Sitting Pretty in Cybersecurity

Spire Solutions is a value-added distributor (VAD) in Middle East and Africa with exclusive distribution rights for some of the world’s best-known vendors that offer niche cyber security solutions and services. Sanjeev Walia, Founder and President, Spire Solutions, throws light on the company’s progress and plans.

How has the need for cybersecurity solutions grown across MEA region since the pandemic?

Research and statistics show that the pandemic has accelerated digital transformation on one hand and introduced many critical cybersecurity challenges to governments and enterprises on the other. People, processes, data, and technologies are now distributed everywhere due to trends like ‘work from home’ so CISOs and cybersecurity professionals have a much harder task in hand. This is driving them to proactively seek collaboration with solution providers from multifold advisory, solutions, services, training, and talent perspectives. Also, the board and broader C-suite are now keenly participating in cybersecurity discussions, a change that was much needed. These developments are propelling growth in the cybersecurity industry.

What are the most common threats that enterprises have been facing?

Endpoints, networks, and humans are being targeted using various methods such as malware, ransomware, phishing, social engineering, and more. Brand and VIP impersonations are on the rise. Supply chain attacks are being reported often. Cybercriminals are constantly changing their tactics, techniques, and procedures and finding innovative ways to fulfil their motives, so it’s become a high priority for enterprises to be dynamic with their security approach.

How is Spire enabling governments and enterprises with their cybersecurity needs?

We are committed to enhancing our customers’ security postures, reducing security costs, and optimizing overall security performance by implementing niche solutions and services that carry out various risk and vulnerability assessments on their IT, OT and IoT environments; create security data lakes to visualize, analyze and make data-driven decisions; automate and orchestrate security to increase SOC efficiency; hunt for threats proactively at the network and endpoint level and thwart them before an incident happens; aggregate, correlate and act upon relevant threat intelligence at the IT, OT and IoT levels; think like an attacker and visualize attack path to proactively fill gaps and build resilience; govern and secure organization-wide data and identities; and profile and provide targeted training to employees as part of human risk management, etc.

The lack of skilled cyber security resources often leaves organizations vulnerable to cyberattacks. What approach and solutions can help address this issue?

Teaming up with the right partners (VADs and resellers) will largely address the cybersecurity skills gaps and help reduce the need for full-time staff. With the right security partners, organizations can achieve more with less staff. Demand for managed security services is consistently growing because of this.

From a solutions standpoint, it’s important to onboard technologies with a higher number of native integrations and those which can integrate with new solutions quickly, on-demand. Security orchestration and automation is another effective approach as it helps reduce human intervention as SOAR platforms can talk directly to multiple tools and technologies within the security environment.

Can you share your recent or forthcoming collaborations in the region?

We had several positive developments since the beginning of this year including exclusive partnerships and regional partnerships with Observability data unicorn Cribl to deliver control and flexibility for logs, metrics, and events; threat intelligence and attribution leader Group-IB for detection and prevention of cyberattacks, online fraud, and digital risk & IP protection; attack path visualisation champion XM Cyber to break the critical points in the attack chain; world’s first human cybersecurity risk management platform OutThink to empower CISOs tackle human behaviour.

What are the initiatives that you have launched recently and what can we expect in the coming months?

Earlier this year, we launched Spire Data, our bespoke big data and analytics business unit, to transform the way companies make growth decisions. Data strategy and governance, BI analytics, AI automation and advanced analytics are amongst our core focus.

We will shortly be announcing a few initiatives and partnerships in the cloud services space too given the growing demand from our customers and partners.