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ARCON's journey to Africa

Ensuring information security amid Africa's digital revolution.

By ARCON
Johannesburg, 20 Nov 2017
Left to right: Anil Bhandari and Paresh Makwana.
Left to right: Anil Bhandari and Paresh Makwana.

It is estimated the African economy loses about $2 billion annually due to information security related incidents. While increasing digitisation has been the driving force behind rapid transformation of the economy, a growing number of cyber incidents and resulting loss of productivity and financial loses continue to challenge African organisations.

Having immense technical expertise in the information security domain, ARCON, not so long ago, in order to tap a very strategic cyber security African market, laid the groundwork to expand in the region. Thanks to its globally renowned information security solutions, a strong in-house team that has a practical knowledge of the ICT infrastructure and security challenges, including a strong network of local partners, ARCON brand features recurrently among information security professionals in Africa as enterprises gradually shift towards building a more robust cyber security framework.

"It was in April 2016 when I joined team ARCON to oversee expansion in Africa. Having worked in Africa and managed data centres of large enterprises for about two decades obviously gave me and my company an edge," says Paresh Makwana, VP Business Development Africa. "However, setting our foot in the new market meant that we had to start from scratch," adds Makwana.

But what a remarkable journey it has been! Indeed, a journey that started from mapping the market just 18 months ago has reached its pinnacle. "This year, we have been touring the world relentlessly, meeting CIOs, CISOs, taking part in summits that includes multiple trips to South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya," notes ARCON's Chief Mentor Anil Bhandari.

"That's a testimony of our success in the region. We have not only won major strategic accounts in the region following competitive technical evaluation process, but we are also busy spreading cyber security awareness, attending thought leadership summits and round-table conferences. Security professionals can see that deploying our solutions can address organisations' biggest concerns: how to protect data," adds Bhandari.

Asked about of what are the key observations, Makwana says the overall security landscape has changed immensely in the span of the last 10 years. Enterprises across South Africa, Kenya and other major African economies have started to formulate an unambiguous cyber security framework.

Organisations are not just strengthening the outer periphery to protect systems from malicious traffic but internally as well; the workforce is regularly trained as to how not to fall in trap of phishing e-mails and other fraudulent tactics.

However, the number of cyber incidents occurring in Africa are very high. What could be the reason behind it?

"Sadly, organisations in Africa have not paid much heed to the insider threats. Malicious corporate insiders, as anywhere in the world, are the biggest sources of a critical data breach in Africa. Organisations will need to re-look at their access controls, authentication mechanisms amid expanding IT ecosystem," observes Bhandari.

"Essentially, we have come across two major security concerns as to Africa information security:

"Data centres: privileged access credentials are shared extensively. Access is unsecured. Organisations are still not prepared to identify in real-time and block unauthorised access. Furthermore, with organisations increasingly moving towards cloud services in combination with mobile advancement, safeguarding the management of privileged accounts has become absolutely vital for information security.

"End-users' activities: Amid rising digitisation, the number of devices in a typical IT ecosystem has multiplied. Against this backdrop, organisations in Africa will need to be absolutely certain who is accessing what, and why? Unmonitored end-user activities has been the biggest source of internal fraud in Africa," adds Makwana.

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Dushyant Arora
ARCON
dushyant.arora@arconnet.com