Refining security

Oil and gas has always been an important sector in the Middle East IT domain, one that vendors and solutions providers work hard to compete in. So what have security vendors targeting the sector been doing to help end-users maintain security standards in these tough times and what threats will the CIOs have to face down in the future?

Although the energy market is multi-trillion dollar industry it has nonetheless, still been hit hard by the financial crisis and falling oil prices. This has meant that the once strong and highly liquid firms that populate this sector have had to think carefully about investments they put into information technology, among other services.

It has also meant that the sector, like most other substantial verticals has seen a series of high profile mergers and acquisitions which, for the involved CIOs, will have created a colossal task to consolidate the resulting networks.

When it comes to IT security in the oil and gas sector, it is common sense that spending has not actually halted as a result of the downturn, after all, threats will not cease and the complexity of networks will only increase. Security has remained an important aspect of IT spend, whilst other networking concerns have been shelved for now.

"We don't see that the financial crisis has impacted them in terms of acquiring new and innovative solutions, rather we see more focus and an increased pick up of solutions than ever before," said Ganesan Lakshmanan, principal consultant, security management at Computer Associates. "The oil and gas sector actually feel that it is the best time to innovate and the best time to deploy."

Omar Dajani, director of systems engineering for MEA, CIS, Russia and Southern Mediterranean at Symantec feels security budgets are now viewed as separate to the overall IT budget: "What we were seeing, going back a couple of years, IT security in oil and gas has been locked into a larger IT project," explained Dajani.

"But what we have seen over the last 12 months is a dedicated security budget has been carved out and generally about 20% of the IT budget has been apportioned to security because they see that it is an area that you cannot afford not to invest in," added Dajani.

Gulf Business Machines, a large UAE-based systems integrator which works in a representative agent fashion for infrastructure giant IBM in the Middle East region, says that the financial crisis has had a short term impact on the oil and gas industry but it is an industry that will regain its importance in years to come, a resurgence that will lead to greater security outlay.

"Over the last few years the price of oil has gone down and it has had an impact on the oil and gas industry, but on the other hand, it has been said that in the next 25 years energy consumption is going to increase by 50%, so it doesn't really matter what is happening with the financial crisis from the oil production perspective," emphasized Ali Hosseini, director of professional services at GBM. "Security is something that they have to spend money on because it has to be in place either way."

From an IT security angle, the oil and gas industry is one of, if not the most, demanding end-user domains. Not only do oil and gas companies make use of incredibly sophisticated computing power in an effort to assess where best to drill for oil - an assessment that can cost millions of dollars if not accurately made - and the mass of data that such calculations produce is so immense, but they also have large scale and complex distributed networks.

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