As the Middle East races toward digitalisation, Netskope, a leader in Secure Access Service Edge, announced the expansion of its NewEdge network in the Middle East with four data centres across the UAE and Saudi Arabia. With this expansion, the network can better serve in-region and multinational enterprise customers.
Consolidating Netskope’s promise to secure data and organisations in the Middle East, the expansion of the NewEdge network complements the growing GCC data centre market – which is expected to reach a value of US$5.5 billion by 2028 from US$3.44 billion in 2022, spurred on by regional government initiatives such as ‘We The UAE 2031’ and Saudi Vision 2030.
Murhaf Alwan, Head of Information Technology at Netskope customer, Al Dawaa, said: “As a KSA-based organisation, it is pertinent that our data storage and processing occur within the Kingdom. We have been using Netskope’s other Gulf region infrastructure to date and benefitting from all the advantages of the technology, however now we can have local KSA-based infrastructure it will enable us to provide an even more optimised experience for our users and ensure we can remain compliant with local data protection laws.”
The addition of the NewEdge data centres will be especially helpful in promoting the adoption of a Zero Trust security model within Middle East organisations. It enables the delivery of real-time inline and out-of-band API-driven services like Cloud Firewall (FWaaS), Secure Web Gateway (SWG), Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB), Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) and Cloud and SaaS Security Posture Management (CSPM/SSPM).
“While the accelerated digitalisation in the region has enabled organisations to provide seamless customer or user experience, they are faced with the challenge of dealing with the ever-changing cyberthreat landscape,” said Jonathan Mepsted, Vice President, Middle East and Africa at Netskope. “Businesses in the region are keen to migrate to a Security Services Edge (or SSE) approach to security, which supports hybrid work models and cloud-based technology while ensuring the data is secured wherever it may go. However, the spanners in the works are the regulatory requirements in place across region, which place strict restrictions on data protection and residency commitments.
“This is why we have invested in robust infrastructure in the region, as part of our distributed and dedicated Service Edge. Because of its ability to inspect massive amounts of data locally, with no need for complex, latency-prone backhauling or reliance on unpredictable public transport, NewEdge has been greatly welcomed by our customers and is unlocking new opportunities for us to serve KSA organisations.”
NewEdge is one of the world’s largest and highest-performing security private cloud. It powers the real-time, inline security services of the Netskope SASE platform allowing security to be deployed at the Edge where and when it’s needed. Its architecture ensures there are no performance trade-offs when implementing the security features. The NewEdge network is extensively peered with the most commonly used web/content-delivery networks, cloud and SaaS providers to deliver fast, optimised access to the content, apps and data enterprises most care about.
