The Saudi Arabia Ministry of Education has chosen the alliance of Etihad Etisalat (Mobily) and IBM to boost information security throughout its organisation.

Managed and cloud security services are offered to the ministry through IBM's Security Operations Center, (SOC) hosted in Mobily's Tier IV certified data center. Using sophisticated predictive analytics technology, the services will help the ministry anticipate and mitigate threats and any possible breaches, providing higher efficiency and productivity to the ministry's operations, a statement said.

Mobily and IBM will utilise the Data Security Services to provide a comprehensive expert assessment of the current data protection capabilities at the ministry. This will help pinpoint where sensitive data resides within the infrastructure and how to protect it. Mobily and IBM will also work with the Ministry to assess its unique needs and data security requirements to develop a holistic data protection strategy aimed at minimising the impact to business exposure.

"The recent increasing rate of security threats from the adoption of new and existing technologies has raised awareness for security protection and management. Through the alliance with IBM, we want to ensure the highest level of security for the Ministry of Education and our customers in the Kingdom," said Dr Marwan Al-Ahmadi, chief business officer, Mobily.

The security services offered to the ministry through Mobily and IBM are designed to provide the highest level of around-the-clock protection and help proactively manage emerging threats. These include real-time analysis and an early warning system for potential threats, while building security correlation and analytics capabilities through QRadar solution at the ministry datacenters, while ensuring no access to the ministry data from outside the country, it said.

"Security threats and targeted attacks are on the increase in the region and globally. Therefore it is important for organizations to take a proactive approach to protect their infrastructure and information," said Mohamed Abdelhak, country general manager IBM Saudi Arabia. "The Mobily and IBM security solution for the Ministry of Education is an excellent example of how organizations can improve their IT security in ways that not only allow innovation but help accelerate it."

The SOC will leverage the IBM X-Force Protection System back end managed security services infrastructure to assist analysts with the aggregation, correlation, analysis and prioritization of security logs and events. With the help of this global infrastructure, IBM analyses more than 15 billion security events each day from devices located in more than 140 countries, said the statement. -TradeArabia News Service