Integrated Telecom Company (ITC), the leading Saudi-based telecom, has grown tremendously over the past few years to become one of the region’s fastest-growing telecom companies. Their services have ranged across various sections such as broadband, cloud computing, security services, and managed services, among many others.
Telecom Review sat down with Radwan Al Mufleh, Chief Commercial Officer at ITC, to discuss their experience throughout the pandemic and how they managed to cope with the repercussions brought about by COVID-19.
With the surge of data traffic due to COVID-19, how does ITC’s managed security services help overcome the ensuing challenges and guarantee the resilience required in the digital era?
Since its beginnings, ITC was built on the ideas of resilience and innovation, and these business drivers proved themselves many times through our 15 years of existence and specifically during 2020.
The way that ITC invested in its national and international connectivity networks, partners, employees, and market-leading products was the right strategy, which allowed ITC to dramatically increase its penetration in the Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) market during the Covid-19 period, expand its base of B2B customers and even launch multiple leading services.
More specifically, the well-integrated and end-to-end managed security portfolio of services launched initially in April 2019 saw its importance increase in conjunction with the increased volume of cyber-attacks on Saudi companies.
For example, we had a 50% increase in revenues for our Anti-DDoS protection service, a 100% increase in our SIEM, Vulnerability Management and Penetration Testing revenues, and a steady increase in our Virtual and Web Application Firewall services.
These services are a small part of our MSS portfolio and provide continuous, 24x7 outsourced protection to our customers, guaranteeing their resilience and business continuity and allowing them reduced operational costs and peace of mind to continue focusing on their core business, as we understand that Cybersecurity is not everybody’s core strength.
In a highly competitive market, what differentiates ITC’s managed security services?
Any respectable company knows that it is imperative to properly cover the three traditional dimensions to deliver any service: People, Process, and Technology. More specifically, to properly deliver Managed Security Services, you need to add a fourth dimension: Speed of Response, and this is where ITC’s Cybersecurity teams excel.
ITC relies on its proven market reputation in delivering stable and secure connectivity and B2B products and its present experienced resources to build for the future and continue separating itself from less capable smaller players in the Saudi market.
How is ITC guaranteeing the best security solutions for its customers, and how is it responding to recurring cyberattacks that have increased with quarantine and remote working?
Our MSS services portfolio consists of tightly integrated products that, combined, deliver end-to-end protection from the endpoint through the network, the computing infrastructure, systems, and security devices.
Our cutting-edge Security Operation Center (SOC) team enables us to offer 24x7 security monitoring through our SIEM, up-to-the-minute Threat Intelligence enrichment, full lifecycle Vulnerability management, incident response, endpoint detection, and response and email and web gateway security are specially geared to customers and employees working remotely, the favorite target of hackers in 2020 and beyond.
The combination of these end-to-end MSS products and our continuous enhancements and updates, all backed by strict SLA’s, is our best response to the recurring attacks threatening the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
What are the changes that ITC’s cybersecurity team has applied to its strategy and approach in the pandemic context? How do you see the future of the company?
As an immediate response in the height of the pandemic during the third and fourth quarters of this year, ITC moved to double-down on its internal cybersecurity protection for its own customers and networks and simultaneously launched an extensive campaign with its B2B customers to position all MSS services and show their value in reducing business risk and impact.
This new cybersecurity strategy is now more mature. It will continue for the next year as ITC does not see any reduction in attacks and risks, so it will continue investing in more MSS product lines, launching a flurry of new services in the first quarter of 2021to achieve even better product-market fit for a wider range of companies in all major sectors.