Intelligent CIO Europe Issue 31 | Page 17

NEWS AFC Ajax names Acronis as its official cyber protection partner Acronis, a global leader in cyber protection, and AFC Ajax, a renowned Dutch professional football club, have signed a multi-year partnership agreement. As AFC Ajax’s official cyber protection partner, Acronis will play a visible and tangible role at Ajax Academy ‘De Toekomst’ (The Future) and the Johan Cruijff Arena. Acronis will be providing AFC Ajax with the latest cyber protection solutions to optimise data workflow, helping the team improve its performance both on and off the pitch. Menno Geelen, Commercial Director at AFC Ajax, said: “Acronis is a global market leader and a technology company that will contribute technology and content to support our growth ambition. We are also going to use its cyber protection solutions and Artificial Intelligence expertise at our training centre, De Toekomst, and see it prominently as a new shirt partner for the Ajax youth. A partner of which we can therefore say with complete dedication: for the future.” Edwin van der Sar, Managing Director at AFC Ajax, added: “Data and innovation are becoming more and more important for us as a football club and as an organisation. Privacy and data security are therefore just as crucial. With Acronis, we have a reliable and knowledgeable partner that stores, makes accessible and secures our data. Acronis will do this at De Toekomst – the cradle of our club where a lot of data is collected and processed – but also in the Johan Cruijff Arena and in our football-related and business activities elsewhere in the world.” Alperia selects Kaspersky to protect its power grid’s remote-control systems Energy provider, Alperia, has chosen Kaspersky to protect its power plants’ remote-control systems and distribution network that supply electricity to 280,000 users in South Tyrol, Italy. The choice to implement Kaspersky Industrial CyberSecurity for Nodes was dictated by the need to have a dedicated solution for the OT environment that grants maximum protection, without the risk of machines essential to the supply of services being interrupted. Today, Kaspersky protects 40 Alperia servers. Alperia, a South Tyrol company established in 2016 following the merger of two major local electrical utilities, currently distributes electrical energy and gas to 280,000 users – operating 34 hydro-electrical power plants, six district heating plants, over 8,600 km of grid and 700 charging stations. After careful analysis of the few solutions available on the market, specifically dedicated to industrial environments, Alperia has chosen Kaspersky Industrial CyberSecurity (KICS). This solution is especially developed to protect the different levels of industrial infrastructures, including SCADA, DCS, PLC, engineering stations and network connections. The solution has a distinctive feature as it implements a holistic approach to grant cybersecurity for companies and critical infrastructures alike. Thanks to its versatility and flexibility, this solution can be configured based on an organisation’s particular needs, meaning it can fit the requirements of a specific ICS environment. This approach not only provides protection for industrial endpoints, but also makes use of passive monitoring technologies to identify anomalies and detect any possible network intrusion. www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 17