• About Us
  • Advertising
  • Digital Magazine
  • Supplements
  • Media Pack
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact us
CXO Insight Middle East
  • News
  • Opinion
  • Business
    • Industries
      • Transport
      • Retail
      • Government
      • Real Estate
      • Education
      • Energy
      • Banking and Finance
    • Channel
  • Future
    • Tech
    • Gadgets
    • Science
    • Space
    • Sustainability
  • Events
    • Channel Insights Summit 2025
    • Insight Innovation Summit
    • CXO50 Oman
    • CXO50
    • ICT Awards
      • Dubai 2025
      • Saudi Arabia
    • Cyber Strategists Summit
    • Cloud Connect 2025
    • Channel Awards 2024
    • All events
  • GITEX
  • Digital Magazine
No Result
View All Result
CXO Insight Middle East
  • News
  • Opinion
  • Business
    • Industries
      • Transport
      • Retail
      • Government
      • Real Estate
      • Education
      • Energy
      • Banking and Finance
    • Channel
  • Future
    • Tech
    • Gadgets
    • Science
    • Space
    • Sustainability
  • Events
    • Channel Insights Summit 2025
    • Insight Innovation Summit
    • CXO50 Oman
    • CXO50
    • ICT Awards
      • Dubai 2025
      • Saudi Arabia
    • Cyber Strategists Summit
    • Cloud Connect 2025
    • Channel Awards 2024
    • All events
  • GITEX
  • Digital Magazine
No Result
View All Result
CXO Insight Middle East
No Result
View All Result

Securing Innovation Through Trust

by CXO Staff
January 24, 2021
in Channel

Maureen Perrelli, Chief Channel Officer, Secureworks, explains how technology partners can help protect the virtual world they helped build.

trust partner rope
Maureen Perrelli, Secureworks
Maureen Perrelli, Secureworks

Whether through direct or channel sales, there is one constant attribute that determines success or failure, and that is trust. Trust can be explained in many ways. It is having the knowledge and expertise to recommend a technology solution that fits the customer’s needs, not yours. It is building and maintaining a track record of doing the right thing on a consistent basis. It is about possessing intelligence of emerging trends and having the confidence to advocate change.

For the hundreds of technology partners we work with every day in the Channel, that trust was put to the test during this pandemic. Companies relied on their technology partners to help them implement remote working solutions alongside new and untested virtual collaboration styles, as well as establishing new supply chain processes and assistance with rethinking conventional strategic planning.

Despite all the collaborative innovation to keep global economies going – as well as ensuring safety for companies and livelihoods – threat actors were ready to take advantage of this creative goodwill. In the recent Secureworks Incident Response Report, our incident responders share lessons from hundreds of engagements conducted during the pandemic. Although we did not see an increase in the volume of attacks, many threat actors used COVID-19 as an opportunity to employ familiar tactics such as phishing.

Healthcare, pharmaceutical, and government organisations were targeted by both nation-states and financially-motivated cybercriminals. These threat actors recognised the large sums of money funding pandemic-related work and targeted the underlying data for financial gain. These industries rely heavily on technology partners, so this is personal to me.

I believe technology partners are in an ideal position to help organisations mitigate the risk posed by threat actors during this pandemic and beyond. Our findings point to specific actions I believe partners can employ to increase their level of trust with their customers:

  • Enforce or develop policies to protect remote work equipment, the consumption or transport of sensitive data and establish technical controls to help monitor and enforce these policies. For example, install technical controls such as a Mobile Device Management (MDM) solution.
  • On-premise testing can now be performed remotely by several security providers. Organisations should conduct frequent vulnerability, penetration, incident response, and simulated attack testing to validate the safety of their remote technology investments, procedural changes, and internal security vigilance.
  • The same can be said about the stable of vendors who help organisations achieve their goals. As all supply chains are connected online, vendors need to demonstrate equal or stronger security postures than the organisations they serve.
  • Threat actors continue to use proven tactics such as ransomware, malware, and business email fraud. Organisations should deploy advance threat detection and response solutions to constantly monitor their now expanded network footprint.
  • Using multi-factor authentication for internet-facing resources, encrypting sensitive data, and disposing of information securely remain vital best practices to protect against credential abuse.

Channel partners can bolster their customer defences by training personnel and tuning their processes and tools for work-from-home environments. This can help all organisations better prepare to detect and respond to incidents well into the future as the pandemic has changed the way the world works, even though cybersecurity threats are largely the same.

Tags: featured2Maureen PerrelliSecureWorks
ShareTweet

Related Posts

How managed services are driving enterprise resilience in the UAE
Business

How managed services are driving enterprise resilience in the UAE

In today’s hyper-connected economy, the pressure on organisations to remain secure, agile, and digitally mature has never been higher. According...

July 10, 2025
ManageEngine appoints Sujoy Banerjee as UAE regional business director
Business

ManageEngine appoints Sujoy Banerjee as UAE regional business director

ManageEngine has appointed Sujoy Banerjee as its regional business director for the UAE. In this new role, Banerjee will oversee...

July 8, 2025

Discussion about this post

Latest Issue

‘Green chatting’ era kicks off with PromptZero launch

‘Green chatting’ era kicks off with PromptZero launch

July 16, 2025
Financial services firms embrace GenAI, security and talent gaps persist: report

Financial services firms embrace GenAI, security and talent gaps persist: report

July 16, 2025
Work reborn: Accelerating digital workplace transformation in the UAE and Saudi Arabia

Work reborn: Accelerating digital workplace transformation in the UAE and Saudi Arabia

July 15, 2025

The most trusted source of strategic intelligence for IT decision makers in the Middle East.

About

  • About Us
  • Advertising
  • Digital Magazine
  • Supplements
  • Media Pack
  • Contact Us

Policies

  • Privacy Policy
© 2025 – CXO Insight Middle East. All Rights Reserved.
Facebook-f X-twitter Linkedin
Separated they live in Bookmarksgrove right at the coast of the Semantics, a large language ocean. A small river named Duden.

About

  • About Us
  • Site Map
  • Contact Us
  • Career

Policies

  • Help Center
  • Privacy Policy
  • Cookie Setting
  • Term Of Use

Join Our Newsletter

© 2024 – CXO Insight Middle East. All Rights Reserved.

Facebook-f Twitter Youtube Instagram

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
Join our mailing list
Sign up here to get the latest news, updates and special offers delivered directly to your inbox.
No Result
View All Result
  • News
  • Opinions
  • Business
    • Industries
      • Transport
      • Retail
      • Government
      • Real Estate
      • Education
      • Energy
      • Banking and Finance
  • Channel
  • Future
    • Tech
    • Gadgets
    • Science
    • Space
    • Sustainability
  • Events
    • Channel Insights Summit 2025
    • Insight Innovation Summit
    • CX50 Oman
    • CXO50
    • ICT Awards
      • Dubai
      • Saudi Arabia
    • Cyber Strategists Summit
    • Cloud Connect 2025
    • Channel Awards 2023
    • All events
  • Videos
  • GITEX GLOBAL
  • Digital Magazine

© 2025 - CXO Insight Middle East. All Rights Reserved.