As a global leader in private cloud, managing 520+ exabytes of data across 13 million servers, and trusted by over half of the Fortune 500, Synology delivers reliable, secure, and flexible solutions for businesses to protect and optimize their data. Synology protects over 25 million workloads worldwide, ensuring business continuity and data resilience across diverse industries.

In the MEA region, the growing wave of ransomware attacks—such as the 2023 incident targeting key financial institutions in the Gulf—has accelerated demand for robust data protection. The regional backup and recovery market is projected to grow over 10% annually through 2027, reflecting the urgent need for stronger cyber resilience.

Recognizing the growing cybersecurity threats and data management complexities, Synology introduces the ActiveProtect Appliance, a next-gen backup and recovery solution. This new lineup enhances backup speeds, ransomware resilience, and usability, ensuring robust cyber resilience for modern enterprises.

Key Highlights of the ActiveProtect Appliances:

• Enhanced Ransomware Protection: Advanced security protocols and secure your data with immutability and isolate your data with air-gapped backups to ensure robust data integrity and access control.
• Unified Management Interface: Single user interface mechanism enables effortless monitoring and control with scalable cluster architecture simplifies management for 150,000 devices and optimizes data visibility.
• Simplified Enterprise-Grade Protection at a Lower Cost: Compared to traditional backup solutions, the implementation cost of this solution averages only 20%. With its software-hardware integrated design, installation, maintenance, and support require significantly less time, making enterprise-grade data protection more accessible to businesses of all sizes.

“Data is the backbone of every modern enterprise, and in today’s evolving digital landscape, building a cyber-resilient infrastructure is more critical than ever,” said Michael Chang, Synology’s APAC Sales Head. “With global cyber threats increasing by 38% in 2023 and the cost of data breaches averaging $4.45 million, businesses need a scalable, secure, and intuitive data protection solution. ActiveProtect is designed to address these challenges in the MEA region, empowering enterprises to safeguard their most valuable assets with greater efficiency and confidence.”

Synology ActiveProtect Appliance has a diverse range of restoration capabilities for business continuity. From regular recovery to disaster scenarios, the solution enables enterprises to quickly and efficiently restore operations, safeguarding critical data and minimizing downtime.

Unlike traditional backup software, which often requires complex integration with multiple hardware devices and licenses—resulting in high software costs per workload license mechanism and complicated pricing based on uncertain storage capacity—Synology offers a streamlined, cost-effective approach. With pricing based on nodes and free licensing for up to three servers, businesses can better estimate costs while ensuring robust data protection.

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The integration of Lucidya’s customer engagement and data analytics capabilities into Infobip’s platform will allow businesses to leverage AI-driven social listening insights for personalized, multi-channel engagement. This partnership aims to enhance customer support, marketing effectiveness, and overall customer experience.

Zeid Shubailat, Director at Infobip, said:“This strategic partnership with Lucidya allows us to enhance our multi-channel communication capabilities by integrating their powerful social listening and AI-driven customer insights from social media channels. Jointly, we empower businesses to engage with their customers with more personalized, data-driven experiences, creating stronger connections and driving better outcomes across the customer journey to meet a wide range of customer needs.”

Some of the benefits of this strategic partnership include:

• Advanced AI-driven solutions for detailed customer intelligence and analysis
• Seamless integration of communication products and services for enhanced customer interactions
• Personalized engagement through innovative messaging channels

Ziyad Bin Sulaiman, Business Development Director at Lucidya, said: “Our partnership with Infobip represents a significant step forward in our mission to provide businesses with the tools they need to foster meaningful and personalized customer experiences. By leveraging Infobip’s cutting-edge communication technology, we’re confident that our clients will see a significant improvement in customer satisfaction and loyalty.”

This collaboration marks a significant step forward in providing businesses with the tools they need to foster meaningful and personalized customer experiences in the Middle East region.

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Applications now Open
The competition targets startups led by women and based in the Middle East.

Enterprises must operate within the tourism sector and related industries, offering sustainable solutions for people, the planet, and prosperity. They must also be an entrepreneurial project at an early stage, idea stage, or Series A stage of their journey. Applications are open for the following three categories:

• People and Skills: This category calls for startups with environmental and sustainable approaches in education tech, social connectivity, wellness or health, and cross-cutting benefits from tourism.
• Green Travel Solutions: For startups that use environmentally friendly and sustainable approaches in green tech, green infrastructure, travel and logistics, urban development or rural development, with cross-cutting benefits with tourism.
• Market Innovators: For startups working with emergent technologies applied to tourism.

UN Tourism has welcomed key global and regional partners and ecosystem collaborators to support the winning startups. Almosafer, Plug and Play, AIM, The Bench, Impulse4Women, and Bilakatu will provide visibility, personalized mentorship, consultancy, and access to potential investment to the best entrepreneurial solutions. This year’s applications will be processed through Plug and Play’s open innovation platform, the largest in the world, and the finalists will also be invited to join the global UN Tourism Innovation Network.

The launch was announced at the AIM Congress, a leading investment platform, in Abu Dhabi, UAE, during a special UN Tourism Investment Forum session on “Investing in Innovation and Enabling Women Entrepreneurs”.

The second edition follows on from the success of the inaugural initiative, with over 140 startups and SMEs applying from 11 countries. The four winners, Fosha (Egypt), Sparkle Haze (UAE), Plastus Biotech (Saudi Arabia), Xenios Academy (UAE) were announced last year during the celebrations for World Tourism Day on 27 September in Riyadh.

UN Tourism and Women Empowerment
UN Tourism is committed to advancing the positive impact of tourism on women’s lives, thereby contributing to achieving the Sustainable Development Goal 5 – Gender Equality. The organization has been actively supporting women entrepreneurs, working to propel the tourism sector forward and to foster inclusivity.

UN Tourism Executive Director Natalia Bayona says: “It is crucial to empower female entrepreneurs in the Middle East with innovative business proposals that have a component of positive social impact and respect for the environment to support the sustainable development of the growing tourism sector in the region.”

UN Tourism and Innovation
Since 2018, UN Tourism has launched more than 25 startup competitions and innovation challenges, covering over 150 countries around the world. With over 20,000 participants and more than 350 top startups mapped with USD 2+ billion in funding, UN Tourism continues its efforts to support digitalization and innovation to advance the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Tourism is a tool for positive transformation and inclusive economic development.

More Information: https://www.unwto.org/women-in-tech-startup-competition-middle-east-2nd-edition-2024

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Watching almost $3 trillion in web3-related asset value shrink by more than 70% is unnerving, to say the least. But the rise and fall of crypto isn’t really the issue. What counts are the core underlying technologies that have made web3 possible, a set of innovations that will have far-reaching implications for many parts of the global economy, private equity included.

The emerging web3 ecosystem now boasts thousands of companies funded by approximately $94 billion in start-up capital from venture funds, hedge funds, private equity, and other investors. Major companies across industries—JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Google, and Disney among them—have begun to think about how web3 will influence their businesses and what it could unlock in terms of managing transactions and engaging with customers. Crypto and nonfungible tokens (NFTs) have led wealthy young consumers to some of web3’s foundational concepts, like digital wallets that can be used across platforms. Forward-thinking private equity firms are also focused on the ways in which blockchains, tokens, smart contracts, and related web3 technologies will affect how they invest and operate.

We already see that web3 is becoming increasingly relevant for private equity in the sense that it continues to attract sophisticated investors, continues to act as a disruptive threat (or opportunity) and as a tool for new fund strategies.

The evolution of web3
Despite all the Sturm und Drang around crypto, there’s no denying it has been an important proof of concept for how web3 technologies work together. Web3’s promise is an improved version of the Internet, one that is more interoperable than today’s siloed web.

Web1, which launched in the 1990s, was read-only, meaning content was pushed at users and nothing flowed the other way. Web2 ushered in social media and the ability to post your own content. Web3 is evolving as a new kind of Internet, with open protocols and standards that allow for new avenues of value transfer, data sharing, and application development across platforms.

The foundational building blocks are blockchains, smart contracts, and tokens. Blockchains are open, decentralized databases and computing platforms that create security through a consensus mechanism. With the development of Ethereum starting in 2014, blockchains allowed users to securely execute lines of code—known as smart contracts—”on chain.”

Tokens, meanwhile, are digital representations of data or assets registered on the blockchain ledger. They can be imbued with clearly defined terms of use (such as trading or governance restrictions) and can carry with them reams of data (escrow information for a real estate asset, say, or gaming assets that can be moved from platform to platform).

From these building blocks come many core web3 concepts and tools. They include dApps (decentralized applications built on blockchain networks), DeFi (decentralized finance networks enabled by smart contracts), DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations), digital wallets enabling persistent digital identity, and open metaverses.

Identifying disruption threat (and opportunity) across the portfolio
While funds that focus on more mature companies and industries may not want to play in the web3 arena, they’d be ill advised to ignore it. Over the next decade, the burgeoning set of web3 innovations could affect a broad sweep of industries and companies, some of which aren’t necessarily obvious today.

Funds need to understand what these changes might mean for more traditional portfolio companies—both in terms of disruption risk and opportunities to go on offense. Those insights come from scanning the current portfolio for potential web3 exposure and probing these issues in due diligence.

The most effective scans map a portfolio sector by sector, looking at the pace of potential disruption, regulatory changes, and other factors that might accelerate or decelerate change. That leads to a clearer picture of how and when web3 is likely to reshape the industry and how much opportunity there might be to capitalize on those shifts.

A web3 lens on fund management
Even as they consider how web3 is affecting companies in their portfolios, a growing number of private equity firms are moving decisively to explore how web3 might change the way they think about strategy and operations. The ability to tokenize real assets via blockchains and smart contracts could lead to important innovations and features for alternative asset products.

Notably, tokenization could allow fund managers to build in tailored secondary liquidity mechanisms or make it easier to use fund investments as collateral and that offers a range of potential benefits.

On the operations side, tokens could lower administration costs by automating manual processes and enabling structured secondary trading mechanisms, custody, margin lending, reporting, and other features that could also be tailored to different types of fund products.

Smart contracts and distributed ledgers promise to enhance efficiency and transparency by creating an immutable record of historical token ownership, lowering the cost and complexity of reporting and regulatory compliance. Nearer at hand  are solutions based on blockchains and smart contracts that can transform back-office operations. 

Whether you’re an investor funding the next generation of IT infrastructure, a fund manager performing due diligence on traditional companies exposed to web3 changes, or a PE strategist evaluating new types of funds and distribution channels, web3 is very likely to emerge as a critical theme over the next 10 years. It may not be time yet to dive in headfirst. But, for many funds, it is time to begin building depth in web3 and evaluating how to turn this technological shift into an advantage.

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shows the Middle East recording 283 deals in the first three quarters of 2022  – an increase of 16% from the same period last year –  with a total value of $23.8 billion.

The report also forecasts that environmental considerations will motivate an increasing number of deals, despite unfavorable macroeconomic conditions, with ‘green’ M&A deals increasing from 5% in 2020 to 10.3% in 2021 suggesting that more dealmakers are recognizing the value-creating potential of these transactions.

“Green deals are very hot in the region. Soaring sustainability transactions in the Middle East are a clear outcome of established national transformation programs seeking out diverse economic outputs for countries on their path to net zero,” said Ihab Khalil, Managing Director, and Senior Partner, BCG. “As the region continues grounding itself as a hub where collaboration and diversification can bear fruit, so will green mergers and acquisitions.”

BCG’s analysis revealed a clear upward trend in ‘green’-related deals over the past decade, with the strongest acceleration occurring in 2021 when Middle East deal volumes nearly doubled to 10.3% following two softer years for broader M&A activity and green transactions.

Green M&A has been growing particularly quickly in industries that are at the forefront of the energy transition and in emerging markets, with the Middle East showing the highest level of green activity globally. Over the past ten years, the energy and utilities industry had the highest share of green M&A and the largest increase, showing a 98% increase in deals from 2020-2021, contributing to 10% of M&A deals in the Middle East in 2021. Asia-Pacific (especially China) was the second-most active region, with a green deal share of approximately 8% in 2021.

“Though the Middle East is seeking out net zero solutions to power its economy, it is not letting go of the stream of energy and power,” said Ronald Maalouf, Managing Director, and Partner, BCG. “On the contrary, increasing ventures in hydrogen will surely position the region not only as a reliable sustainable center of energy supply but as a leader in that segment capable of powering an even greater number of mergers and acquisitions across the board. With COP28 scheduled in the United Arab Emirates, we expect more attention to be drawn to the region’s green portfolio to spearhead global sustainable development goals to success.”

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Cuemath’s growth underscores the high demand for learning maths among students in the K-12 segment. The classes are delivered through personalized 1:1 online live sessions that are conducted by handpicked maths teachers to ensure desirable outcomes for the learners.

Vivek Sunder, CEO, Cuemath said: “As Cuemath eyes global expansion in the coming years, the MENA region has emerged as one of the strategic business markets outside of India. Our first regional team in Abu Dhabi will serve the wider region and our priority will be to understand the maths needs of parents and students in geography and design-optimized maths curricula to cater to their requirements. Alongside the UAE government’s increased emphasis on strengthening the education ecosystem, embracing innovation and the ability to support the digitization of education, Cuemath with its high-quality maths pedagogy can suitably contribute to maths learning for students at the school level.

In a move to further solidify its presence in the region, Cuemath is participating at GESS 2022, to be held between 15th to 17th November at World Trade Centre, Dubai. Cuemath’s booth, #K45, at the event will showcase its platform, offer a walkthrough of the company’s vision to nurture ‘1 billion maths minds’, and facilitate face-to-face conversations with curriculum designers and academic counselors.

Commenting on the participation at GESS 2022, Divi Ramola, Head of APAC and EMEA, Cuemath, said, “We are proud to demonstrate our commitment to the MENA region by investing in a growing team and office to foster relationships with students, teachers, academia, and decision makers. At this stage of our growth, we believe that participation at a prestigious event like GESS 2022 will provide us with a great opportunity to meet and engage with the stakeholders from the education ecosystem and explore business synergies.”

In June 2022, the company announced raising USD 57 million in a fresh round of fundraising, led by Alpha Wave, at a valuation of USD 407 million. In the last two years, Cuemath has expanded to over 80 countries

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During the visit, Phillips will meet with business leaders from various sectors including innovation and technology, financial services and family offices, fintech, business and professional services, tourism and hospitality, and transport, infrastructure and advanced manufacturing. He will also update the business leaders about the Hong Kong’s latest business environment and opportunities, highlighting the city’s strategic role in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA).

Phillips said, “Hong Kong is an ideal location for overseas and Mainland companies, as well as entrepreneurs from around the world, as a base to set up or expand their business in Hong Kong, the GBA, China, and Asia more widely. The facts speak for themselves: in two surveys conducted last year, we saw a record number of businesses from overseas and the Mainland come to Hong Kong, as well as the largest number of startups in Hong Kong.”

He added, “Hong Kong offers to companies a wide range of routes to growth opportunities. I look forward to sharing with representatives of companies and entrepreneurs the up-to-date and real situation in Hong Kong, and particularly how they can use Hong Kong to seize opportunities, including those arising from the GBA.”

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The GrowthX Accelerator and Highway to 100 Unicorns are part of a broader strategic partnership between Microsoft and the Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO) to accelerate opportunities for startups across the region. The GrowthX Accelerator, announced in January 2021 and officially launched in May, brings together corporates with challenges and startups that can build field-ready solutions. It empowers B2B tech startups with the commercial and technical resources and support they need to accelerate their growth.

H.E. Mohamed Ali Al Shorafa, Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development, said, “Startups are the lifeblood of Abu Dhabi’s innovation ecosystem, bringing ingenuity, fresh ideas and ambition to drive progress across all sectors. The Abu Dhabi government is committed to supporting entrepreneurs and businesses through scale up programmes such as GrowthX Accelerator and Highway to 100 Unicorns. The progression of these initiatives to their next phases signifies the success they have achieved in helping startups. We will continue on this journey to ensure innovators have access to all the tools and resources they need to make impactful change in Abu Dhabi.”

The UAE has ranked consistently high on global indexes that benchmark business excellence. Microsoft for Startups GrowthX Accelerator is designed to consolidate the progress the country has made by leveraging the benefits its government offers technology companies. Through intense technical and commercial acceleration, the programme engenders connections and brings innovators together to learn, grow, become investor-ready and better engage corporates in the region.

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The victimized websites belong to media outlets in the UK, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia, as well as to Hezbollah; to government institutions in Iran (Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Syria (including the Ministry of Electricity), and Yemen (including the Ministries of Interior and Finance); to internet service providers in Yemen and Syria; and to aerospace/military technology companies in Italy and South Africa. The attackers also created a website mimicking a medical trade fair in Germany.

A watering hole attack compromises websites that are likely to be visited by targets of interest, thus opening the door to the infestation of a website visitor’s machine. In this campaign, specific visitors of these websites were likely attacked via a browser exploit. However, ESET researchers were unable to get hold of either an exploit or the final payload. This shows that the threat actors have chosen to narrow the focus of their operations and don’t want to burn their zero-day exploits, demonstrating how highly targeted this campaign is. The compromised websites are only used as a jumping-off point to reach the final targets.

“Back in 2018, we developed a custom in-house system to uncover watering holes on high-profile websites. On July 11, 2020, our system notified us that the website of the Iranian embassy in Abu Dhabi had been tainted with malicious JavaScript code. Our curiosity was aroused by the high-profile nature of the targeted website, and in the following weeks we noticed that other websites with connections to the Middle East were also targeted,” says ESET researcher Matthieu Faou who uncovered the watering hole campaigns.

“The threat group went quiet until January 2021, when we observed a new wave of compromises. This second wave lasted until August 2021, when all websites were cleaned again as was the case in 2020 – likely by the perpetrators themselves,” he adds.

“The attackers also mimicked a website belonging to the World Forum for Medicine’s MEDICA Trade Fair held in Düsseldorf, Germany. The operators cloned the original website and added a small piece of JavaScript code. It is likely that the attackers were not able to compromise the legitimate website and had to set up a fake one in order to inject their malicious code,” says Faou.

During the 2020 campaign, the malware checked the operating system and web browser. As the selection process was based on computer software, the campaign was not targeting mobile devices. In the second wave, in order to be a bit stealthier, the attackers started to modify scripts that were already on the compromised websites.

“In a blogpost about Candiru by Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, the section called ‘A Saudi-Linked Cluster?’ mentions a spearphishing document that was uploaded to VirusTotal and multiple domains operated by the attackers. The domain names are variations of genuine URL shorteners and web analytics websites, which is the same technique used for the domains being seen in the watering hole attacks,” explains Faou, linking the attacks to Candiru.

Thus, there is a significant likelihood that the operators of the watering hole campaigns are customers of Candiru. The creators of the documents and the operators of the watering holes are also potentially the same. Candiru is a private Israeli spyware company that was recently added to the US Department of Commerce’s Entity List. This may prevent any US-based organization from doing business with Candiru without first obtaining a license from the Department of Commerce.

ESET stopped seeing activity from this operation at the end of July 2021, shortly after the release of blogposts by the Citizen Lab, Google, and Microsoft detailing the activities of Candiru. The operators appear to be taking a pause, probably in order to retool and make their campaign stealthier. ESET Research expects them back in the ensuing months.

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In a recent global study, 88% of TikTok users said that they discover new content that they enjoy while using the app, and about half of users said they discover new products through advertisements posted by a product or brand.

On TikTok, businesses of all sizes are empowered to grow their brands through creative content and storytelling. Since the launch of the TikTok for Business platform, brands around the world have made real connections with TikTok users by embracing the culture that makes the platform unique. Social commerce has become an increasingly important channel for merchants to expand their audience. Conveniently, TikTok provides simple, scalable solutions that enable businesses to authentically and impactfully engage with its community.

Through this partnership TikTok is making it easier for Shopify merchants to tap into the creativity of the TikTok community in the Middle East, be discovered, and optimize their marketing campaigns. Through this partnership TikTok is making it easier for Shopify merchants to tap into the creativity of the TikTok community in the Middle East and be discovered, as well as test, optimize and scale their marketing campaigns. In fact, Shopify merchants will now be able to benefit from the core functions of the TikTok For Business Ads Manager without leaving the Shopify dashboard. TikTok’s suite of ad products empowers businesses to unleash their creativity and tell their stories with spontaneity and authenticity, grow their audiences and ultimately generate higher results with less costs.

“We are very excited to announce this partnership with Shopify in the Middle East, giving merchants a unique platform to reach new audiences in an engaging and creative way like nowhere else. As we continue to develop our platform to bring businesses of all sizes innovative and fun ways to connect with new customers, as well as get the best out of their campaigns, we are confident this partnership with Shopify is a big step in this direction and the start of a promising future in the e-commerce arena”, said Shant Oknayan, General Manager, Global Business Solutions, Middle East Africa Turkey and Pakistan, TikTok.

“We’re thrilled to be the first partner to welcome TikTok to the world of commerce, particularly right now, as our merchants prepare for a busy online holiday shopping season,” said Satish Kanwar, Vice President of Product at Shopify. “TikTok is one of the world’s fastest growing entertainment platforms with over 100 million highly engaged users in the US alone. The TikTok channel means Shopify merchants—even those without a strong TikTok following of their own yet—can connect with these new audiences using content that feels authentic and genuine to the TikTok experience.”

Through the new TikTok channel, Shopify merchants can access core functions of the TikTok for Business Ads Manager without leaving the Shopify dashboard.

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