Group-IB, a global threat hunting and intelligence company headquartered in Singapore, has announced that it has signed a partnership with CyberKnight Technologies, a cybersecurity focused value-added-distributor (VAD). Through the agreement, CyberKnight will provide local banking, government, and private sector customers a wider access to Group-IB’s suite of threat hunting, intelligence, and fraud prevention solutions to support the continuous success of the region’s digitization. The agreement marks another important milestone in Group-IB’s strategy to expand its footprint further in the GCC region.
According to the annual Hi-Tech Crime Trends report 2019/2020, the activity of at least 17 state-sponsored threat actors, including Lazarus, APT33, and MuddyWater, was discovered targeting the MEA region alone. The Middle East remains a testing ground for tools used in attacks on the energy sector from the times of Stuxnet up until now. Every day, the cyber resilience of local IT and OT systems, and the digital assets of banks are challenged by a myriad of threats ranging from fraudsters to state-sponsored adversaries.
To address these critical challenges for private and public sector companies, Group-IB has entered a distribution partnership with CyberKnight. The company will now be able to offer Group-IB’s fraud prevention solutions: Secure Bank, Secure Portal, its anti-APT Threat Detection System, along with a wide range of digital forensics, security audit and cyber investigation services. The CyberKnight team will receive additional technical training from Group-IB threat hunters, and DFIR experts to ensure high-quality support on-the-ground with no delay, reflecting Group-IB’s customer-centric approach globally.
“The financial and government sectors in the GCC region are especially prone to be primary targets for cybercriminals, therefore, such institutions must focus efforts on detecting complex threats and blended attacks that combine phishing, malware, and fraud across web and mobile channels. Group-IB’s Secure Bank and Secure Portal in particular are fully equipped to detect the threat of sophisticated fraud to protect online banking, government, and eCommerce portals. Unlike traditional anti-fraud solutions that analyse transactions, Group-IB platforms algorithms start working right from the sign-in stage to detect and prevent dangerous activity before fraud is executed. Where financial organisations have existing transactional anti-fraud solutions in place, Group-IB complements it with real-time detection of attacker logins, social engineering scams, bots, money laundering networks, and the possible infection of a user’s device,” said Vivek Gupta, Co-Founder & COO at CyberKnight.
As Group-IB continues to reach more clients and partners in the region, the company has recently announced the appointment of Ashraf Koheil to the position of Regional Sales Director in charge of the Middle East, North Africa, and Turkey. Koheil most recently served as Regional Sales Director for Middle East & Africa at FireEye, and previously as Cloud Channel Sales lead in MEA at Microsoft. Koheil brings a wealth of experience in building partner and distribution ecosystems, as well as a profound understanding of business development strategies, and a phenomenal track of establishing new and growing existing businesses in the Middle East.
“Getting relevant information about who or what exactly can impact your organisation is a critical task for cybersecurity teams. Group-IB provides a comprehensive toolset to detect complex threats, client-side fraud across sessions, platforms and devices, attacks, and threat actors’ activity before they can harm an organisation. We are thrilled to be represented by CyberKnight in the GCC. The company’s local market knowledge includes deep-rooted channel partnerships across the region, extensive enterprise and government customer relationships, and the strong cybersecurity expertise necessary to provide timely technical support on-the-ground. We look forward to CyberKnight’s contributions to elevate the delivery of Group-IB products and services to greater heights,” said Ashraf Koheil, Regional Director MEA & Turkey at Group-IB.
