Tech Interviews

High-Performing Cybersecurity Mesh Platform to Protect All Enterprise Assets

Published

4 years ago

March 6, 2022

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Fortinet develops and sells cybersecurity solutions, such as physical firewalls, antivirus software, intrusion prevention systems, and endpoint security components. The Integrator engages Alain Penel, Regional Vice President – Middle East at Fortinet to discuss the company’s capacities to help enterprises against cyberattacks.

Speak about Fortinet’s capacities to offer comprehensive protection for enterprises in times of rising cyber attacks

To fight today’s evolving threats, organizations should look into a security platform based on a cybersecurity mesh architecture with security solutions that are designed to work together. A cybersecurity mesh architecture integrates security controls into, and across, widely distributed networks and assets. Defenders will need to plan now by leveraging the power of AI and machine learning (ML) to speed threat prevention, detection, and response. Advanced endpoint technologies like endpoint detection and response (EDR) can help to identify malicious threats based on behavior. Also, zero-trust network access (ZTNA) will be critical for secure application access to extend protections to mobile workers and learners, while Secure SD-WAN is important to protect evolving WAN edges.

Alain Penel, Regional Vice President – ME at Fortinet

Together with the Fortinet Security Fabric, organizations can benefit from an integrated security platform that secures all assets on-premises, in the data center, and in the cloud or at the edge.

What advice do you give to enterprises to secure their network and reduce vulnerabilities?

Today’s threat environment is constantly changing, and from distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks to ransomware, the frequency, volume, and sophistication of cyberattacks show no signs of slowing down. Every organization, from small businesses to the largest enterprises and service providers, in every industry, requires network security to protect critical assets and infrastructure from a rapidly expanding attack surface.

Organizations need to develop a Security-driven Networking strategy that tightly integrates an organization’s network infrastructure and security architecture, enabling the network to scale and change without compromising security operations. This next-generation approach is essential for effectively defending today’s highly dynamic environments – not only by providing consistent enforcement across today’s highly flexible perimeters but by also weaving security deep into the network itself.

SMEs face large-scale cyber threats than large enterprises. How can they defend their physical and cloud networks? What are the solutions Fortinet offers to them in order to protect their digital ecosystem?

SMEs struggle to implement strong, holistic security across their business for a variety of reasons and too often rely on piecemeal security cobbled together with multiple vendors’ point products that do not operate cohesively. Ultimately, this results in inflated costs and stagnating growth, as investing in technology that would help the business be more productive is delayed by security. Cybersecurity for SMEs must therefore be simple, cost-effective, and easy to deploy.

Fortinet’s small and mid-size business security solutions deliver a path to complete protection. Clear ROI is delivered without sacrificing security with tight integration, automation, and visibility across the entire cybersecurity footprint to improve effectiveness, reduce cycles, and scale as the company grows. Cloud-based, centralized management simplifies ongoing operations with business-driven rules and policies so businesses can quickly consume new technology while keeping the business safe from attack.

Give insights into the partner collaboration Fortinet has made globally in the last two years

Fortinet is committed to helping partners be able to meet new and changing customer demands created by the work-from-anywhere models through Fortinet’s Engage Partner Program and enablement tools for partners.

As an example, last year Fortinet introduced new Specializations focused on high growth areas with additions, including “zero trust” access, operational technology, and security operations. Specializations help partners further distinguish their expertise among current and potential customers as trusted partners who have the knowledge, services, and technologies to fulfill customer business needs.

Elaborate on Fortinet’s business strategies in the Middle East?

In the region, we see strong interest in secure SD-WAN, cloud, and OT areas. By transforming their WAN architectures with SD-WAN, organizations can leverage such functions as dynamic path selection, optimized application delivery, and accelerated cloud on-ramp to deliver business-critical applications to the WAN edge – even for the most bandwidth-hungry applications – all while delivering instant ROI benefits. A secure SD-WAN solution goes further as it also includes a full stack of integrated, enterprise-class security features, and centralized management so it can be seamlessly incorporated into the larger corporate security framework. In 2021, we saw many attacks on critical infrastructure. Attacks against OT systems and critical infrastructure can have dire consequences for the lives and safety of both workers and consumers. OT organizations need to deploy cohesive solutions across their converging IT and OT networks. A platform approach is essential for OT organizations since their security considerations must extend beyond the on-premises system. Now they also must cover the operating system, the network infrastructure, and take the increased dependence on enabled Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) devices into account as well. Cybercriminals certainly aren’t going to let up in 2022. As digital innovation accelerates, organizations are increasingly reliant on secure cloud solutions and infrastructures. Fortinet Adaptive Cloud Security Solutions provide the necessary visibility and control across cloud infrastructures, enabling secure applications and connectivity from the data center to the cloud.

How do you react to the increasing competition in the security solutions market?

Competing in today’s highly dynamic digital marketplace requires tools built around security-driven Networking principles that are designed to adapt to constantly changing requirements. We tightly integrate security with networking and connectivity solutions to ensure that even the most dynamic environments and edges are always protected. By weaving security and networking together, security no longer functions as an overlay.

Enterprises need more than siloed solutions in today’s complex environment. This is why the Fortinet Security Fabric is the answer to their security challenges: it ensures that solutions deployed anywhere, regardless of their form factor or the network they run on, can see each other, share threat intelligence, and coordinate a unified response to threats. It supports our unique security-driven networking approach that blends security, networking, and connectivity into a unified solution. Our advances in AI-based security technology are woven into the Security Fabric, helping ensure that organizations can receive essential, actionable threat intelligence, identify, and investigate unusual behavior, and coordinate a unified response across the entire distributed network to neutralize threats in seconds.

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Tech Interviews

Riverbed Launches AI-Powered Intelligent Network Observability Solutions

Published

1 month ago

August 7, 2025

Integrator Web-Editor

By Riverbed Communications Team

Riverbed, a global leader in AIOps for observability, has launched its latest AI-driven network observability tools. These new solutions help IT teams proactively detect and resolve issues faster. As a result, organizations gain improved visibility, quicker remediation, and lower operational costs across hybrid environments.

Why Riverbed Network Observability Stands Out

Modern enterprise networks are becoming more complex. To meet this challenge, Riverbed’s latest tools provide real-time, AI-powered insights. The release includes the xx90 appliance series for AppResponse, NetProfiler, and Flow Gateway. These systems offer up to 3x more performance than previous models.

In addition, Riverbed now offers these tools through Flex Subscription. This flexible model supports deployments across physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructure. It also improves cost predictability and maximizes IT value.

Riverbed IQ Essentials: Remediation at Speed

As part of this launch, Riverbed is introducing the Intelligent Network Observability Essentials bundle — a curated set of tools designed to surface root causes faster and enable proactive remediation.

Included in the bundle:

–Riverbed IQ: A SaaS-based AI engine that pinpoints network issues without additional infrastructure.
–Role-Based Workspaces: Unified dashboards that deliver context-rich packet, flow, and endpoint visibility.
–Grafana Plug-In: Integration for users who want to visualize Riverbed metrics directly within existing Grafana dashboards.
–Topology Viewer: A dynamic visual map that correlates network topologies with application and user performance.

This bundle supports faster triage and deeper insight across distributed and hybrid networks, making it easier for IT teams to operate efficiently at scale.

Flexibility Meets Simplicity with Riverbed Flex

Today’s enterprises require technology investments that adapt to evolving business needs. Riverbed Flex delivers that flexibility with:

-License portability across hardware, virtual, and cloud deployments
-Predictable operating costs through OPEX-based pricing
-Future-ready architecture that eliminates the need to re-purchase software during transitions

By decoupling software from infrastructure, Flex allows businesses to realign observability investments with growth, resilience, and innovation goals — without compromising on value.

High-Performance Architecture, Built to Scale

To match the performance requirements of modern networks, Riverbed has engineered its new xx90 series appliances to support uncompromised throughput for both packet and flow-based observability. Whether deployed for AppResponse or NetProfiler, these appliances deliver high-volume capture and analysis — with sustained packet capture at over 50 Gbps and modular storage scaling beyond 2.4 PB.

New updates also include:

-Real-time triage of encrypted IPSec ESP traffic
-Support for cipher hygiene and globally distributed environments
-3x faster reporting and 2x greater flow throughput
-Dynamic flow load balancing and full support for SD-WAN environments

Together, these capabilities give organizations full-fidelity data visibility — essential for delivering seamless digital experiences.

Delivering Value and Efficiency at Every Layer

Dave Donatelli, CEO of Riverbed, highlighted the strategic vision behind this major release:

“With our next-gen xx90 systems and software advancements, we’re giving customers dramatically higher performance and unmatched efficiency. Riverbed IQ is powering smarter observability with AI insights, while Flex simplifies deployment and protects long-term investments.”

This sentiment reflects Riverbed’s ongoing commitment to reducing tool sprawl, simplifying network management, and empowering IT teams with AI-enhanced capabilities that drive efficiency at scale.

A Foundation for the Future of Observability

As digital demands continue to rise, Riverbed’s intelligent network observability solutions are positioned to help organizations adapt, scale, and thrive. By integrating hardware innovation with AIOps automation, and offering a modern licensing model, Riverbed delivers a platform that meets enterprise needs today — and evolves with them tomorrow.

Whether it’s accelerating incident response, maintaining user experience, or optimizing hybrid cloud performance, Riverbed’s latest release proves that observability isn’t just about monitoring — it’s about enabling smarter business decisions.

Make sure to check out the recent edition Digital Magazine Technology – The Integrator

Tech Interviews

Local by Design: The Untold Advantage Behind the Middle East’s Most Trusted Platforms

Published

2 months ago

August 5, 2025

Integrator Web-Editor

Arab tech executive presenting ride-hailing data in a Dubai office

By Khaled Nuseibeh, CEO of Hala

In today’s digital world, global platforms often dominate headlines. Yet in the Middle East, a different success story is unfolding—one led by home-grown innovation. Local platforms in the Middle East aren’t trying to catch up. They’re rewriting the playbook.

The Rise of Local Digital Platforms in the Middle East

Platforms rooted in their own communities see what others miss. They understand the silent signals of everyday life—the way people move, pray, celebrate, and adapt to seasons.

Taxi demand, for instance, spikes after Friday prayers, not just during morning rush. Families shift their travel patterns during Ramadan. During the scorching summer, shaded areas and malls become primary destinations. You won’t find these insights on a global dashboard—they come from living them.

Built-In Context: Why Localisation Wins

Being close to the ground gives local platforms a major edge. In a city like Dubai, it makes a difference whether you’re navigating Deira’s tight alleys or Downtown’s wide streets.

At Hala, we designed our model around this insight. Our “location snapping” project improved over 60,000 pickup and drop-off points—faster routing, fewer errors, and better experiences for both riders and captains.

Operational Excellence Through Cultural Intelligence

We don’t wait for problems to escalate. Our team spotted supply gaps caused by standardised captain shift times. So, we adjusted schedules to better match demand during peak periods—without compromising captain wellbeing.

Because we operate locally, we can act quickly. We don’t need to wait for head office approvals across time zones. We just fix what needs fixing.

Aligning with UAE Policies and National Vision

The value of localisation goes far beyond convenience. Increasingly, it aligns with national priorities. The UAE’s commitment to smart cities, sustainability, and economic diversification offers a clear framework for innovation—and regional players are best positioned to deliver on that.

For instance, just last month, Dubai launched a new initiative to award more government contracts to domestic manufacturers. The Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology also partnered with major retailers to boost visibility for locally produced goods.

These policies reflect a deeper truth: sustainable progress must be built from within. At Hala, founded as a public-private partnership between the RTA and Careem, this philosophy isn’t just a talking point—it’s how we operate.

Community-First Tech: A Blueprint for Scalable Growth

Trust is earned in the street—through consistency, reliability, and cultural relevance. That’s why both Hala and Careem Plus have kept support operations in-country, tailored our features to reflect the needs of UAE residents, and continually invested in tech that reflects local behaviours.

When localisation is built into your business model—not added as an afterthought—you can adapt faster, deliver more impact, and align seamlessly with both policy and community expectations.

Whether it’s refining geo-location accuracy, rethinking shift schedules, or rolling out financial services that matter to users here, local digital platforms in the Middle East are shaping a new era of tech leadership.

The Path Forward: Growth Built on Relevance

This region is young, mobile-first, and ambitious. People here aren’t just looking for functionality—they want platforms that reflect their identity, speak their language, and understand their context.

And increasingly, localisation isn’t a limitation on scale—it’s the blueprint for sustainable growth. The Middle East is not a monolith, and its cities are not interchangeable. Platforms that understand this will not only serve their markets better—they will lead them.

Read how Globant uses tech to drive sustainability in business

Tech Interviews

Why TWO99 is Rethinking Cloud Marketing with Compliance, Data, and Agility

Published

3 months ago

June 11, 2025

Integrator Web-Editor

How does TWO 99 ensure its Cloud Security Solution remain compliant with evolving international data privacy laws like GDPR and HIPAA?

Two99’s cloud-native security solutions—including CNAPP, CWPP, and CSPM—are engineered to align with evolving international data privacy regulations such as GDPR and HIPAA through a proactive, multi-layered compliance framework. Our platforms integrate automated policy enforcement and real-time security posture monitoring to enable rapid detection and remediation of compliance deviations.

As an ISO 27001:2022 certified organization, we maintain a robust Information Security Management System (ISMS) that embeds data protection, risk assessments, and regular audits into our core operations. In parallel, our ISO 9001:2015 certification underscores our commitment to rigorous quality management processes, allowing agile adaptation to global regulatory shifts.

Our compliance team continuously monitors international privacy standards, translating insights into operational controls and product enhancements. We enforce stringent data storage protocols, including encryption of data at rest and in transit using advanced cryptographic methods, along with secure key management and policy-driven data retention and deletion.

Regular internal evaluations and third-party audits further validate our security posture, ensuring that Two99’s offerings not only meet but consistently exceed global data protection standards.

Given your background with WPP and GroupM, how has your approach to digital transformation changed since founding TWO 99?

My experience with WPP and GroupM provided invaluable insights into how large-scale organizations operate—especially in terms of process, structure, and scalability. However, founding TWO99 marked a deliberate shift toward a more agile, innovation-driven approach to digital transformation. At TWO99, we focus on vertical-agnostic scalability, bringing together technology, creativity, and performance under a unified, adaptable framework.

Unlike traditional holding companies that often operate within rigid silos, our model emphasizes speed, flexibility, and integration. We’ve built an ecosystem that allows us to pivot quickly, test rapidly, and deploy solutions that are customized to the dynamic needs of each client. This is especially critical in emerging markets like India, where consumer behaviors and platform trends evolve at breakneck speed.

Our approach moves away from isolated service offerings and instead delivers end-to-end growth strategies—from brand storytelling to performance marketing—under one roof. This integrated engine not only accelerates ROI but also empowers clients to scale more efficiently across diverse industries and geographies.

Ultimately, digital transformation at TWO99 is not about adopting new tools; it’s about building a mindset of experimentation, collaboration, and continual evolution—something that’s only possible when tech, creative, and media are not just coexisting, but co-creating.

You speak a lot about growth marketing—what’s one underused strategy or tool you believe more startups should adopt?

One of the most underutilized yet high-impact strategies in growth marketing today is predictive audience modeling—specifically using first-party data to anticipate user behavior before a customer even shows active intent. In the rush to acquire users, many startups focus heavily on performance spend and surface-level targeting, often missing the opportunity to build smarter, more efficient pipelines through data-driven foresight.

By leveraging tools like AI-powered lookalike modeling or Google’s AutoML, companies can identify emerging patterns and preemptively segment high-intent audiences. These platforms analyze behavioral signals—ranging from product interactions and website heatmaps to backend signals like GitHub commits or CRM workflows—to spot trends that traditional analytics would miss.

At TWO99, we’ve seen transformative results with this approach. For instance, by layering multiple intent signals (e.g., developer activity, trial-to-paid movement, sales pipeline stages) and combining them with Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO), we helped a SaaS client reduce their Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) by over 30%. This wasn’t just about targeting more people—it was about targeting the right people, at the right time, with the right message.

Startups that embrace predictive modeling early in their growth journey can shift from reactive marketing to proactive growth engineering, ultimately driving better ROI, faster time to conversion, and more sustainable customer relationships.

At TWO 99, how do you balance creative innovation with data-driven performance when leading campaigns for tech and cloud-based clients?

At TWO99, we treat data as the creative brief—a philosophy that helps us seamlessly bridge creative storytelling with performance marketing, especially for tech and cloud-based clients. Rather than starting with assumptions or generic messaging, we begin with behavioral analytics and first-party data to uncover real pain points, usage patterns, and moments of friction within the user journey.

This insight-driven approach allows us to craft narratives that aren’t just imaginative, but deeply relevant and conversion-focused. For example, if product analytics show a drop-off at the integration stage, our creative strategy might revolve around simplifying technical complexity or highlighting seamless onboarding. In this way, the campaign’s message is directly informed by what users are experiencing, not just what the brand wants to say.

We also continuously A/B test creative iterations—from copy to visual formats—to fine-tune performance in real time. For tech and cloud clients, where the buyer journey is often complex and multi-touch, this balance of data and creativity ensures that each piece of content not only captures attention but drives measurable outcomes like engagement, sign-ups, or qualified leads.

In short, we don’t see data and creativity as separate tracks. At TWO99, one fuels the other—creating high-performance campaigns that are not only intelligent but emotionally resonant.