The combined Veritas and NetApp bundle is a fully customizable archiving solution for customers from any vertical industry. It works as a drop-in system for existing IT environments as well as new deployments. By bundling archiving licenses and physical storage together, the bundle helps reduce overall information management costs.

“Archiving is the ideal tool for protecting, organizing, and searching data, helping to meet compliance and eDiscovery requirements. The combined Veritas and NetApp solution complements an organization’s existing backup implementation. Archives are for discovery, while backups are for recovery,’’ said Ayman Al Bayaa, CEO of STME.

Archiving solutions improve many areas of data protection and IT operations. For example, by archiving “stale” data from primary applications, such as Microsoft SharePoint or Windows-based file servers, the storage footprint of these applications can be reduced, improving both backup and recovery performance. In addition, by using archiving, and not backup, for long-term information retention, organizations can optimize data protection strategies – for example, transitioning from keeping backups forever to shorter retention tailored to meet recovery point and time objectives.

Furthermore, the combined solution automates many labour-intensive data management tasks, including data de-duplication within archives, policy-based archiving of leading information sources, as well as enabling seamless end user access to archived emails and files.

In recent years, cyber security has become increasingly more vulnerable to breaches involving unauthorized access to, theft and loss of data, and the interception of data while in transmission. A survey conducted by KPMG in 2015 on UAE organisations’ readiness and ability to respond to cyberattacks indicated that only 50% of respondents had any counter attack measures in place.

Further, the survey found that around a third of these organizations had been hacked in the past 12 months, and worse, some organizations had no clued they were under attack until it was too late. Recovery time for attacked organizations was anywhere between two weeks to one month. This is not isolated to the UAE, as a PWC survey on Economic Crime in the Middle East, indicated that organizations reported cybercrime as the second highest type affecting them in 2014.

“Most cyber security attacks happen because companies lack knowledge about it or they rely on destiny, assuming that these attacks will never happen to them. There is also a misconception that security solutions are very costly, which is again misguided, as for each type and size of firms there will be tailor-made security solutions based on their needs and capacities. And of course, it is always less expensive and pain-free to prevent cyberattacks rather to deal with its consequences,” emphasized Mr. Ayman Al Bayaa, CEO of STME.

To combat these cyber threats STME has, firstly, developed and is in the process of developing products and services at various cost models. Companies in the MENA region can avail themselves of STME’s security products covering networks, host, identity, database, and cloud security. Some popular services that STME offers include security management and security operation centres.

Importantly, STME is providing an informative and consultancy service to their clients, both to keep them informed of the security climate in general and what options are available. Here, STME is at a distinctive advantage given its regional reach in MENA, which enables the company and its clients to hold frequent and frank discussions on the threats, challenges, and solutions. For example, in mid-March STME participated alongside one of its very important partners who is one of the biggest vendors in security services in a security themed event at the Kempinski Burj Rafal Hotel, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to inform clients of the dangers of cyberattacks, and the options available to them.

STME is continuously bringing new security solutions to the market, keeping its clients informed and making sure that they are contented with the security services provided.