RIYADH: Digital security in Saudi Arabia is set to be strengthened after global technology firm Cisco announced a new data center for the Kingdom to better protect users, infrastructure and investments. The facility will support the company’s cloud security services in Saudi Arabia, including its new Secure Service Edge solution, Cisco Secure Access. This product automates decisions about how users connect to the internet, Software as a Service products and private applications, a move which the firm claims helps increase productivity. The data center will be carrier-neutral, and available on any internet service provider in the Kingdom. Cisco intends for the data center to have service availability by mid-2024. Saudi Arabia has increasingly taken the lead in boosting cybersecurity, and in November last year a special forum was held in Riyadh dedicated to the issue. Announcing the new data center, Salman Faqeeh, managing director of Cisco in Saudi Arabia, said: “Today’s announcement reconfirms Cisco’s alignment to provide advanced cloud security protection and services to the Saudi community. “It builds on Cisco’s long-standing commitment to our customers and reflects our continued support for digital transformation, by using the power of technologies to create a secured thriving digital economy in Saudi Arabia.” Findings of the latest Cisco Security Outcomes Report underscore the importance of security resilience. The report revealed that 54 percent of organizations surveyed in Saudi Arabia experienced a security event that impacted business. The most common incidents were distributed denial of service attacks at 60 percent, network or system outages at 54 percent and malicious insider abuse events at 40 percent. The global report also states that converging networking and security into a mature, cloud-delivered secure access services protocol boosted security resilience scores by 27 percent. In January, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman issued a royal decree to establish a new institute for the Global Cybersecurity Forum in Riyadh. The institute aims to harness the potential of cyberspace and support efforts to boost cybersafety on a global scale.