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Sunaina Rana / EMIRATES BUSINESS
Help AG is a strategic information security consulting company, founded in Germany in 1995. Since its establishment in the Middle East in 2004, Help AG has maintained a sole focus on advanced IT security services and solutions, laying specific importance to three pillars — application security, understanding of the security impact of the application and governance and standards around protecting information. After more than a decade in the region, Help AG has firmly established itself as the Middle East’s trusted
security advisor.
Emirates Business talks to Stephan Berner, Managing Director of Help AG, about the company’s prospects in the region.
Can you throw some light on Help AG’s area of specialisation?
Focussing solely on the security aspects of Information Technology and maintaining an unprecedented 80 percent of staff in technical positions has enabled Help AG to stand out as the region’s trusted advisor capable of delivering the most complex and innovative IT security solutions. our operations spanned every aspect of enterprise IT security including application security, network security, enterprise mobile security and
next generation modern malware protection.
What is the main agenda on cards?
As a key player in the security arena, the company remains dedicated to raising regional awareness about IT security threats and trends and regularly conducts informative vendor-agnostic events such as its flagship Security Spotlight Forum (SSF) and CIO circle of trust.
What is your presence in the Middle East? Where all in the region do you have your base?
We established our regional headquarters in Dubai and have gradually expanded our presence in a strategic manner. We now have offices in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Qatar from where we service the entire Middle East region.
Last year, we expanded our footprint into Saudi Arabia with the inauguration of our office in Saudi Arabia. These offices are all fully staffed operational hubs and not just sales offices.
Can you describe you biggest highlights of the previous year?
Our biggest highlights includebusiness of US$51million, up from US$38million in the previous year. This impressive 35 percent year on year growth was achieved primarily through incremental business with existing customers.
Further we increased our staff strength from 65 to 130 employees and continued to maintain our 80-20 technical to sales ratio.
We also established our presence in Saudi Arabia by inaugurating our new office in Riyadh and our first deal itself was for US$200,000 with a major bank.
What makes Help AG the largest security analysis team in Middle East?
We grew our Cyber Security Consulting (SSC) team from 9 to 20 consultants providing IS governance and compliance, risk management and information assurance and business resiliency.
This means that Help AG now has the largest security analysis team in the Middle East We serve some of the most high-profile public and private organisations in the region. 40 percent of our business is related to government, 20 percent to banking and finance, 14 percent to oil and gas, 16 percent to defence and airspace, 8 percent to groups of companies and 2 percent from other verticals.
What are your regional goals for the rest of the year and beyond?
At Help AG, we have identified and outlined three corporate strategic initiatives till 2016.
First, focus on existing markets, UAE and Qatar, driven and measured against quality delivery and customer excitement.
Second, capitalise on our geographical expansion into KSA and secure new business in the Kingdom.
Third, drive uptake of our Managed Security Services (MSS). Offerings such as MSS enable us to really engage deeply and more consistently with customers. This opens up the possibility of addressing new areas in their security infrastructures.
