Group-IB, one of the global leaders in cybersecurity headquartered in Singapore, has signed a managed security services provider (MSSP) partnership agreement with Security Matterz, a specialist IT security organization with offices in London, UK and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The agreement was signed at LEAP 2023, the premier technology exposition held in the Saudi capital Riyadh from February 6-9, 2023, by Mohammad Flaifel, Regional Sales Manager, KSA, at Group-IB, and Hasan Sawwa, Chief Commercial Officer at Security Matterz.
With this agreement, Security Matterz’s clients in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) will be able to leverage Group-IB’s full stack of sector-leading cybersecurity products, recognized as some of the best in class by leading independent industry research agencies. Headlining this agreement is Group-IB’s trailblazing Managed Extended Detection and Response (MXDR) product, which will be managed by Security Matterz’s own SOC for their clients. Group-IB and Security Matterz will jointly invest in Group-IB MXDR’s local capabilities to make it available in Saudi Arabia, allowing enterprises to use this solution to counter the growing cyber threats in the country, fully in line with local regulations. Group-IB’s MXDR works seamlessly across networks, endpoints, and clouds, to give companies and organizations superior detection and response capabilities to identify and attribute cyber criminals, detect, hunt, and respond to the most sophisticated threats in IT networks.
Figure 1: Group-IB and Security Matterz’s managed solution
Group-IB actively tracks all current and emerging online threats in the Middle East, Africa and the whole world. Earlier in January, Group-IB revealed in the latest edition of its annual Hi-Tech Crime Trends Report that 150 companies in the MEA region had their data leaked online following ransomware attacks between H2 2021 – H1 2022. This figure includes 42 companies in the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), with the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia the top two affected countries in the GCC region.
According to Group-IB analysis, in 2022 alone, the credentials of more than 690,000 users in the MEA region were stolen by cybercriminals who leveraged information stealers such as RedLine Stealer. Group-IB is also aiding in efforts to stop the proliferation of scams in Saudi Arabia. The company recently unveiled its research into a wide-scale phishing campaign that saw cybercriminals create more than 1,000 domains impersonating a manpower agency in Saudi Arabia as part of a ploy to steal the banking credentials of users. At its heart, Group-IB has a zero-tolerance policy to cybercrime, and all findings into this scam were shared with the Saudi Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-SA).
In line with the joint commitment of Group-IB and Security Matterz to bolster Saudi cybersecurity benchmarks amid the country’s ongoing digital transformation, this agreement creates a pathway for Security Matterz to offer other products from Group-IB’s Unified Risk Platform, including Threat Intelligence, Digital Risk Protection, and Attack Surface Management to their clients in the Middle East as a managed solution, creating added value for all parties involved.
Figure 2: Group-IB and Security Matterz representatives at LEAP 2023
“This strategic partnership between Group-IB and Security Matterz lays the foundation for a stronger and more secure security posture in Saudi Arabia. Group-IB is committed to its task of elevating cybersecurity benchmarks in the region with our product solutions and training services, and we look forward to offering our sector-leading expertise and wide-ranging knowhow to Security Matterz, as we work collaboratively to enrich the services catalog available to Security Matterz’s trusted clients.”
Group-IB’s Regional Sales Manager, KSA
“Security Matterz is excited to partner with Group-IB in the thriving Middle East region. We see this partnership as a long-term, mutually beneficial partnership and it will enable us to offer an extended range of Group-IB solutions to our existing and potential customers. Security Matterz has been serving the Saudi market for more than 14 years now and we have built and fostered strong relationships with our clients and this partnership helps us to offer even more to those hundreds of clients.”
Chief Commercial Officer at Security Matterz
Group-IB’s MSSP Partners gain value by knowledge transfer from Group-IB’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-GIB), Security Operations Center, Cybersecurity Education Team, and Digital Forensics and Incident Response and Threat Intelligence teams. This know-how empowers the MSSP partners’ teams to independently operate and gain deeper insights into the threat actors that are targeting their clients.
