Hikvision Bring Smarter Security with Artificial Intelligence

Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co., Ltd. (Hikvision), the world’s leading provider of innovative security products and solutions, recently embarked on an AI Tour across 40 countries spanning Asia, Africa, Middle East, Oceania, and Latin America. In the tour’s stop in the Philippines, Hikvision showcased AI innovations covering AI Cloud architecture, AI technologies, AI products, and other vertical solutions.

In today’s digital age, Artificial intelligence (AI) has begun to revolutionize how we live, work and play. AI is offering businesses the prospect of increased productivity and innovation, while at the same time also enabling society to help solve some of its most persistent challenges -- like disease, natural disasters, and security.

Ray Wu, General Manager of Hikvision

“As AI becomes more common and more powerful, deep learning will soon become the foundational technology for the security industry. AI will strengthen critical security efforts in every sphere, with new machine learning techniques giving CCTV cameras the ability to spot troubling behavior without human supervision,” said Ray Wu, General Manager of Hikvision. 

Deep learning is the next level of AI development. It is beyond machine learning where supervised classification of features and patterns are set into algorithms. Rather, deep learning incorporates unsupervised or “self-learning” principles. “Hikvision is building deep learning into its own analytics algorithms. The result of multi-layer learning and extensive data collection is enhanced accuracy and improved analytics. And this applies to vehicle and human recognition,“ explained Mr. Wu.

Based in Hangzhou, China, Hikvision is a pioneer in intelligent video surveillance and has created diversified products and solutions that utilize AI to address today’s modern challenges. In Hikvision’s AI tour, the company introduced several product models equipped with deep learning algorithms:

• EXIR Flexible PanoVu Network Camera - This camera features 1/2.7" progressive scan CMOS sensors and four lenses with each lens supporting 1080p resolution at 30fps. A compression of up to H.265+ saves bandwidth and storage space. The EXIR is capable of 6 behavior analyses as well as 4 exception detections.
• PanoVu PT Series 2MP + 2MP Target Capture Camera - This camera is able to capture distant images as well as close-up images with the integration design of distant view camera and tracking PTZ camera. This series can be widely used in situations where wide monitoring range and high definition are required, such as the entrance or exit of an airport, park, or station. 
• 2MP 25× IR Network Speed Dome - The speed dome is a DarkfighterX series camera that adopts the patented dual-sensor design to process color and brightness independently, and outputs one full-color image. It is equipped with deep-learning-based target classification algorithms for auto-tracking and perimeter protection.
• Facial Recognition Server - Powered by deep learning technology, the server incorporates algorithms for identity confirmation and support for up to 1 million blacklisted targets. It is compatible with third-party cameras and meets varied scenario requirements, including shopping malls and public squares.
• LPR Camera - Powered by Hikvision’s deep learning AI algorithm, this camera can identify more than 6 types of Philippine license plate numbers, including both private and public utility vehicles, at 90% accuracy. Hikvision is dedicated to optimizing its LPR algorithm and expects to up its accuracy to 95% by 2019.

Hikvision has introduced a series of products that can accurately detect, recognize, and analyze human, vehicle, and object features and behavior, and can be widely used in indoor and outdoor scenarios. “With AI, CCTV cameras now have the digital brains to match their eyes, letting them analyze live video with no humans necessary. AI is a game-changer, and we’re seeing firsthand how that technology can be used to guard against theft and improve security,” said Evelyn Ativo, Product Group Head of Iontech Inc., one of the key players in the Information Technology distribution industry in the Philippines.

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Philippine Potential Economic Loss at $3.5 Billion Due to Cybersecurity threats - Microsoft

Microsoft commissioned a study to be conducted by Frost & Sullivan regarding “Understanding the Cybersecurity Threat Landscape in Asia Pacific: Securing the Modern Enterprise in a Digital World” that  aims to provide business and IT decision makers with insights on the Economic cost of Cybersecurity Breaches in the region and identify the gaps in organizations’ cybersecurity strategies. The study involved a survey of 1,300 business and IT decision makers ranging from mid-sized organizations (250 to 499 employees) to large-sized organizations (>than 500 employees).

Security experts discuss the economic impact of cybersecurity in the PH during Microsoft’s study launch. From L-R: Hans Bayaborda, Managing Director, Microsoft Philippines; Mary Jo Schrade, Assistant General Counsel, Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit, Microsoft Asia; Angel “Lito” S. Averia, Jr., President, Philippine Computer Emergency Response Team; Atty. Raul Cortez, Corporate, External, and Legal Affairs Lead, Microsoft Philippines.

The  Microsoft and Frost & Sullivan study revealed that the potential economic loss in the Philippines due to cybersecurity incidents can hit a staggering US$3.5 billion which is 1.1 percent of the Philippines’ total GDP of US$305 billion[1]. In addition, more than half of the organizations surveyed in the Philippines have either experienced a cybersecurity incident (18%) or are not sure if they had one as they have not performed proper forensics or data breach assessment (34%).

“As companies embrace the opportunities presented by cloud and mobile computing to connect with customers and optimize operations, they take on new risks,” said Hans Bayaborda, Managing Director, Microsoft Philippines. “With traditional IT boundaries disappearing the adversaries now have many new targets to attack. Companies face the risk of significant financial loss, damage to customer satisfaction and market reputation — as has been made all too clear by recent high-profile breaches.”

The True Cost of Cybersecurity Incidents – Economic, Opportunity and Job Losses

The study also focuses more on economics and employment.

The study finds that a large-sized organization in the Philippines can possibly incur an economic loss of US$7.5 million, more than 200 times higher than the average economic loss for a mid-sized organization (US$35,000); and Cybersecurity attacks have resulted in job losses across different functions in seven in ten (72%) organizations that have experienced an incident over the last 12 months.

To measure the cost of cybercrime, Frost & Sullivan has created an Economic Loss Model based on macro-economic data and insights shared by the survey respondents. This model factors in three kinds of losses which could be incurred due to a cybersecurity breach -  Direct, Indirect and Induced.

Direct are Financial losses associated with a cybersecurity incident which includes loss of productivity, fines, remediation cost, etc;

Indirect is the opportunity cost to the organization such as customer churn due to reputation loss; and

Induced is the impact of cyber breach to the broader ecosystem and economy, such as the decrease in consumer and enterprise spending.

“Although the direct losses from cybersecurity breaches are most visible, they are but just the tip of the iceberg,” said Edison Yu, Vice President and Asia Pacific Head of Enterprise for Frost & Sullivan. “There are many other hidden losses that we have to consider from both the indirect and induced perspectives, and the economic loss for organizations suffering from cybersecurity attacks can be often underestimated.”

In addition to financial losses, cybersecurity incidents are also undermining the Philippines organizations’ ability to capture future opportunities in today’s digital economy, with more than half (57%) respondents stating that their enterprise has put off digital transformation efforts due to the fear of cyber-risks.

Key Cyberthreats and Gaps in the Philippines Organizations’ Cybersecurity Strategies

Besides external threats, the research also revealed key gaps in organizations’ cybersecurity approach to protect their digital estate:

Although high-profile cyberattacks, such as ransomware, have been garnering a lot of attention from enterprises, the study found that for organizations in the Philippines that have encountered cybersecurity incidents, data exfiltration and data corruption are the biggest concern as they have the highest impact with the slowest recovery time.

Security an afterthought: Only 44% of organizations consider cybersecurity before the start of a digital transformation project. Majority of respondents (56%) either think about cybersecurity only after they start on the project or do not consider it at all. This limits their ability to conceptualize and deliver a “secure-by-design” project, potentially leading to insecure products going out into the market;

 Creating a Complex Environment: Negating the popular belief that deploying a large portfolio of cybersecurity solutions will render stronger protection, the survey revealed that 17% of respondents with more than 50 cybersecurity solutions could recover from cyberattacks within an hour. In contrast, more than twice as many respondents (38%) with fewer than 10 cybersecurity solutions responded that they can recover from cyberattacks within an hour; and

Lacking cybersecurity strategy: While more and more organizations are considering digital transformation to gain competitive advantage, the study has shown that 46% of respondents see cybersecurity strategy only as a means to safeguard the organization against cyberattacks rather than a strategic business enabler. A mere 25% of organizations see cybersecurity strategy as a digital transformation enabler.

“The ever-changing threat environment is challenging, but there are ways to be more effective using the right blend of modern technology, strategy, and expertise,” added Hans. “Microsoft is empowering businesses in the Philippines to take advantage of digital transformation by enabling them to embrace the technology that’s available to them, securely through its secure platform of products and services, combined with unique intelligence and broad industry partnerships.”

Microsoft tags Artifical Intelligence (AI) as the Next Frontier in Cybersecurity Defense

In a digital world where cyberthreats are constantly evolving and attack surface is rapidly expanding, AI is becoming a potent opponent against cyberattacks as it can detect and act on threat vectors based on data insights. The study reveals that more than almost four in five (79%) organizations in the Philippines have either adopted or are looking to adopt an AI approach towards boosting cybersecurity.

AI’s ability to rapidly analyze and respond to unprecedented quantities of data is becoming indispensable in a world where cyberattacks’ frequency, scale and sophistication continue to increase.

An AI-driven cybersecurity architecture will be more intelligent and be equipped with predictive abilities to allow organizations to fix or strengthen their security posture before problems emerge. It will also grant companies with the capabilities to accomplish tasks, such as identifying cyberattacks, removal of persistent threats and fixing bugs, faster than any human could, making it an increasingly vital element of any organizations’ cybersecurity strategy.

Recommendations for the Modern Enterprise in a Digital World

AI is but one of the many aspects that organizations need to incorporate or adhere to in order to maintain a robust cybersecurity posture. For a cybersecurity practice to be successful, organizations need to consider People, Process and Technology, and how each of these contributes to the overall security posture of the organization.

To help organizations better withstand and respond to cyberattacks and malware infections, Experts suggest Five Best Practices in improving their defense against cybersecurity threats:

Position cybersecurity as a digital transformation enabler: Disconnect between cybersecurity practices and digital transformation effort creates a lot of frustration for the employees. Cybersecurity is a requirement for digital transformation to guide and keep the company safe through its journey. Conversely, digital transformation presents an opportunity for cybersecurity practices to abandon aging practices to embrace new methods of addressing today’s risks;

Continue to invest in strengthening your security fundamentals: Over 90% of cyber incidents can be averted by maintaining the most basic best practices.  Maintaining strong passwords, conditional use of multi-factor authentication against suspicious authentications, keeping device operating systems, software and anti-malware protection up-to-date and genuine can rapidly raise the bar against cyberattacks. This should include not just tool-sets but also training and policies to support a stronger fundamental;

Maximize skills and tools by leveraging integrated best-of-suite tools. The best tools are useless in the hands of the amateur. Reduce the number of tools and the complexity of your security operations to allow your operators to hone their proficiency with the available tools. Prioritizing best-of-suite tools is a great way to maximize your risk coverage without the risk of introducing too many tools and complexity to the environment. This is especially true if tools within the suite are well-integrated to take advantage of their counterparts;

Assessment, review and continuous compliance: The organization should be in a continuous state of compliance. Assessments and reviews should be conducted regularly to test for potential gaps that may occur as the organization is rapidly transforming and address these gaps. The board should keep tab on not just compliance to industry regulations but also how the organization is progressing against security best practices; and

Leverage AI and automation to increase capabilities and capacity: With security capabilities in short supply, organizations need to look to automation and AI to improve the capabilities and capacity of their security operations. Current advancements in AI has shown a lot of promise, not just in raising detections that would otherwise be missed but also in reasoning over how the various data signals should be interpreted with recommended actions. Such systems have seen great success in cloud implementations where huge volumes of data can be processed rapidly. Ultimately, leveraging automation and AI can free up cybersecurity talents to focus on higher-level activities.

To better understand the cyberthreats happening globally and in Asia Pacific, please download the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report Volume 23 here > https://info.microsoft.com/ww-landing-Security-Intelligence-Report-Vol-23-Landing-Page-eBook.html

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Fortinet Introduces FortiGate 6000F series, Industry’s Fastest 100 Gbps+ Next-Generation Firewall Appliance.

Taguig City, February 13, 2018. Fortinet® (NASDAQ: FTNT), the global leader in broad, integrated and automated cybersecurity solutions, today introduced its FortiGate 6000F Series of Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFW).

The first in the series, the FortiGate 6000F incorporates a new hardware processing architecture that delivers the validated performance of a Fortinet chassis in a compact appliance form-factor to deliver advanced security for exponentially increasing.

The FortiGate 6000F series NGFWs are ideally suited for enterprise edge networks that prioritize threat protection and encryption inspection throughput in a form-factor that enables high density, energy efficiency, and deployment simplicity.

The FortiGate 6000F is built around Fortinet’s next-generation hardware architecture that combines discrete, multi-cpu processing cards that enable chassis-class performance, resilience, and capacity.

Delivers unparalleled processing power and speed to meet the security needs of enterprise edge traffic with industry-leading encrypted traffic inspection, threat protection and NGFW performance.

The Next-Generation of FortiGate 
Fortinet’s new F-series includes the FortiGate 6300F and FortiGate 6500F, which are high-performance, compact and easy to manage NGFW appliances that are integrated within the Fortinet Security Fabric.

Advanced Security Capabilities and Performance: The 6000F series are the industry’s fastest NGFW appliances, delivering advanced threat protection and SSL inspection performance to handle massive volumes of traffic at the network edge.

High Speed and Flexible Interfaces: High density zSFP+ and QSFP28 interfaces support 10G, 40G, 100Gbps and new 25G data rates to provide high speed connectivity and increased flexibility as enterprises migrate to higher density designs.

Security Fabric Integration: FortiGate firewalls serve as the foundation of the Fortinet Security Fabric and run FortiOS, the world’s most deployed network security operating system. The Fortinet Security Fabric provides broad, integrated, and automated security that is required to protect the vast digital attack surface created by digital transformation.

Next-Generation Hardware Architecture
An industry first for a security appliance, Fortinet’s next-generation hardware architecture leverages compact internal processing cards that are miniaturized versions of the blades typically used in cutting-edge modular security chassis. Each processing card combines multiple 12-core CPUs, Security Processing Units (SPUs), and Content (CP9) and Network Processors (NP6) into a discrete unit. The FortiGate 6000F series can support up to ten discrete processing cards in a 3U appliance.

The innovative design enables traditionally chassis-only benefits like high resilience and session scale while also delivering advanced security capabilities at breakthrough speeds never before seen in a compact appliance form-factor. The architecture provides additional benefits like hardware load balancing using new custom Distribution Processors (DP3) that intelligently assign tasks between the discrete processing cards.

Increase in Multi-Cloud Networks and Encrypted Traffic Requires Security Speed & Scale
Multi-cloud environments and the increasing use of IoT and mobile devices to access mission-critical applications are drastically increasing the volume of encrypted data on enterprise edge networks. The adoption of these technologies is also increasing bandwidth, throughput, and session capacity requirements that are driving enterprises to modernize their edge networks.

Additionally, the expanded digital attack surface and complex threat landscape is escalating the need for advanced security protections that can be applied with speed and scale across all connected devices. Security appliances need to be able to deliver the high performance required to protect encrypted traffic at the enterprise edge with a compact, modern interface that can seamlessly grow capacity in a smaller, efficient physical footprint.

“Enterprise adoption of the cloud is massively increasing the volume of traffic that needs to be inspected at the enterprise edge. Add to this the ever-increasing percentage of encrypted traffic and today’s NGFW’s need to perform at levels unheard of five years ago. The FortiGate 6000F high-end firewall series is built upon a new architecture that delivers the industry’s highest threat protection and encryption inspection performance to ensure enterprises can scale their defenses and meet the evolving needs of their business.”, John Maddison, senior vice president of products and solutions, Fortinet.

“Our use of the cloud continues to expand to meet the evolving business needs of our users and customers. This growth has increased the amount of traffic crossing our networks and created an imperative to continue to maintain security standards across our entire infrastructure without impacting business productivity. Our extended IT infrastructure is absolutely critical to everything we do, so it’s invaluable to have the security performance and seamless protection that Fortinet provides across our physical and cloud-based domains.” - Stuart Berman, global security architect at Steelcase

“Cloud computing is becoming increasingly popular, but gaps in protection can occur if security solutions can’t keep pace with agile public, private, and hybrid cloud environments.  The growth of IoT and Mobility also puts large demands on performance and security architectures as data traverses these end points.  ePlus recognizes these advances and has invested significantly in providing our customers with comprehensive security solutions to meet these growing demands.  We are proud to partner with Fortinet and leverage their robust platform to both scale and secure these transformative environments.” - Pascal Perot, VP strategic alliances, security at ePlus

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Microsoft Philippines launches Kaizala Secure Mobile Messaging App

Microsoft Philippines locally launch Secure Mobile Messaging App for work communication and collaboration.

Microsoft Kaizala Launch

For businesses, there has been challenges in managing staff in the field as well as gather feedback and data from them. Microsoft offers a convenient, secure and mobile tool - Microsoft Kaizala to address these challenges for organizations and businesses.

Microsoft Kaizala Offers

Kaizala makes it easier to connect large groups of people inside as well as outside your organization whether they may be your employees, suppliers or your customers. Enables you to organize work into teams and communicate and collaborate remotely through mobile.

Microsoft Kaizala Features

Microsoft Kaizala Features

Businesses nowadays are now digital and more concern with security. Therefore Microsoft made Kaizala adhere to industry standards for security and compliance. Azure Active Directory services authentication ensures secure access to Kaizala Management Portal, where IT administrators control membership of groups as well as manage users - add, remove and their access to data.

IT Management Kaizala

With Kaizala, Managers will be able to easily reach their remote staff or front-line workers and may as well be use to reach people outside their organization using a simplified yet secured interface. With simple interface, people even with less technical know-how will be able to easily grasp and operate the app.

“Most businesses work with several partners, distributors, and stakeholders who are not on the company’s email address list, so communication can be slow and unsecure. With Microsoft Kaizala, they can better connect and coordinate with the entire team. As internet usage increases, we believe it will be easier for organizations to communicate with all their stakeholders, wherever they are in the Philippines,” said Bertrand Launay, Microsoft Philippines Managing Director.

Reporting and Analytics Kaizala

Microsoft Kaizala gives Organization broadcasting, data collection tools and real-time analytics. Send information such as announcement or documents as well as photos and videos that may include location. Conduct surveys and polls and get results real-time. Other than this, companies can also assign tasks and jobs and track completion. This may be also be applied for bills payable and tracking expenses. The app really makes things simpler and seamless increasing coordination and productivity with real-time results. You can also link it with your Office 365. Even with only 3G, the App is usable as it was designed to have low data requirements.

For more elaborate administration controls, there is Kaizala Pro that has additional features that includes user and group management, system integration, automation with Microsoft Kaizala APIs, advance reporting and analytics, custom actions, creation of public groups, organizational profile and directory for enterprise.

“For management, the reviewing process becomes a lot easier online. What used to take 7-10 days to compile is now happening on a real-time basis. They are able to get information in real-time, and can also give feedback to the team in the field an in turn, can increase productivity or allow them to give better solutions to their customers,” added Launay.

Microsoft Kaizala is available for iOS and Android.

Android

iOS

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