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Combating cyber crime requires partnership approach

The time has come for service providers to step in to support business in curbing risk and locking down their systems, says Mariana Kruger, General Manager: ICT and Converged Solutions at MTN Business South Africa.


Johannesburg, 06 Mar 2017
Mariana Kruger, GM: ICT and Converged Solutions, MTN Business.
Mariana Kruger, GM: ICT and Converged Solutions, MTN Business.

Building a business in tough economic times is hard enough, but doing so while holding cyber criminals at bay is that much harder. The time has come for service providers to step in to support business in curbing risk and locking down their systems, while at the same time empowering them to go digital, says Mariana Kruger, General Manager: ICT and Converged Solutions at MTN Business South Africa.

"The cyber crime problem has becomes so complex, and cyber criminals so sophisticated, that businesses cannot effectively combat all the threats alone. They need support within a trusted partnership, whereby their service provider mitigates the risks and allows them to focus on growing their core business," she says.

Kruger notes that cyber crime is growing exponentially. "Juniper Research predicted recently that the cost of data breaches would rise to $2,1 trillion globally by 2019 - four times the estimated cost of breaches in 2015."

"Recently, PwC reported a sharply increased incidence of reported cybercrime among its survey respondents is sharply higher this year, jumping from 4th to 2nd place among the most-reported types of economic crime. Around 50 or the organisations polled said they had suffered losses over $5 million; with nearly a third of these reporting cyber-crime-related of over $100 million," she says.

But the losses suffered due to cyber crime are not just the immediately apparent financial losses, she says. They extend to reputational damage and the cost of audits, criminal proceedings, disciplinary hearings and more.

"These days, criminals aren't stealing just your money - when your intellectual property is your business, you have to cover every base to mitigate cyber risk," Kruger says.

"The recipe for protecting an IT environment revolves around strong IT governance and the right partner or technology selections. This will help to either mitigate an attack or allow for swift action when a breach occurs," adds Kruger.

"As a trusted connectivity provider and end-to-end ICT services partner, MTN Business has increased its focus on cyber security for small business. Since cyber threats come at you via the Internet, we are moving to effectively intercept those threats before they reach the business."

MTN's partnership approach to mitigating IT risks has seen it partner with the vendors of best-in-class security solutions including IBM, Fortinet, Mimecast and Symantec to offer South African businesses the most effective IT security solutions via a single service provider.

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