Even though South Africa is a prime target for cyber attacks, many local organisations are still under-prepared to mitigate this risk.
This is according to experts from Boston IT Solutions South Africa (Boston SA) and Radware, who shared some insights after participating in the ITWeb Security Summit in Cape Town recently.
Esti Bosch, Business Unit Manager for Networking and Security at Boston SA, says: “During our engagements with attendees at the ITWeb Security Summit, we asked them how they protect their applications and data. We were alarmed to find that not all companies are thinking of protection beyond a traditional next-generation firewall.” She notes that traditional next-generation firewalls are not effective against sophisticated application layer attacks. “You need a web application firewall to protect against application layer vulnerabilities and layer seven DOS attacks,” Bosch says.
Boston SA says recent high-profile DDOS attacks were a key topic of conversation and cause for concern among attendees at the event.
Says Bosch: “South African organisations lacking adequate security have found themselves becoming easy targets for attacks that cause downtime or lead to customer data being stolen. We’re surprised to see that economically key sectors, such as financial services, telecommunications, government agencies, healthcare and e-commerce, are not taking the necessary protections to protect themselves or their customer data. Disruptions to entities in these sectors can cause significant operational downtime, financial losses or damage to brand reputation.
“Due to South Africa’s ever-growing presence on the world stage and relatively lax nature towards information security, raising awareness around these issues is our number one priority. We have been running security bootcamps in conjunction with Radware to upskill organisations in this ever-changing field,” she says.
Partners in securing high-performance data centre infrastructure
As a technology distributor aiming to revolutionise IT infrastructure across Africa, Boston SA specialises in delivering IT infrastructure and private cloud solutions tailored for traditional enterprise environments, AI factories, high-performance computing (HPC) centres and internet service providers (ISPs).
Leveraging its more than 30 years of experience in distribution and OEM markets, Boston SA is able to design, assemble, test and validate bespoke IT, data centre and security solutions tailored precisely to client and project requirements.
Providing services beyond hardware, Boston SA offers full customisation, including client-specific branding, documentation, packaging and global onsite maintenance packages. This end-to-end service model ensures clients receive not just a piece of hardware, but also a fully supported, mission-critical IT infrastructure throughout Africa.
By providing access to its advanced testing facilities, Boston SA can provide clients with access to the latest technologies, hardware and software before committing to a deployment.
To add further value, Boston SA integrates cyber security measures into these solutions, ensuring its high-performance computing and AI infrastructures are not only powerful, but also secure. This integration is part of its broader strategy to provide end-to-end, mission-critical solutions that include onsite and 24-hour support, addressing concerns such as data sovereignty and system reliability across Africa.
Boston SA recently partnered with Radware, adding Radware’s comprehensive suite of integrated network and application security and application delivery solutions to its portfolio.
Benjamin Kewley, Solutions Architect at Boston SA, explains that the partnership significantly enhances Boston SA’s security capabilities, empowering it to deliver robust, scalable and AI-powered protection to ensure that clients can operate securely amid increasingly sophisticated cyber threats – which themselves are now often driven by AI technologies such as large language models fine-tuned specifically for hacking purposes.
He says: “Radware is a global leader in cyber security solutions and provides best-in-class network and application security and application delivery solutions designed to protect our customers and their environments from a wide range of cyber threats – from basic volumetric DDOS attacks to sophisticated bot-driven business logic attacks that have the potential to exfiltrate company data. Radware is an outstanding choice for mitigating these attacks with a single vendor with a focus on South Africa as they are one of the only DDOS protection services with a local scrubbing centre, which makes it a more appealing solution to companies who need to comply with data sovereignty laws. This, along with Radware’s combination of cutting-edge technology, global-scale infrastructure and flexible deployment options, makes Radware stand out above the competition.”
Radware’s cyber security suite includes application and network security solutions infused with state-of-the-art AI and generative AI algorithms, which are designed to block modern attacks while delivering consistent real-time protections across cloud, on-premises and hybrid environments. Designed to automatically and continually adapt to changes in the threat landscape, applications and infrastructure, Radware’s AI-based approach to security helps organisations significantly improve attack detection and mitigation, reduce mean time to resolution (MTTR) and meet compliance challenges. This continuous learning capability enhances threat detection accuracy, reduces false positives and accelerates incident response, enabling Boston SA to offer highly resilient and intelligent cyber security tailored for demanding HPC environments.
Additionally, Radware’s Emergency Response Team offers expert support to swiftly mitigate attacks, further strengthening Boston SA’s security offering.
“This collaboration is a perfect match. It enables us to build private and on-premises cloud solutions as well as offer a security platform to protect such deployments,” says Savitri Smit, Sales Manager at Boston SA.
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