COUNTRY FOCUS: KUWAIT
CLOSER ANALYSIS
C
isco has announced that
Kuwait Oil Co. has selected
Cisco security solutions for
its network hardware refresh. Kuwait
Oil has installed Cisco Network
Admission Control (NAC), a powerful,
easy-to-deploy admission control and
compliance enforcement component
of the Cisco TrustSec solution.
With comprehensive security
features, in-band or out-ofband deployment options, user
authentication tools, bandwidth
and traffic filtering controls,
Network Admission Control is
a comprehensive offering for
controlling and securing networks.
It will help Kuwait Oil to implement
security, access and compliance
policies through a central
management point rather than
configure policies throughout the
network on individual devices.
The Cisco Annual Security Report
2015 notes that malware encounters
are on the rise in the energy, oil and
gas sectors. Maintaining network
security and operational efficiency
in today’s distributed enterprise
networks demands new technology.
A more holistic approach to network
access security incorporates:
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- Accurate identification of every
user and device
- Easy onboarding, provisioning and
securing of all devices
- Centralised, context-aware policy
management to control user access
– whoever, wherever and from
whatever device.
Also integrated into Kuwait Oil’s
network will be the Cisco Identity
Services Engine, which helps conquer
enterprise mobility challenges and
safeguard the evolving network.
It is a security policy management
and control platform that automates
and simplifies access control and
security compliance for wired,
wireless and VPN connectivity. The
Identity Services Engine offers an
easy onboarding experience, so that
personal devices can be secured and
granted access through a simple selfservice portal. The Identify Services
Engine is primarily used to provide
highly secure access and guest
access, support bring-your-owndevice (BYOD) initiatives, and enforce
usage policies in conjunction with
Cisco TrustSec technology.
“The number of devices and
applications accessing Kuwait Oil
Company’s network both inside
and outside our firewall has been
steadily growing, thereby creating
more attack vectors for hackers
to exploit. Cisco’s broad set of
solutions covering the broadest set
of attack vectors, leveraging both
global and local intelligence, met
our company needs perfectly. Cyber
attacks are getting increasingly
sophisticated and discreet and
are driven by financial or political
gain. The good news is that the
O&G organisations like ours
can put measures in place to
counter attacks,” said Abdulsalam
Al-Matrouk, Senior Engineer
Telecommunications, Kuwait Oil Co.
“We applaud the Kuwait Oil Company
for putting security at the forefront
of its agenda. Cisco has been
helping securing countries, cities and
businesses of all sizes for decades, and
we understand the rapidly changing
security landscape. Our continued
investment in software, data analytics
and threat intelligence along with our
assessment, monitoring, response
and operational capabilities offer
advanced threat protection across the
entire attack continuum,” commented
Ziad Salameh, Managing Director
& General Manager Gulf, Levant &
Pakistan and Middle East Services
Leader, Cisco.
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