Help AG becomes a Microsoft partner in the GCC

Help AG, the cybersecurity arm of e& enterprise (formerly known as Etisalat Digital), has been named as the managed security services provider (MSSP) partner of Microsoft in the GCC.

The companies signed a memorandum of understanding at the 2022 edition of the Gulf Information Security Expo & Conference (Gisec), the cybersecurity event held in Dubai.

By partnering with Microsoft, Help AG will be able to provide services based on all Microsoft security products, including Microsoft Sentinel and Defender, covering the domains of security management and identity, information, and threat protection.

Sayed Hashish, General Manager at @MicrosoftUAE, said: “By joining forces with Help AG, we are combining our world-class products and solutions with Help AG’s technical expertise and services, to offer our customers superior threat protection solutions.”https://t.co/hKJRSl1gS2 pic.twitter.com/evfOgEIQvU

— HelpAG_ME (@HelpAG_ME) March 23, 2022

Commenting on the partnership, Stephan Berner, chief executive officer at Help AG, said: “The modern cyberthreat landscape has made it essential to adopt an all-inclusive approach that covers security, compliance, identity, management, and privacy. As a pioneer proponent of the ‘service centric approach’, Help AG has been building offerings that customers can avail ‘as a service’ based on state-of-the-art security platforms and tools. Help AG along with Microsoft now offers the world’s most comprehensive approach to security, as a part of ‘Help AG as a service’, including solutions such as Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Defender for cloud apps, Microsoft Defender for IoT, and Azure active directory identity protection.”

Sayed Hashish, general manager, Microsoft UAE, said: “According to research, the UAE experienced a 250 per cent surge in cyberattacks in 2020, compared with the previous year. This included around 1.1 million phishing attacks. In the same year, almost half (49 per cent) the country’s organisations experienced a ransomware attack. By joining forces with Help AG, we are combining our world-class products and solutions with Help AG’s technical expertise and services, to offer our customers superior threat protection solutions.”

Microsoft was recently announced as a leader in the Forrester XDR Wave: extended detection and response (XDR) report, Q4, 2021. The company continues to innovate to bring SIEM (security information and event management) and XDR together to empower defenders with an integrated toolset and rich security intelligence.

Incorporating Microsoft’s security solutions will expand and strengthen Help AG’s MSS offering further, which delivers flexible services combining security event management, infrastructure monitoring, and incident response either through remote or on-site response teams defined by strict SLAs.