Business Connexion`s Microsoft Competency and Shaya Technologies, a specialist BEE security service delivery company, recently announced a distribution partnership that will see the delivery of a world-first technology to the South African market.
"The technology, called SatSafe, was designed by Shaya Technologies," explains Alison Biddulph, security consultant at Business Connexion`s Microsoft Competency.
"The technology involves using satellites to deliver security patches or software update information directly to a network in mere seconds, avoiding the Internet and possible bandwidth bottlenecks entirely."
With the mean time between the release of a patch and the exploitation of the vulnerability decreasing at an alarming rate, the threat of a day-zero attack is looking more real.
"This proven technology aims to reduce this risk by facilitating the proactive delivery of critical security and software patches to operating systems and applications that require them," Biddulph adds.
The core service includes a satellite dish receiver and Microsoft critical updates. However, according to Business Connexion, the applications can be spread across many other areas of operation, including anti-virus, server and desktop service packs and spam signature files, to name a few.
From an anti-virus point-of-view, SatSafe`s service also includes a 24x7x365 monitoring service, which monitors 117 early warning sites and acquires updates via private FTP sites (supplying the software vendors) as well as public vendor Web sites.
"Potentially large updates are thus made available, almost immediately and directly to users, bypassing the congestion that could be created on traditional Internet lines as updates are downloaded from vendor sites," Biddulph says.
"The added benefit of using satellite technology to deliver updates is that the satellite coverage footprint covers SA and all its neighbouring states, giving businesses the strategic advantage of being able to apply updates to multiple sites, spread over vast areas," Biddulph adds.
This technology has already been deployed in SA, with large governmental agencies such as Armscor protecting its systems across the country using the system.
In addition, a large SA bank is using this technology to deliver software updates to a huge number of disparate branches.
This technology has the potential to add a lot of value to business almost immediately, Business Connexion believes.
Apart from the tangible savings achieved by reducing the load on existing network bandwidth, the ability to patch vulnerabilities, across multiple sites, in almost real-time, could save businesses large amounts of time, money and downtime.
"The need for proactive updating systems has never been more apparent," Biddulph comments.
"The updates are available from vendors. However, with threats becoming more complex and the time needed to patch vulnerabilities decreasing, the delivery method needs to be sped up, which is where this technology helps to make businesses more secure in SA," she concludes.
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