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EDITOR’S QUESTION
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NICOLAI SOLLING,
CTO AT HELP AG
“
I THINK THAT
IN COMING
YEAR, WE WILL
REALLY START
TO SEE CLOUD
ADOPTION HERE
IN THE MIDDLE
EAST. WHILE
ORGANISATIONS
IN THE REGION
HAVE ALWAYS
BEEN EARLY
ADOPTERS OF
TECHNOLOGY,
THEY HAVE BEEN
QUITE HESITANT
WHEN IT COMES
TO CLOUD.
www.intelligentcio.com
T
he volume, scale and complexity of
cyber-attacks in 2017 have been
truly unmatched. Shamoon 2, Petya,
WannaCry, KRACK, and the Equifax breach
are all examples of such attacks but they
of course present only a snapshot, with the
largest majority not getting so much as a
passing mention in most media.
Unfortunately, we are living in an era in
which cyber-attacks will start to challenge
how we can utilise technology in the future.
Of course, this is extremely disheartening
as I believe technology holds the answer to
many of the big challenges we are facing in
the world. So, there will be a lot of discussion
around how to deal with attacks.
I also think that we will start discussing
privacy and what the roles of nations should
be under the umbrella of ‘protecting the
greater good’. The big concern I have is that
we are living in a time when the techniques
used by governments to perform legal
interception and investigation of national
security concerns are now being exploited by
cyber criminals.
I think it is time the cyber security industry
understood that if we break encryption
or build backdoors or even avoid fixing
discovered vulnerabilities to allow for easier
legal intercept, which in itself can be a
good thing, we also open up a profound
set of vulnerabilities when these are also
discovered by cyber criminals! We saw this
most recently with the Petya and WannaCry
malwares, which both used vulnerabilities
initially discovered by intelligence agencies
in the Western world.
It is not all gloom and doom though. I think
that in coming year, we will really start to
see cloud adoption here in the Middle East.
While organisations in the region have
always been early adopters of technology,
they have been quite hesitant when it
comes to cloud.
But I can really see that this is changing,
and adoption is starting to happen. Our
industry will undergo fundamental changes
as customers transition from CAPEX to OPEX
based spending in the future and this will of
course impact technology models.
I have no doubt that even with its challenges
and security concerns, the digital march
will steadily gain pace in 2018 and digital
transformation will continue to shape
the way in which organisations conduct
business. The organisations that come out
on top however, will be those that factor in
cyber security from the onset and constantly
evaluate their security posture to keep cyber
criminals at bay. n
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