Cisco plans to establish an edge data center in Saudi Arabia for cloud security services

Cisco has announced its plans to establish an edge data center in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) to provide cloud security services. The data center aims to assist customers in safeguarding their users, infrastructure, and investments against cyber threats. This strategic move by Cisco is part of its ongoing efforts to empower local and regional organizations with flexible security solutions and data protection for distributed locations, remote users, and devices.

The newly proposed data center will serve a crucial role in delivering secure access with agility, high resilience, and increased capacity to users in KSA. It will support Cisco’s cloud services, including their latest offering, Secure Service Edge (SSE) solution, known as Cisco Secure Access. Many organizations currently rely on a complex array of disparate security products that were not designed to address the challenges of today’s highly distributed environments. As a result, users often face inconsistent access experiences and frequent reauthentication, which can disrupt productivity. Cisco Secure Access aims to address these issues by automating decisions regarding user connections to the internet, Software as a Service (SaaS), and private applications. This automation eliminates complexity and enhances productivity.

By establishing the data center, Cisco reaffirms its commitment to a hybrid architecture that allows the rapid expansion of its global reach to benefit customers. In Saudi Arabia, organizations will experience the advantages of Cisco’s co-located edge data center, which combines the scalability of public cloud with carrier-neutrality. The data center will be accessible through any Internet Service Provider (ISP) in Saudi Arabia. Cisco aims to make the services available by mid-2024.

Salman Faqeeh, Managing Director of Cisco in Saudi Arabia, expressed his enthusiasm about the announcement, stating, “Today’s announcement reconfirms Cisco’s alignment to provide advanced cloud security protection and services to the Saudi community. It builds on Cisco’s long-standing commitment to our customers and reflects our continued support for digital transformation, by using the power of technologies to create a secured thriving digital economy in Saudi Arabia.”

The importance of security resilience is underscored by the findings of the latest Cisco Security Outcomes Report. The report revealed that 54 percent of surveyed organizations in Saudi Arabia experienced a security event that had a significant impact on their business operations. The most common incidents included distributed denial of service attacks (60 percent), network or system outages (54 percent), and malicious insider abuse events (40 percent). The global report also highlights that integrating networking and security into a mature, cloud-delivered secure access services edge led to a 27 percent improvement in security resilience scores.

With this initiative, Cisco aims to provide enhanced cybersecurity measures and contribute to the growth of a secure and prosperous digital economy in Saudi Arabia.