MAM
Discovery India appoints Hanmer & Partners as it PR agency
MUMBAI: Discovery Networks India has appointed Hanmer & Partners as its new public relations agency with effect from April 2005. The agency will provide communications consultancy to the company for its three networks – Discovery Channel, Discovery Travel & Living and Animal Planet.
Discovery Networks India brand director Aditya Tripathi said, “The communications challenge is too keep the viewers informed and engaged, thereby attracting higher viewership for the channels. I am confident that Hanmer & Partners will be able create innovative communication platforms and tools to help us achieve this goal.”
Hanmer & Partners Communications Pvt. Ltd managing director Sunil Gautam said, “We are extremely privileged to be given the reputation management mandate by Discovery Networks India and will assist them in achieving their business objectives. We have set up a national team dedicated to managing the communications campaign in each of their target markets. We are excited to be a part of this dynamic category.”
Discovery Communications, Inc. is the leading global real-world media and entertainment company. It has grown from its core property, the Discovery Channel, first launched in the US in 1985, to current global operations in more than 160 countries and territories with one billion cumulative subscribers.
In India, three Discovery television brands, Discovery Channel, Discovery Travel & Living and Animal Planet reach 52 million cumulative subscribers, with programming customised into English and Hindi.
Brands
Google completes $32 billion Wiz deal to boost AI and cloud security
Wiz joins Google Cloud but keeps multi-cloud support across rival platforms
NEW YORK: Google has completed its $32 billion acquisition of cloud security company Wiz, marking the biggest deal in the tech giant’s history and signalling a major push to strengthen security in the era of artificial intelligence and multi-cloud computing.
The New York-headquartered cybersecurity firm will join Google Cloud while continuing to operate under the Wiz brand. Crucially, the company will maintain support for multiple cloud platforms, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud, reflecting the reality that most large organisations run their systems across several cloud providers.
Google said the acquisition is designed to help organisations build and scale applications more securely as businesses and governments increasingly move critical systems and data to the cloud. At the same time, the rapid adoption of generative AI has introduced new cybersecurity risks, with attackers also using AI to launch faster and more sophisticated attacks.
Wiz has built a reputation for simplifying cloud security. Its platform maps entire cloud environments, identifying vulnerabilities, potential attack paths and misconfigurations before they can be exploited. By connecting insights from code, cloud infrastructure and runtime environments, it allows security and engineering teams to detect and fix risks early in the development cycle.
Bringing Wiz into Google Cloud will create what the company describes as a unified security platform capable of detecting, preventing and responding to threats across cloud and AI environments. The combined offering will also integrate Google’s own security capabilities, including threat intelligence tools, security operations platforms and the cybersecurity expertise of Mandiant.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the move reflects the growing importance of security as more organisations rely on AI and cloud technologies. “Keeping people safe online has always been part of Google’s mission,” he said, adding that the partnership will help organisations innovate with greater confidence.
Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, said the goal is to make security an enabler rather than a roadblock for businesses building modern applications. He noted that the combined technologies will simplify the complex task of protecting hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
For Wiz, the acquisition opens the door to global scale while keeping its core philosophy intact. Co-founder and CEO Assaf Rappaport said the company remains committed to an open, multi-cloud approach and will continue supporting customers regardless of where their workloads run.
Over the past year, Wiz has expanded its platform to address emerging risks tied to AI applications, including tools that help organisations monitor AI usage, detect AI-specific vulnerabilities and secure AI workloads during runtime.
With Google’s infrastructure, artificial intelligence capabilities and security ecosystem now behind it, Wiz plans to accelerate development of its platform while continuing to serve enterprises, governments and start-ups operating across different cloud environments.
For Google Cloud, the acquisition adds a powerful piece to its security puzzle as competition intensifies among global cloud providers. For customers, it promises a future where building fast in the cloud does not have to come at the expense of staying secure.
