Bitdefender, the innovative cybersecurity solutions provider protecting 500 million machines worldwide, today announced its participation in the 39th edition of GITEX Technology Week, to be held in Dubai, UAE, from October 06 – 10.

Over the last couple of years, enterprises and governments in the Middle East, particularly in the healthcare and industrial sectors, have been changing the way they operate by connecting a plethora of disparate systems across operations, to mine untapped data. However, this radical shift toward the Internet of Things (IoT) is expanding the attack surface considerably. Bitdefender plans to use the MENA region’s premier technology tradeshow as a platform to discuss the most critical threats associated with IoT and demonstrate to customers and partners unique solutions to protect IoT infrastructures that are increasingly more exposed to cyberthreats.

Speaking about the importance of deploying robust cybersecurity solutions that specifically address IoT security, Tarek Kuzbari, regional director, Middle East, at Bitdefender said, “Given the region’s appetite for technology and innovation, governments and enterprises across the Middle East are increasingly turning to cloud environments and IoT applications to transform their operations and achieve growth. But at the same time, it is imperative that these same organizations also realize the security implications associated with these initiatives. The consequences of an IoT attack can range from downtime and loss of revenue and reputation, to―in the case of an attack on medical devices in the healthcare sector—even loss of life.”

“Traditional security solutions fall short in these scenarios as most IoT applications cannot be secured via an anti-malware solution. The best IoT security strategy is to focus on network threat detection, as the network is the common ground for all IoT devices,” continued Tarek.

Through a mix of live demonstrations and hourly presentations at the stand, at GITEX, the company will highlight how Bitdefender Network Traffic Security Analytics (NTSA) utilizes network traffic to provide an effective threat and breach detection solution, improving the security posture of IoT infrastructures. What makes Bitdefender NTSA unique is the cloud threat intelligence from 500 million sensors deployed globally, the proprietary machine learning and behavior analytics used to detect network traffic anomalies early in the attack cycle, and the automated alert triage to provide context and facilitate incident response. The company will also showcase how Bitdefender GravityZone can offer organizations an end-to-end breach avoidance platform across endpoint, network and cloud, enabling them to protect both IoT and IT infrastructures by yielding complete visibility on security-relevant events across both environments, and providing the tools to respond proactively, before an attacker can establish a presence in the infrastructure.

To further highlight the challenges around IoT security and advise Middle East organizations on how best to secure their infrastructures, Bitdefender will host a 25 min presentation in the X-Labs area titled ‘Defending IIOT: From Stuxnet to Trisis — 10 years of industrial cyberattacks’. Led by Bogdan Carlescu, cybersecurity evangelist at Bitdefender, the presentation will highlight the evolution of industrial attacks between the two milestones, Stuxnet and Trisis. During the session, Bogdan will also lay out Bitdefender’s predictions for 2020.

“As a cybersecurity community, I believe we have a duty of care to serve as advisors to regional governments and businesses, particularly when it comes to newer technologies like IoT. We need to educate them on the latest threats facing their organizations, understand their pain points and most importantly, work with our partners to offer them solutions that will make the best sense for their business, rather than ours. GITEX gives us a wonderful opportunity to do just this and along with our visiting EMEA executives, local team and key channel partners, I look forward to highlighting how the Bitdefender portfolio of endpoint, network and threat intelligence solutions, can help regional organizations protect their most critical assets” concluded Tarek.