COVER STORY
Azizi Developments is one of the leading
private real estate developers in the
UAE. The awareness of its brand and
the projects it is associated with has
increased exponentially over the last few
years. This led to resellers, agents and
employees trying to leverage the name
of Azizi and its brand to improve their
credibility within the market – especially
on social media.
The voice of content used was not unified,
the frequency was irregular and there
were too many variations of the same
profile floating around across the different
social media platforms, thus cascading
mixed messages to the end-user.
The online presence of the company
was also tainted by the presence of
multiple websites created by different
stakeholders with the intent to promote
themselves as the official representative
of the brand and their offerings. The
level of service and dedication provided
was not up to the company mark as was
discovered and this led to the overall
brand image getting diluted in the eyes
of the customer.
Through the entire process it was
evident that the brand of Azizi
Developments was being tainted
using social media dysfunction and
misinterpretation – which led to missed
leads. With this unified approach laid
down by Satsangi and the team at Azizi,
and a closer watch on any scattered
approach outside of the official
channels, this has dramatically changed
over the past three months.
Satsangi said: “Our customers now are
being directed to our official websites,
not impersonating websites.
“So we are looking at a huge recovery
from the loss of lead generation which
was, prior to ZeroFOX, being redirected
to other websites that are impersonating
Azizi Developments and dropping a lead
there, rather than have it come to us.” He
added that the solution provides crucial
visibility, stating: “You can't protect what
you can't see.”
Customers are also more satisfied with the
interaction with the brand, social media
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leads are no longer being missed and are
being converted into solid business and
overall brand awareness has increased
due to a concerted effort on a single
account versus a divided approach
across different social presence.
Anand Choudha, CEO and President,
SPECTRAMI, added that nearly 70%
of customers visit an organisation’s
Facebook page before making a
buying decision – so protecting brand
reputation is a ‘no-brainer’ for every
modern marketing team.
He said: “Identifying and removing fake
or fraudulent social accounts is now a top
priority. With ZeroFOX we have ensured
that our customer, Azizi Developments’
company-owned social media and online
digital accounts are protected with
automated remediation to immediately
hide or remove sensitive content.”
Intelligent CISO spoke to Ankit Satsangi
further about some of the biggest
regional cybersecurity talking points.
What, in your view, are the
biggest cyberthreats faced by the
region at the moment?
In 2018 Q4 I think we are going to
be looking at a few rising attacks
in phishing and ransomware. Every
company has a certain number of
vulnerabilities which can be exploited in
some way or another, so we go with a
layered approach, a layered defence, not
just a single point of defence.
Looking ahead, are there any
new threats you think are likely
to emerge or any other things
CISOs or security professionals
need to be aware of?
I think the threat landscape is evolving
and so is the CISO role. In the very early
days a CISO was a very technically-
focused person, a very security-focused
person but it has evolved to having a
more mind-share with the board, more
involvement with the board and talking
security from more of a business
perspective and business aspect and
convincing the board why you need
budgets rather than answering questions
Our customers now
are being directed to
our official websites,
not impersonating
websites.
in technical terms as that doesn’t really
make any sense, so the CISO is now a
management player.
How much of a challenge is
convincing the board that they do
need to invest?
CISOs have good days and bad days.
It is somewhat of a challenge because
there are certain things that you can
explain – such as anti-virus. That’s a
common term. But if we talk about,
for example, email security, we would
definitely need to portray why we need
this layer of defence and, if we don’t,
what could possibly be damaged within
our organisation.
We could possibly be looking at
downtime in emails, that would lead
to a certain loss of lead generation or
business disruption. So, it definitely is a
challenge, but it’s all on how you present
to the management.
What advice would you give to
aspiring CISOs?
Be more of a management player.
That’s really what it takes because
almost a very large percentage of
CISOs don’t really have what it takes to
convince the management. I’m not just
talking specifically the Middle East, I’m
talking globally as well. It’s almost 25%
of c-level execs that say CISOs should
be part of the organisation’s senior
leadership team.
So definitely, the advice would be to
continue with security but at the same
time you have to be a management
player otherwise you’re not going to get
the numbers or the budgets to progress
with security for your organisation. u
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