Following the acquisition of cybersecurity service provider Coordinates Middle East last month, Gulf Business Machines (GBM) has announced the launch of GBM Shield, its most comprehensive cybersecurity offering to date. With October recognised as Cybersecurity Awareness Month globally, GBM Shield was introduced to regional organisations at the flagship GBM Security Summit held in both Dubai and Abu Dhabi earlier this week, thus marking a new chapter in cyber defense for the region.
Developed to address evolving security challenges that regional organisations face due to the sophisticated threat landscape, the GBM Shield cyber defense program taps into GBM’s extensive experience and local know-how while providing 24/7 access to GBM’s uniquely skilled team of security professionals. In a holistic approach to cybersecurity, the program is risk-driven rather than technology-driven, thus enhancing existing technologies within an organisation to elevate its security and cyber resiliency and increase the returns on security investment.
Last month, GBM announced the acquisition of majority shares of Coordinates Middle East, a regional Managed Detection & Response firm headquartered in Dubai. GBM Shield will be powered by Coordinates. Coordinates’ an innovative platform that enables integration, automation, and orchestration across any technology to provide defense-grade services to enterprises of all sizes.
GBM’s annual cybersecurity report released earlier this year highlighted how redesigning security for the digital-first world and protecting it from external and internal threats has become a key priority for organisations. These insights mirror findings from last year’s GBM Security Report, which reported that securing data had become essential to building trust with customers, with 84 per cent of those surveyed wanting to invest in data security this year. GBM Shield brings together the best of GBM’s advanced cybersecurity portfolio and its three decades of experience to offer a vendor-agnostic integrated program that can be easily scaled up or down based on the customer’s needs.
Hani Nofal, Vice President of Digital Infrastructure Solutions at GBM, said, “In the last few years, we have seen the technology landscape evolve like never before. With massive leaps in the region’s digital transformation and increased adoption of technologies such as cloud and Artificial Intelligence (AI), we are seeing increased sophistication in cyber threats and a wider impact on an organization’s operations.
“Over the last three decades, GBM has become the trusted advisor to regional organisations as they develop their cybersecurity programs, and this expertise and the partnerships we have in place have allowed us to build the most advanced end-to-end cybersecurity offering in the region today. Through GBM Shield, organisations can easily overcome the complexities, budget constraints and other challenges that come with implementing a cybersecurity program and benefit from GBM’s security experts who can adapt the program based on their evolving needs.”
GBM’s comprehensive framework of services and solutions, integrating technologies from global security leaders, has enabled organisations to implement industry best practices in cybersecurity. With a holistic approach to mitigating security risk, GBM’s bespoke cybersecurity program focuses on the organisation’s people, processes and technology.