As cyber threats continue to grow in scale and sophistication, organisations in the Middle East region are ramping up the adoption of intelligent security and governance technologies. At the show, Praneeth Vanteru, Technical Evangelist at ManageEngine, shed light on the company’s role in strengthening digital resilience for regional enterprises and their latest innovations.
Vanteru said: “GITEX presents a great opportunity to meet our customers and partners from across the region. We are present across the Middle East and Africa, so we look forward to introducing the new products we’re launching this year”.
Vanteru noted that the Middle East has seen a significant rise in ransomware and cyberattacks, particularly targeting high-value industries like finance, oil and gas, and energy.
On the other hand, he highlighted that organisations are increasingly leveraging AI within their environments to strengthen their cybersecurity defences. “From a government perspective, there’s a lot of interest in reinforcing compliance frameworks and identity and governance structures. That’s how the region is looking to counter the growing threats”, he added.
Discussing what excites him most about the Middle East’s digital transformation journey, Vanteru said the region’s openness to experimentation sets it apart. “The most exciting thing is that this is a region where organisations are not afraid to try new technology”, he said.
He explained that ManageEngine is driving innovation across three core areas — artificial intelligence, identity and governance, and security.
“In AI, we’ve introduced a virtual agent called ‘Ask Zia’, which is a Zoho AI”, Vanteru said. “It includes sentiment analysis, analytics, forecasting solutions, and integrations with various large language models, including ChatGPT”.
In the area of identity governance, the company’s AD360, an integrated identity and access management (IAM) solution, features risk exposure management, providing a graphical view of lateral threats within an organisation. He said: “We’ve also added local multi-factor authentication capabilities to strengthen identity protection”.
In terms of security, ManageEngine has completely re-engineered its threat detection console. “We’ve brought in a trilogy of security mechanisms”, Vanteru explained. “We correlate events happening across the network, integrate user and entity behaviour analysis, and connect with third-party threat feeds, all in a single console”.
To minimise false positives, ManageEngine has introduced object-level identifiers that reduce the signal-to-noise ratio. “This improves the number of true alerts and saves a lot of time for IT administrators”, he added.
Vanteru believes that AI is becoming the unifying thread across ManageEngine’s portfolio of solutions. “We see AI as something that can blend into all the solutions we have”, he said. “When it comes to agility, AI makes things faster through automation, saving time for IT administrators and enabling organisations to focus on strategic objectives”.
He added that AI also enhances security operations. “It can predict threats better and respond faster than typical human intervention. Making AI the central theme between all our solutions is how we’re helping organisations stay secure, agile, and future-ready”.
Reflecting on the response at this year’s GITEX, Vanteru said, “It’s been very vibrant. We’ve had a lot of interactions with customers as well as new prospects. These are really exciting times ahead”.
He concluded by inviting attendees to explore the company’s innovations. “I would request everyone to visit our booth; we have amazing things to offer this year”.
Image Credit: ManageEngine
