Secure Computing's Middle East Partner Summit kicks off in Dubai as company aims to strengthen regional presence

Over 35 key Secure Computing partners from across the Middle East are attending the summit, during which the company will share its product strategy and direction, while also discussing the opportunity that Enterprise Gateway Security presents to partners.

"The channel is a strong focus for us in 2008, and through this partner summit we are looking to take our relationship with our Middle East channel partners to another level," said Nimer Ghazal, Regional Sales Manager for Secure Computing. "The summit presents an ideal platform for us to effectively communicate our product strategy and approach for the year, to our key partners in the region."

Senior Secure Computing representatives including Mike Smart, Manager of Product Marketing; Katy Sutcliffe, EMEA Marketing Manager; Eyass Hawari, Regional Pre-Sales Engineer; Vibin Shaju, Regional Pre-Sales Engineer; and Nimer Ghazal, are present at the partner summit, speaking on topics ranging from messaging and web gateway to product strategy and access management.

Secure Computing has approximately 40 partners in the Middle East, a region which has been a major focus for the company in recent years.

A Secure Computing partner enjoys high credibility, enhanced level of differentiation, increased competency, greater visibility, profitability and a stronger relationship with customers and prospects.

Secure Computing's growing success and increasing demand for its offerings is reaffirmed in the numerous independent studies conducted on its industry-leading solutions.

In January 2008, Secure Computing's Webwasher® Anti-Malware engine ranked first place in an independent study conducted by AV Test Labs, achieving a near-perfect overall score and surpassing all other leading vendors.

Secure Computing's Webwasher scored higher than all 26 other companies and had a false positive rate as low as 0.003%, surpassing all other gateway solutions.

The research tested and scored vendors on a range of capabilities including signature-based protection, false positive differentiation, proactive detection and reaction time.

In recent months, Secure Computing has announced the launch of new initiatives and updated versions of several of its solutions.

The company announced the release of SafeWord 2008, a new version of its award-winning two-factor authentication solution.

SafeWord 2008 will provide highly secure yet cost effective two-factor authentication through user-friendly tokens, protecting access to critical information assets and applications through Citrix applications, Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), Web applications and Outlook Web Access.

Secure Computing also unveiled its "SWAT" Initiative for protecting organizations from Web 2.0-related threats carried in Web and messaging protocols.

The "Secure Web 2.0 Anti-Threat" initiative is an intensive effort to provide corporations with informative research, tools, solutions and best practices vital for companies evaluating-or re-evaluating-their approach to Web and messaging security.