Overall spending on information and communication technology (ICT) in Saudi Arabia is expected to reach $34.5 billion this year, up 1.0% on 2018.

That’s according to the latest insights, trends, and predictions presented by International Data Corporation (IDC) last week as it hosted the 2019 edition of its annual IDC Directions event at The Ritz-Carlton, Riyadh.

The forum brought together more than 100 of the Kingdom’s most influential technology vendors, telecommunications operators, and IT service providers.

Running under the theme ‘Multiplied Innovation: Scaling a Technology Revolution in Saudi Arabia’ , the highly anticipated event explored the emerging trends and priorities that will shape ICT investments in 2019 and beyond. IDC’s group vice president and regional managing director for the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa, Jyoti Lalchandani, opened the event by outlining IDC’s chapters of innovation in the digital economy and contextualizing their relevance to the Kingdom’s ongoing digital transformation.

He explained that cutting-edge technologies are increasingly forming the core of modernization efforts in the Kingdom and that a wave of pan-industry digitalization is set to hit organizations of all sizes, with the future of the ICT presenting pockets of opportunity like never before.

This was followed by the event’s keynote presentation from Hamza Naqshbandi, IDC’s country manager for Saudi Arabia, during which he highlighted the critical role that digital transformation and innovation-accelerating technologies will play in shaping ICT investment decisions over the coming years.

He stressed the vital role that technology will play in enabling some of the most important aspects of the Kingdom’s National Transformation Program (NTP) and its overarching Vision 2030 strategy.

He also identified several areas of opportunity around software and IT services, with IDC anticipating these to be the fastest growing IT markets in Saudi Arabia over the coming years, expanding at five-year compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) of 7.9% and 6.0%, respectively, to reach combined spending of $6.2 billion in 2022.

“As the Kingdom further enhances its digital transformation posture, adoption and use of innovative technologies demanded by the NTP objectives will drive significant ICT spending,” said Naqshbandi.

“While traditional ICT segments like hardware, mobile phones, and telecom services will see a significant slowdown, innovation accelerators and 3rd Platform technologies such as IoT, cloud, mobility, AI, and robotics will continue to offer quick wins for the supply side.”

Naqshbandi explained that use cases around these advanced technology solutions are emerging across Saudi Arabia, reinforcing the significance of these technologies in achieving some of the key NTP and Vision 2030 goals.

He also revealed IDC’s prediction that spending on IoT solutions in the Kingdom will touch $1.5 billion in 2019, while security solutions will attract total spending of more than $400 million. Spending on public cloud, meanwhile, is forecast to cross the $250 million mark in 2019.

“Technology spending momentum will rapidly shift from traditional technologies to transformative solutions, while the ‘doing more with less’ mantra will continue to prevail,” said Naqshbandi. “The Saudi ICT market will show symptoms that are typical of a transforming economy as private sector organizations gear up to keep pace with digital transformation initiatives driven by the government. Developing an effective digital transformation platform that can sustain, advance, and scale business operations may be the most important task facing the Kingdom’s decision makers in 2019 and beyond.”

As part of our continued investment across Sub-Saharan Africa and commitment to safety and security on our platform, we are opening a new content review centre in Nairobi, Kenya.

In partnership with Samasource – one of the largest digital employers in East Africa and a leading social enterprise — the site in Nairobi will be Facebook’s first content review centre in Sub-Saharan Africa. It will employ approximately 100 reviewers by the end of the year, and who will support a number of languages, including Somali, Oromo, Swahili and Hausa.
Fazdai Madzingira, Public Policy Associate for content said: “Over the years, we have made significant investments globally, and locally in ensuring that people see the content they want to see, and are aware of what is and isn’t allowed on the platform. That’s why we have a set of Community Standards and last year published the more detailed internal guidelines around these rules. We want Facebook to be a place where people can express themselves and freely discuss different points of view, whilst ensuring that it remains safe for everyone.”
Commenting on the forthcoming opening of the centre, Ebele Okobi, Facebook’s Public Policy Director, Africa added: “This further highlights our commitment to serving the community of people using our platforms across Africa, as well as our commitment to continuing to invest and partner locally across the continent. I am delighted that through our partnership with Samasource we will be opening our first content review centre here in Africa.”
Carolyn Komen, Samasource Program Director said, “At Samasource we believe that giving work is the most powerful solution to ending global poverty. We use technology and private sector methods to measurably improve access to work and job training. As one of the largest digital employers in East Africa, we’re excited to partner with Facebook in Nairobi to help keep people on Facebook safe and continue our mission. Our team will receive extensive training and support, benefit from industry-leading facilities, and have the opportunity to advance their careers in tech through this partnership.”

The Internet Society and African IXP Association (AFIX) have announced that they will hold the 10th annual Africa Peering and Interconnection Forum (AfPIF) in Port Louis, Mauritius from 20-22 August, 2019 in collaboration with the local host, Rogers Capital.
AfPIF is an annual event that serves as a platform to develop the African Internet. It brings key infrastructure, service, and content providers together in order to improve network interconnection, lower the cost of connectivity, and increase the number of users in the region. First held in 2010, the event was created to address the realization that most of Africa’s Internet traffic is sourced or exchanged outside the continent.
Over 400 participants attended last year’s AfPIF in Cape Town, South Africa including providers of international, regional, and sub-regional transport, transit, and content as well as more than 20 Internet Exchange Point (IXP) operators. This year’s attendance is expected to exceed that.
“Removing barriers to content availability and distribution will have significant impacts on the Internet in Africa. It will help to make existing international content more accessible,” explained Michuki Mwangi, Senior Development Manager for Africa at the Internet Society.  “AfPIF is the only event in Africa focused on building the Internet by building relationships. It plays a key role in bringing together different parties to increase local traffic exchange across the continent,” he added.
Kyle Spencer, Co-Coordinator of the African IXP Association said “our target is to localize 80% of Africa’s Internet traffic by 2020, and I believe we’re well on our way. Packet Clearing House reports that Africa currently sees the highest growth of domestic bandwidth production in the world, registering a 92% increase from 410 Gbps to 786 Gbps within the last 12 months — and our internal industry benchmarking data corroborates this. It’s an exciting time for Africa, and we look forward to building on this momentum in Mauritius.”
We are pleased to host AFPIF 2019 in Mauritius especially with the special privilege that this year’s event will coincide with the celebration of its 10 years of existence. As a diversified and sophisticated business hub for the region, we believe Mauritius may help open new business perspectives for the AFPIF delegates. We are looking forward to welcoming the delegates in August 2019 and to providing our support for the development of Internet Infrastructure in Africa.’ – Dev Hurkoo, Managing Director, Rogers Capital-Technology

Cyber criminals are continuously shifting their attack techniques to better target endpoints. As more than one-third (39 percent) of cyber attacks are now non-malware based adversaries can exploit gaps in traditional antimalware solutions used in isolation.

Considering 50 percent of organisations also have insufficient endpoint or network visibility during incident response engagements, it’s clear many businesses are injecting ineffective security tools into their environments, ultimately adding complexity without directly addressing the problem.

These disconnected solutions require ongoing diligence and expert resources to analyse a multitude of security alerts and identify compromised devices. Yet, with the growing cyber-security skills gap, businesses don’t have the resources needed to manage their security infrastructure effectively.

To help organisations address these challenges, Dell is introducing Dell SafeGuard and Response, a portfolio of next-generation endpoint security solutions that combines the managed security, incident response expertise and threat behavioural analytics of Secureworks with the unified endpoint protection platform from CrowdStrike.

Dell’s modern and effective approach designed to prevent, detect and respond to the shifting threat landscape makes it easy for organisations to protect their data with the industry’s most secure commercial PCs.

With AI-driven and cloud-native endpoint protection powered by CrowdStrike and expert threat intelligence and response management by Secureworks, Dell SafeGuard and Response provides customers with the essential capabilities they need to protect their PCs and data.

CrowdStrike endpoint security solutions prevent more than 99 percent of malware and non-malware-based threats, detect 100 percent of vulnerabilities⁴, and respond to sophisticated attacks rapidly. Secureworks’ RedCloak behavioural analytics are built into the prevention, detection and response capabilities, so customers benefit from an ever-smarter network effect of protection.

When an emerging threat is discovered in one environment, countermeasures are created and deployed to all customers who may be affected.

With Dell SafeGuard and Response, customers no longer need to worry about complex implementation involving numerous agents. Dell’s modern approach to security simplifies the buying process, allowing customers to order these new solutions alongside their new PC. Businesses will receive outstanding prevention combined with the ability to quickly detect compromised devices and remediate cyber incidents.

Customers can select from the following new Dell SafeGuard and Response solutions to meet their unique security needs:

• CrowdStrike Falcon Prevent™:This next-generation antivirus (NGAV) solution uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to stop malware and malware-free attacks, offering organisations enhanced protection without requiring signatures and the heavy updates that come with them.
• CrowdStrike Falcon Prevent and Insight:In addition to the NGAV solution, customers can advance their threat prevention capabilities with Device Control and Falcon Insight™, the leading endpoint detection and response (EDR) solution. This enables full visibility into endpoint threat activity and real-time remediation designed to prevent, detect and investigate incidents and stop threats.
• Secureworks Managed Endpoint Protection:Combined with CrowdStrike Falcon Prevent and Insight and Device Control, this offering provides customers with 24×7 managed services from Secureworks to monitor the state of endpoints for indications of threat actor activity. Secureworks Security Operations Center and Counter Threat Unit™ will investigate events to determine severity, accuracy and context to suggest remedial actions, giving organisations peace of mind around the clock.
• Secureworks Incident Management Retainer:In the event of a serious security incident, Secureworks will deploy its On-Demand Incident Response Specialist Team who are highly skilled to respond to and mitigate a cyber incident at any time. Now, organisations with and without security operations centres can have the support and expertise needed in critical times. This service can also be used to build a proactive response plan for future security incidents.

“Organisations are faced with what may feel like an exponentially expanding threat landscape and a mixed bag of solutions to fix it,” said Brett Hansen, Vice President and General Manager of Client Software and Security Solutions, Dell.

“To meet the evolving needs of our customers and stay ahead of ever-evolving threats, Dell is offering organisations the tools they need to keep their devices and data secure.”

“Attacker techniques are getting more sophisticated and customers need managed solutions that are actively guarding against threat activity,” said Wendy Thomas, Senior Vice President of Business and Product Strategy, Secureworks.

“Our modern approach with Dell ensures a coordinated defence against cyber threats at the scale and speed required for any customer’s evolving security needs beyond the network.”

“Being selected by Dell is a testament to CrowdStrike’s market leadership and the proven value of our platform,” said Matthew Polly, Vice President of Worldwide Business Development and Channels, CrowdStrike.

“Together, we are equipping customers with a unique and compelling solution to deliver an end-to-end approach to endpoint security that effectively stops threats, while reducing enterprise complexity and modernising threat detection and management.”