Building blocks of trust

With the ongoing evolution of multi-cloud deployments and emerging technologies, organisations need to be agile deal not just with regulations, but with an ever-changing threat landscape, says Hamid Qureshi, regional sales director, MEASA-Entrust

Given the current landscape, what do you see as the top threats faced by banking and financial sectors? What can they do to better protect themselves?

The threats facing the current landscape can be broken down into four primary threats, which are distinct, but interconnected.

The first is protecting data from both malicious attacks and from accidental mistakes by employees. A vital aspect of this approach is to redefine how you think about your security, moving away from thinking of creating a wall around your data and focusing on protecting the data itself.

The second challenge is that of regulation. While regulatory mandates drive a lot of the data protection activity, it is dangerous to just do this as a check box exercise. The focus should be on understanding what the regulation is trying to achieve and formulating an approach that meets not just the letter of the law, but the spirit of it as well.

The third challenge is the rapidly changing technological landscape. While cloud adoption is relatively mainstream and provides an opportunity to be more agile and scale better, but it is also an opportunity to lose data if mindsets don’t change. Financial institutions need to be developing strategies that set out how they plan to deal with blockchain and cryptocurrencies and establish a post-quantum encryption posture.

Last - but not the least – is the rise of the new entries into the financial world like neobanks. These institutions typically don’t have the legacy systems or physical overheads of their traditional counterparts, which enables them to be more agile and dynamic, but equally they sometimes don’t have the charter or compliance to offer a complete set of financial services. For these challenger banks it’s imperative that they can demonstrate the highest levels of security to build customer trust, while traditional banks need to update their processes and capabilities with features like instant card issuance and modern applications to retain customer loyalty.

How is Entrust helping its customers secure identities, payments and data?

Entrust core technology represents the building blocks of trust: managing IDs and credentials, authenticating users, ID proofing bound to credentials, physical access management, encrypting data and managing security policy. Now, more than ever, customers can turn to Entrust for solutions, for key use cases that enable digital transformation with security and identity – from certificate lifecycle management and identity and access management to digital signing workflows and seamless travel solutions.

How does Entrust help organisations deploy safe and secure vaccine credentials and passport programmes?

The digital enabling technologies already exist to ensure both powerful data security and minimal check-in disruption. Let’s take a closer look at a few of the encryption and authentication tools vaccine passport initiatives currently have at their disposal.

Digital signatures: Enabled by proven public key infrastructure (PKI) technology, these can be deployed within a person’s mobile device or a physical smart card to securely identify the individual and validate their documentation. Digital identity proofing: Mobilebased identity proofing tools empower ID solutions to integrate ID verification into a streamlined mobile experience. Multi-factor authentication: Confirms user authenticity with a range of different secondary authenticators – such as OATH tokens, mobile push, OTP, biometrics, and more. Adaptive risk-based authentication: Each time users request access; the access context is automatically assessed in real time by machine learning policy engines created to notice subtle irregularities in contextual attributes – such as biometrics and device reputation.

Hardware security modules: This tamper-resistant cryptographic hardware provides a strong root of trust to keep encryption keys secure.

With 2022 only a few months away, what is in for customers when it comes to safeguarding their businesses for the future?

As we start to find ways to navigate the ‘new normal’, many people are starting to return to their offices as new working routines are being outlined. With many organisations considering a more permanent approach their hybrid/distributed workforce, the coming months are the ideal time to examine the ‘bubblegum and duct tape’ that was needed by IT teams to keep their respective organisation’s functioning and take stock of how to more robustly and securely manage their IT workforce going forward.

Q:Can you tell us about Krispr, its specific business model and what sets it apart from the rest of the industry/competition?

Krispr’s aim is to achieve food self-sufficiency without depending on land, climate, light, or water, as traditional agriculture does. In addition, we want fruits, vegetables and other foods to be seen as the primary source of good health. Better eating equals a healthier body, mind and a stronger immune system and food should be considered as the first medicine, as someone once said.

Tell us in brief about vertical farming and the kind of plants you can grow

Vertical farming is a way of capitalising on cubic space by growing up instead of across. The same amount of acreage can therefore fit in more crops. Plants that can currently be grown include leafy greens, some fruits, root vegetables and certain mushrooms.

What is your business strategy post-pandemic?

We launched Krispr during the pandemic with our strategy targeting e-commerce channels as much of the purchasing was happening online. We are now looking at more mainstream channels such as B2B and retail.

How are you tackling the GCC region’s food security challenges?

The GCC’s food security is impacted by a challenging climate, water scarcity and limited arable land. As a result, food imports are critical. Any strategy to tackle this must overcome these obstacles to achieve consistent quality and quantity of production.

Our indoor growing technology aims at tackling most of those factors – environmental controls provide optimum conditions for plant growth, water saving technologies reduce water requirements by at least 80 per cent, and water-based nutrient delivery systems eliminate the need for arable land.

How are you transforming food production and reversing nutritional decline without damaging the planet?

Let us begin with ‘without damaging the planet’:

1. We grow using water-saving techniques and no pesticides. This avoids pesticide runoff in the soil, which would lead it to deteriorate.

2. Water is used sparingly – only as much as the plant requires – with the remainder recirculated, cleaned and replenished.

3. We don’t need to cut down trees to create room for arable land since we can grow within existing buildings, of which there are many.

4. We are able to grow in urban areas, where the produce is largely consumed, which drastically reduces the length of the supply chain and the carbon footprint associated with imports. Reversing nutritional decline: Because of the demands for maintaining freshness during imports, produce is often harvested before it is ripe and ready to consume. Supply chains are not perfect, and once a plant is cut, it starts to lose its freshness and nutrients. However, shorter supply chains (growing near places of consumption) and on-demand harvesting can preserve freshness, flavour and nutrition.