Kaspersky Lab has reaffirmed its commitment to the African market, announcing the appointment of Riaan Badenhorst as the head of operations for Kaspersky Lab Africa at a press lunch in Parktown this week.
"The security market has experienced strong growth in recent years, the reason being that cyber crime has become a business and the market now has to move from one that previously protected devices to one that protects people," said Vasily Dyagilev, MD of Kaspersky Lab for emerging markets. He added that security has had to change because users are accessing data from various platforms.
"A user's digital identity has become as important to them as the things they carry around in their pockets each day," he said.
According to Dyagilev, effective protection is more than having anti-virus technology installed on a computer, and it is especially important for companies to go beyond the standard understanding of security.
"Everyone knows that when you go out at night, you need to be aware of potential threats to your safety, but for some reason, people do not have the same attitude when accessing the Internet, and they should," Dyagilev said.
The South African situation
Statistics from Kaspersky Lab show that, in the third quarter of this year, every fifth user in SA faced a form of malware while surfing the Internet. Also in the third quarter, Kaspersky detected infections on 30.2% of computer hard drives and removable media (flash drives) in SA. This figure is almost double that for the same period in the UK.
According to Dyagilev, this is in part due to the fact that most people in SA and Africa were only able to access the Internet quite late in the game, immediately exposing them to all of the threats. In addition, Dyagilev believes that because there is so much outdated software within the African region, and because many computers do not have any anti-virus installed, the region is a perfect environment for self-propagating malware.
"This proves the reality of cyber criminal activity here and makes us work harder on raising awareness of the necessity of protection measures and offering a robust line of consumer and corporate solutions in the region," he said.
Kaspersky Lab aims to become the top IT security vendor in SA and to further tap into the African market, which is a key focus for the brand. "Going forward, considering the fact that more and more businesses are becoming entrenched in the digital world, where concepts such as virtualisation are growing at an astonishing rate, coupled with the fact that 125 000 new samples of malware appear every day, according to our research, our aim is to strengthen our presence and growth within the corporate solutions market," said Dyagilev.
The appointment of Badenhorst is part of Kaspersky's new office structure. He will be in charge of all Kaspersky operations in over 40 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
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