Page 35 - SAMENA Trends - May 2020

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Microsoft, IDC Host Digital Event To Discuss Business Continuity And
Cybersecurity in The Era Of Remote Working

Microsoft and IDC hosted an exclusive webinar featuring industry
experts to discuss business continuity and its challenges, as
organizations in the region and around the world maintain the
remote working norm. The session titled ‘Powering Through
Together ‘explored the recent surge in uptake of cloud technologies
and collaboration tools and urged business leaders to take a
holistic approach to Cybersecurity, while ensuring productivity of
their workforce. Mark Walker, Associate Vice President, Vertical
Industries for IDC Middle East and Africa, delivered the opening
keynote and discussed the challenges that leaders are facing
during the unprecedented times, as well as the implications on
businesses considering the outlook. Business has significantly
changed in terms of priorities, customer focus, and digital
transformation plans across all sectors – uncertainty and risk
has increased significantly. IDC research indicates that after an
initial surge in IT investment in communication and collaboration
solutions, focus is now on accelerating digital transformation
using highly secure cloud-based platforms to deliver solutions
that accommodate remote work and provide reliable, secure as a result, Microsoft Security solutions help identify and respond
accessibility. Ann Johnson, Corporate Vice President for to threats 50% faster, as well as automate 97% of the routine
Cybersecurity Solutions Group at Microsoft, shared her perspective tasks that occupied defenders’ valuable time. During the webinar,
on business continuity, and laid out guidance for businesses to Microsoft experts from the Middle East and Africa highlighted
adapt and enable secure remote work options to become more key security strategies that can help organizations in improving
operationally resilient in short and longer term. “Cybersecurity their security posture. Mina Nagy, Azure Security Lead shared
provides the underpinning to operational resilience and business best practices for security professionals on how an organization
continuity as more organizations adapt to enabling secure remote can enable security and management for their remote workforce.
work options, whether in the short or longer term,” said Johnson. And Mehmet Uner, Services Strategy Lead discussed ways that
“Cloud technology and artificial intelligence help unlock new can allow secured access to cloud and on-premises applications
capabilities to extend the power across endpoints, networks, with ease of modern management capabilities for all devices. The
data, applications, and infrastructure to improve productivity session also hosted a panel discussion with participants from the
and collaboration as we must also be empathetic to the end financial services industry. Yuri Misnik, Group Technology Office
user experience during times of constant disruption.” Microsoft at First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB) shared insights on the strategy put
has been a frontrunner in empowering organizations to adopt in place while implementing remote working procedures. “Security
remote working solutions while implementing the right security of our customers and their data is our top priority. Our model is
measures. The AI capabilities built into Microsoft Security tools one of continuous improvement across all functions of the Group,
are trained on 8 trillion daily threat signals backed by insights from this discipline that gives us confidence that we will stay one step
3,500 security experts. Custom algorithms and machine learning ahead of the emerging threats and determined adversaries. ”
models make, and learn from, billions of queries every day. And concluded Misnik.

Microsoft Announces New Supercomputer at Build Conference, Lays Out

Vision For Future AI Work

Microsoft has built one of the top five represents a key milestone in a partnership going to enable,” said Microsoft Chief
publicly disclosed supercomputers in announced last year to jointly create new Technical Officer Kevin Scott, who said the
the world, making new infrastructure supercomputing technologies in Azure. potential benefits extend far beyond narrow
available in Azure to train extremely large It’s also a first step toward making the advances in one type of AI model. “This is
artificial intelligence models, the company next generation of very large AI models about being able to do a hundred exciting
is announcing at its Build developers and the infrastructure needed to train things in natural language processing
conference. Built in collaboration with and them available as a platform for other at once and a hundred exciting things in
exclusively for OpenAI, the supercomputer organizations and developers to build computer vision, and when you start to see
hosted in Azure was designed specifically upon. “The exciting thing about these combinations of these perceptual domains,
to train that company’s AI models. It models is the breadth of things they’re you’re going to have new applications

35 MAY 2020