Sophos and Secureway Hold Successful IT Security Seminar In Saudi Arabia

Sophos security expert, Dr. James Lyne, addressed the changing threat landscape and gave practical advice on threat protection strategies for businesses to utilize at the niche event attended by CIOs and senior management of leading Saudi companies

Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, February 8th, 2011: Sophos, the leading Global IT security and data protection company together with its partner, Secureway Network Distributors, held a successful IT security seminar titled ‘Anatomy of an Attack: How hackers threaten your security’ for its business customers and partners at the Intercontinental Hotel Riyadh last week. Dr. James Lyne, senior technologist from Sophos, flew into the city to share his expertise on the lifecycle of attacks and give practical advice on threat protection strategies at the event, which was well attended by CIOs, IT managers and senior management of Saudi companies.

The seminar explained how financially motivated hackers threaten the security of an organisation’s IT systems and data. It also covered the best practices that an IT manager could follow to protect against the latest integrated threats, the top five things that an IT manager could do today to make his company’s business more secure and also featured demonstrations of live malware attacks.

“With extensive usage of the Internet for everyday business, security continues to be a growing concern for companies. In 2010, Sophos analyzed 95K new pieces of malware each day during 2010 – that’s one unique file every .9 seconds! As more and more businesses connect with their customers through the Internet, increasing amounts of sensitive data must be stored, accessed and manipulated. Security administrators face a constant battle to maintain usability while preventing penetration from the outside and loss from within,” explained Dr. James Lyne, senior technologist, Sophos.

“The seminar in Riyadh was to share insights with our customers on how attacks occur through a live demonstration of a malware attack in action, which of course, was self-contained and harmless. The session was designed to show how chains of attacks link together both from the perspective of the hacker and the end user, showing in gory detail the true capabilities of modern malware. We were pleased with the response we received and look forward to holding more seminars in the region soon,” Dr. Lyne added.

“Sophos is committed to delivering effective and simple security to our customers. Working as a trusted partner with local support in the Middle East region, we deliver a broad range of security solutions to help our customers overcome the challenges of security to unlock business efficiency and manage risk. We are here to provide value and to help,” said Dr. Kamel Heus, Managing Director MEA, Sophos.

Sophos, a world leader in IT security and control, offers complete protection and control to business, education and government organizations – defending against known and unknown malware, spyware, intrusions, unwanted applications, spam, and policy abuse, and providing comprehensive network access control (NAC). Sophos’ reliably engineered, easy-to-operate products protect over 100 million users in more than 150 countries. The company was recently positioned by Gartner, Inc. as a Leader in the 2010 Endpoint Protection Platforms Magic Quadrant, which means Sophos has now been recognized by Gartner in 2010 as a leader for both Endpoint Protection and Data Protection.

"Sophos is a leader in threat protection having won several industry awards for its superior products. The latest AV Comparatives report for November 2010 ranks Sophos among the top three security companies beating other well-known market players. In addition, Sophos was included as a Leader for the third time in a row in the 2010 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms. We were happy to partner with Sophos to organise this event for our customers in Saudi Arabia. The event was a success with decision makers and IT managers from enterprises and SMBs attending in large numbers. Going by the response we have received from our Saudi seminar, we look forward to organising many such events across the region,” Mr. Mohamad Akkad, Country Manager – KSA, Secureway Network Distributors concluded on a high note.

For more updates on seminars and changing security threats, please follow Dr.James Lyne (@jameslyne) on twitter.

About Sophos
More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com

About Secureway Network Distributors
Secureway Network Distributors are the Middle East's Specialist Value Added Distributors in the IT Security & Mobility Industry. Secureway Network Distributors offers Middle East Value Added Resellers an excellent opportunity to capitalize on their growing customer bases by providing End to End IT security solutions, while assisting them in the full lifecycle of the project.
With focus on pure Value-Added Distribution, Secureway Network Distributors has the global backup and local experience to deliver an unparalleled level of service, support, logistics and competitive pricing to the Middle East IT marketplace.
Secureway Network Distributors represent: F5 Networks the leader in application traffic management, Fortinet the recognized leader in Unified Threat Management systems, Actividentity Identity Management systems, Sourcefire Enterprise Threat Management, Sophos AV protection, Loglogic realtime log analysis and Lumension the global leader in operational endpoint security.
For further information, please visit http://www.secureway.ae

Luciana Kaddoumi
Marketing Manager
Secureway Network Distributors FZ LLC
Office # 21-08, Grosvenor Business Tower, TECOM C,
Dubai Internet City,
PO Box 500640, Dubai, UAE
Tel: +971 4 375 7612
Email: luciana.kaddoumi@secureway.ae

This release was published on openPR.