Solutions with a holistic approach

Lloyd Rodrigues, Regional Head – Middle East and Africa, Nexus speaks to CXO DX on the company’s solutions focus

What are the major solutions that you showcased at GISEC?
Nexus (www.nexusgroup.com) is trying to promote a platform-based approach, instead of a point-based solutions and that was our focus at GISEC. In the Middle East region, most of the organisations have primarily adopted a point-based approach in cybersecurity. Companies are increasing adopting different point solutions for firewalls, VPNs, encryption, PKI etc. It becomes strenuous for companies to integrate all these solutions into a single dashboard and have an overview of all the solutions. This is where Nexus comes in.

The Nexus Smart ID platform is a security alternative to point-based solutions. This is a single solution for authentication, authorization, access, encryption, digital signing and more. This is a one stop shop for customers who have plans for adopting an overall based security when it comes to digital access, digital ID, physical access and physical ID.

What are the challenges security challenges currently faced by the organizations in the Middle East and how do you help tackle them?
Organizations adopt point security solutions like VPN, 2FA, Identity Management and Access Management, Digital Signing, Encryption from different vendors. As mentioned earlier, it becomes a challenge to maintain and integrate different solutions. It also leads to a cost escalation as an annual maintenance fee and subscription charges are to be paid for different products.

The components of the Nexus Smart ID Solution issue trustworthy identities, generate credentials, and provide the corresponding lifecycle management from a single Platform. Identities can be persons as well as technical components, like mobile devices, VoIP phones, servers, network devices, IoT devices, services, APIs or software components. The Certificate Management components provide a fully-fledged high-security CA platform and OCSP Responder with the Common Criteria evaluated core Certificate Manager at the heart to generate and manage asymmetric keys and certificates, as well as to provide the related security services. The SmartID solution offers a built in VPN, multi factor authentication suite and an Identity Federation engine to integrate with 3^rd party applications using SAML and OpenID Connect. Having a single platform helps reduces administrative overhead and cost.

Currently, we are witnessing an increased adoption of IoT. How does Nexus aid in the secure adoption of IoT infrastructure?
For critical infrastructure such as energy IoT applications, the potential consequences of a security breach can be absolutely devastating. A sabotaged power supply can have broad and serious consequences and endanger the lives of people. Workplace customers can automate enterprise certificate provisioning for IT systems and devices: personal computers, mobile devices, servers, web applications, services, network devices, network printers, conference systems etc. It supports enterprise IT to manage and automate the entire life cycle of their internal and external PKI-based certificates.

Nexus’ solutions can also be used for securing the communication and identities of connected vehicles include PKI-based identities for vehicle-to-everything (V2X), vehicle-to-grid (V2G) and vehicle ID use cases.

How are you driving awareness in the Middle East region?
In the Middle East region, we are trying to educate customers for evaluating products which are certified and compliant with global certifications. We are also educating customers on the importance of working with platinum partners and trusted partners. It is also important to go with respected partners who have experience and skill sets. Customers should be aware of choosing security solutions which are highly rated by 3rd party rating agencies and look into the security skill set of the local partners in the region.