The availability of fibre and the adoption thereof is on the increase. However, more fibre also means security threats are rapidly on the increase.
So says Johan Olivier, commercial manager at XDSL, who notes, in the past 18 months, security threats have ramped in local businesses. He believes, therefore, security is an essential offering Internet service providers must consider.
When it comes to installing the physical fibre, he says, Telkom, Dark Fibre Africa and Neotel are leading the pack in SA.
He explains the adoption of fibre is two-fold. "Copper theft is a big problem and concern in South Africa, and the saturation on the Telkom copper infrastructure is another challenge. Therefore, businesses are looking at alternatives. Furthermore, wireless is too unpredictable and very expensive if you use the licensed frequency spectrums."
According to Olivier, once implemented, fibre broadband offers a lot of new possibilities to companies. Fibre makes voice over IP a reality and will only fail due to cable damage, providing users with much more stability than copper, he adds.
"Fibre broadband services offer flexibility, easily scaling from 1Mbps to 10Mbps or even 100Mbps; it enables the use of cloud-based applications and storage, and facilitate innovation in terms of processes and business models."
However, he warns, security is a key concern for any business making use of fibre. "The main security issue is the available bandwidth and stability. This allows for bigger timeframes, which hackers can use to attack firewalls and servers," says Olivier.
He is of the view that organisations need to be proactive by closing unused ports, stopping unused services, changing default passwords, altering passwords regularly, and using two-factor authentication.
"Scrutinising security logs is also a must. Although this is reactive analysing, it will give you a good view of attempted attacks."
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