BizBahrain November 2016

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Highlights | Technology Kodak offers End - End Solutions With digital transformation being top priority for Government agencies around the world, it is clear that digital technology is the way forward for electoral processing. With this in mind, Kodak Alaris offers an end-to-end solution for management of elections including ballot paper processing technology, design, print, logistics and the associated professional services. Today in the ‘paper voting’ election process, paper ballots are counted by hand or by using Optical Mark Recognition (OMR). But with OMR, the marks need to be made in very specific places. The legacy approaches are more sensitive and therefore prone to errors, plus the overall process is slower. Digitising ballots is important because it offers governments the ability to show transparency & accuracy in a vital democratic process, while also being able to provide results quickly. Mr. David Whitton, General Manager of Kodak Alaris Information Management - Eastern Cluster (Middle East, Africa, East Europe, Turkey & Russia) says, “The future of elections is undoubtedly digital technology and most electoral management bodies must adopt new solutions to improve the electoral process, both in terms of speed and transparency of the results. Digital in this case doesn’t mean electronic voting but rather digitizing ballot papers and processing the information after it’s scanned. The requirement for this is a reliable scanning and software solution to help save time and reduce errors when tallying the votes.” The Kodak Alaris solution is extremely versatile, as a number of election bodies have seen. The ballots can be presented in any orientation and it handles varying sizes of ballot papers, which is dictated by the number of candidates on the ballot. All of the scanning takes place within one unit. This allows the solution to be centrally administered with the various job profiles being drawn down to the relevant counting centre and processing line. This flexibility means that should there be a rare machine failure; the ballots can easily be processed on another, ensuring the results are gathered in the required time. Winners of ‘Innovate for Refugees’ Global Competition announced Category: Most innovative solution brought forward by a refugee • Open Embassy from the Netherlands awarded US$30,000 offered by Uber • Recycle Beirut from Lebanon awarded $20,000 offered by Samih Darwazah Foundation Under the patronage of Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, MIT Enterprise Forum (MIT EF) Pan Arab, in partnership with Zain Group and MBC Hope, announced the seven winners of the Innovate for Refugees competition at an award ceremony that took place at the King Hussein Business Park Main Theatre in Amman, Jordan on October 4. Following a round of judging and deliberations by a panel of six industry experts, the final winners were selected as follows: Category: General • Change Water Labs from the United States and Evaptainers from Morocco; each awarded $20,000 by Zain Group and MBC Hope • Boloro & BanQ from Jordan awarded $20,000 offered by Zain Group Category: Education • Natakallam from the United States awarded US$20,000 offered by Jusoor Category: Child-focused • LEDLife from Switzerland awarded US$20,000 offered by UNICEF The competition was initially set to reward five winners but given the calibre of the finalists, two additional prizes were offered: $20,000 by Zain Group and $20,000 by Samih Darwazah Foundation. The MIT EF Pan Arab Innovate for Refugees initiative was launched in June 2016 in partnership with Zain Group, a leading mobile telecommunications innovator across the Middle East and Africa, and MBC Hope, the Corporate Social Responsibility arm of MBC, and is supported by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), UNICEF, Jusoor and Uber. There were also over 30 partners supporting the competition including TechFugees and the International Rescue Committee. The competition invited entrepreneurs and refugees from around the world to come up with tech-driven, innovative solutions to help address the global refugee crisis. Over 1,600 applications were received, with 21 finalists shortlisted to the final round. 66 November 2016
Technology DNS Users for Data Transport become Cybercrime Targets Rod Rasmussen Vice President of Cyber Security, Infoblox Malicious DNS tunneling is a big problem in cyber security and organizations in Bahrain need to be aware of this. The technique involves the use of the Domain Name System (DNS) protocol to smuggle sensitive corporate or personal information out of a network, and to enable malware command and control communications in and out. Indeed, as the Infoblox Security Assessment Report revealed recently, two in five enterprise networks showed evidence of DNS tunneling in the second quarter of 2016. However, all is not necessarily as it seems. Close scrutiny of apparent DNS tunneling traffic repeatedly reveals an amount of anomalous activity which appears harmful but is, in fact, being sent intentionally by users and services on enterprise networks, and tended not to be malicious in nature. Exploiting the DNS protocol Typically DNS queries are very small data packets, and their intended purpose is not to transport any data other than that needed to perform name-resolution services. And, although the introduction of authentication mechanisms such as DNSSEC and DKIM may have changed the landscape over recent years, their primary intent is also only to serve up information on a domain name, rather than transporting any other data. But, there is sufficient flexibility in the DNS protocol that unrelated data can be inserted into a DNS query and then sent in to or out from a targeted network. “Legitimate” DNS tunneling Within an enterprise, the use of DNS for legitimate communications can often set off false alarms with networking and security teams on the lookout for malicious DNS tunneling. Most companies that employ this unsanctioned use of DNS tend not to advertise the fact and this can present a challenge to security teams looking for insidious use of the protocol. After all, legitimate and malicious use can look practically identical at first glance. Of course, those using DNS in this way are generally taking creative shortcuts rather than deliberately abusing their organization’s networks. It all started around twenty years ago, when pay walls in certain hotels and airports blocked direct access to the internet via standard protocols such as HTTP. It was noticed, however, that DNS wasn’t blocked and tools including NSTX, Dnscat and iodine were subsequently released allowing web sessions and email to be tunneled through a user’s DNS connection. Over the years these tools have evolved to provide full VPN services over DNS, with dozens of examples freely available on GitHub and elsewhere. Circumventing controls Essentially, the main problem with DNS tunneling techniques is that they circumvent controls put in place by a network team, opening up security, compliance and operational concerns while, at the same time, overloading the DNS protocol and anomaly detection systems put in place to examine DNS traffic. Businesses are increasingly trying to protect their DNS as its importance becomes clearer, and are beginning to realize how much extraneous DNS traffic is running on their networks. It’s perhaps optimistic to expect the practice to stop completely, but efforts could be made to persuade IT vendors and manufacturers to become less reliant on it, and ultimately make it less difficult to secure this valuable and vulnerable protocol. Refund for Note 7 Users Samsung Gulf Electronics confirmed this month that consumers' safety is the company’s priority, Thus Samsung has stopped sales, exchanges and production of the Galaxy Note7 globally. Consumers in the Gulf region with either an original Galaxy Note7 or replacement Galaxy Note7 device should power down and stop using the device and take advantage of the remedies available. Starting today, Samsung Note7 owners can bring their device, regardless of the original point of purchase, to any of the following Samsung Brand Shops to exchange their Galaxy Note7 for a Galaxy S7 edge with a refund of the price difference (in the form of cash or a gift voucher): Consumers who wish to obtain a full refund are asked to bring their Galaxy Note7 and the original receipt to the original point of purchase. All consumers who have a replacement Galaxy Note7 device, or do not have an original purchase receipt, or have questions related to the exchange process, are advised to contact Samsung’s call center on 8000- 4726 for assistance. For more information on Galaxy Note7 exchange process, please visit: www.samsung.com November 2016 67
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BizBahrain November 2016

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