MEA Tec Distribution sign ‘ground-breaking’ partnership agreement with QriarLabs and Qriar Technologies

CNME Editor Mark Forker spoke to executives from MEA Tec, QriarLabs and Qriar Technologies at GISEC 2024, in an effort to find out more about their new distribution agreement, how their cutting-edge technology has the capability to transform the way businesses approach Identity Access Management – and how ultimately, they are fully committed to eliminating vendor lock-in to give customers the autonomy and freedom that they want for their IAM journey.

QriarLabs and Qriar Technologies are two companies that are completely rethinking the way identities and securities are integrated.

A recent report compiled by Help AG showed that identity attacks have grown exponentially over the last 12 months.

Despite the increase in attacks many enterprises remain reluctant to address their Identity Access Management inadequacies due to the complexity that is involved when it comes to integration.

However, that is where QriarLabs and Qriar Technologies enter the fold.

The Brazilian IT company, that also has locations in Orlando and Dubai, is on a mission to both eliminate vendor lock-in, and reduce the glaring gaps that currently exist in the identity industry.

At GISEC 2024, the two companies announced its distribution agreement with cybersecurity focused distributor MEA Tec Distribution.

CNME sat down with Wael Handous, CEO of MEA Tec Distribution to learn more about the agreement that had been brokered between them and QriarLabs and Qriar Technologies. 

He described the partnership as ‘ground-breaking’.

“MEA Tech Distribution is a cybersecurity focused distributor. We have enjoyed a lot of success in terms of growth over the last number of years across the Middle East region. We have established our HQ in Dubai, but we also have branches in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar. At GISEC, we’re announcing what we believe to be a ground-breaking partnership with QriarLabs and Qriar Technologies. We believe that the technology that they are introducing is going to be a gamechanger in the Middle East in terms of the identity solutions that they are bringing to the table,” said Handous.

Handous highlighted how MEA Tec Distribution have developed a reputation for being extremely diligent when it comes to selecting technologies, and he believes that harnesses trust with vendors. 

“We have a reputation with vendors across the marketplace for being very picky when it comes to the technologies that we choose. We are a very focused distributor, and we follow the compliance of the GCC countries when it comes to the rules and regulations around cybersecurity. We want to help bring technologies into the market that are going to enhance the cybersecurity landscape in terms of greater resiliency, and that is exactly what QriarLabs is doing,” said Handous.

As aforementioned above, when it comes to IAM, complexity surrounding integration is a huge issue for many enterprises.

However, when asked why MEA Tec Distribution partnered with QriarLabs, Handous said there were a number of factors, but ultimately it was the fact they were removing the complexity associated with IAM integration, and that there was no market competition, citing that what QriarLabs is doing is totally unique in the market.

“Qriar is taking a unique technology into the market. We’ve worked with other vendors on different technologies, but we’ll always find competition in that specific space in terms of that particular product offering. However, when it comes to Qriar they are the only company in the world that does what they do. They are helping businesses to acquire IAM solutions in a very easy and simplistic way. One of the biggest risks that exists in the cybersecurity ecosystem when it comes to IAM space is that many businesses delay projects around it because of hassle of doing it, which leaves huge gaps for hackers to exploit. In summary, Qriar will make that journey into the IAM space simple, and will remove the complexity that currently exists,” said Handous.

CNME then spoke to Edgar Silva, CEO and Co-founder at QriarLabs to learn more about their journey they have undertaken as a company – and how the traditional integration process with IAM was a painstaking process that their technology is now eliminating.

“The problem with a lot of solutions in the IAM space is the fact that they are not easy to integrate, and the implementation process can take anywhere from 6-9 months. Our mission at QriarLabs is to make the journey as simple as possible. There is a commonality of challenges facing customers, and it’s our job to create a solution that ultimately helps them address that problem, but it’s crucial that we achieve that by making the experience as painless as possible for the customers,” said Silva.

Silva added that many vendors will claim that they can deliver an IAM integration is a painless way, but according to Silva that is simply not true.

“There are a lot of vendors will tell you that they can deliver the integration process in a seamless way, but it’s not true. However, with Qriar labs we can do this and we have already proved it. We have worked with some customers in Brazil, and we’ve taken the implementation process down from 9 months to 2 months. The technology we have is a gamechanger, and not only for us, but for our distributors like MEA Tech, as they now can go to the market and say, look we really have a solution that can really help you,” said Silva.

He also stated that the partnership agreement with MEA Tec Distribution was a perfect fit for QriarLabs.

“We’re entering a market that we have very little knowledge about, so it’s critical that you work with the best partners to go into that market in order to effectively sell our products, and MEA Tech certainly fits the bill for us. You need to work with partners that understand the market, and have the trust and respect of the IT and technology ecosystem across the Middle East region – and that is certainly something that we can see from our conversations here at GISEC that MEA Tec Distribution has,” said Silva.

Almir Menezes, CEO, Co-founder and Board member at Qriar Technologies, highlighted the data sensitivities that exists in the UAE, and across the GCC region.

He pointed out that another key advantage for QriarLabs is the fact that they offer an on-premises model.

“We can offer customers a SaaS model, but we also have the ability to offer an on-premises model. We know that local customers want their data to reside in the UAE. We participated at the Cyber Stars start-up competition and a recurring question we were asked was how can me deliver this kind of managed services request from public sector entities across the UAE. However, we are agile, and we can provide both a SaaS and on-prem model, so we really can cater to whatever the market demands are. Data sovereignty is a key issue here, and the fact we can provide this for businesses across the Middle East region gives us a great market advantage,” said Menezes.

CNME Editor Mark Forker then brought Juliano Itabaiana, Chief Growth Officer, at 2Futureholding into the conversation.

2Future is an investor of Qriar Technologies and QriarLabs.

2Future Holding is a Future Capital firm that connects people, ideas, and transformative businesses.

2Future is a single-family office with perpetual capital, headquartered in Brazil with offices in the USA, Europe, and the Middle East.

With a keen eye for identifying emerging trends and seizing opportunities, 2Future supports audacious entrepreneurs and start-ups creating solutions to some of society’s biggest challenges.

Itabaiana reiterated what had already been said by declaring that what QriarLabs is bringing to the table is totally unique.

He also noted how the company can remove the issue of vendor lock-in for many businesses.

“What QriarLabs is bringing to the table is the fact that absolutely nobody else is able to do what we are doing. The common problem that key vendors and distributors face is worldwide, and that is when a customer becomes a hostage of an exclusive vendor, and you’re unable to onboard different solutions because these solutions don’t communicate to each other. Ultimately, that’s why the integration process is so protracted, costly and complex because they are locked-in. Qriar Labs is an enabler, and our solution is a facilitator to give customers the freedom that they both want and need to decide what kind of IAM solutions, privileged access management and API orchestrations they have as a custodian,” said Itabaiana.

Almir Menezes concluded a brilliant conversation by summarizing just exactly what it is that QriarLabs provides for its customers.

“We can offer flexibility to businesses because we allow them to work with the IAM solution that they want, there is no lock-in. We provide low-costs because we can deliver products faster. I think what I love the most about what we can do is the fact that our customers can work with more than one vendor at the same time. The reason we are so enterprise focused, by default enterprises run several different types of applications, especially if they are worldwide then a lot of the time these applications don’t communicate to each other. Our solution creates an ecosystem in which they communicate to each other, especially on provisioning and deprovisioning access, because that’s the No.1 threat in the cybersecurity industry – and that is why we are so confident that through our partnership with MEA Tec we are going to enjoy a lot of success here in the Middle East,” said Menezes.