware and operationally impactful.'
Channel Post MEA
a day ago
- Business
- Channel Post MEA
Data Center Capacity is Shifting Rapidly to Hyperscale Operators
The number of large data centers operated by hyperscale companies reached 1,189 at the end of the first quarter, and new data from Synergy Research Group shows that they now account for 44% of the worldwide capacity of all data centers. Over half of that hyperscale capacity is now in own-built, owned data centers with the balance being in leased facilities. With non-hyperscale colocation capacity accounting for another 22% of capacity, that leaves on-premise data centers with just 34% of the total. This is in stark contrast to six years ago, when almost 56% of data center capacity was in on-premise facilities. Looking ahead to 2030, hyperscale operators will account for 61% of all capacity, while on-premise will drop to just 22%. Over that period, the total capacity of all data centers will continue to rise rapidly, driven primarily by hyperscale capacity growing threefold over the next six years. While colocation share of total capacity will slowly decrease, colocation capacity will continue to increase each year at near double-digit rates. After a sustained period of essentially no growth, on-premise data center capacity is receiving something of a boost thanks to GenAI applications and GPU infrastructure. Nonetheless, on-premise share of the total will drop by around two percentage points per year over the forecast period. The number of large data centers operated by hyperscale companies reached 1,189 at the end of the first quarter, and new data from Synergy Research Group shows that they now account for 44% of the worldwide capacity of all data centers. Over half of that hyperscale capacity is now in own-built, owned data centers with the balance being in leased facilities. With non-hyperscale colocation capacity accounting for another 22% of capacity, that leaves on-premise data centers with just 34% of the total. This is in stark contrast to six years ago, when almost 56% of data center capacity was in on-premise facilities. Looking ahead to 2030, hyperscale operators will account for 61% of all capacity, while on-premise will drop to just 22%. Over that period, the total capacity of all data centers will continue to rise rapidly, driven primarily by hyperscale capacity growing threefold over the next six years. While colocation share of total capacity will slowly decrease, colocation capacity will continue to increase each year at near double-digit rates. After a sustained period of essentially no growth, on-premise data center capacity is receiving something of a boost thanks to GenAI applications and GPU infrastructure. Nonetheless, on-premise share of the total will drop by around two percentage points per year over the forecast period. 'Cloud and other key digital services have been the prime drivers behind data center capacity expansion, and the dramatic rise of AI technology and applications is now providing an added impetus,' said John Dinsdale, a Chief Analyst at Synergy Research Group. 'However, the mix of data center capacity is quite different region by region, an example being that hyperscale owned data center capacity is much more prevalent in the US than in either the EMEA or APAC regions. Overall though, the trends are all heading in the same direction. All regions will see double-digit annual growth rates in overall data center capacity over the forecast period, and all regions will see the hyperscale owned portion of that capacity growing by at least 20% per year.'
