Johannesburg, 11 Sep 2003
Symantec, the world leader in Internet security, today announced the appointment of Faritec as its first Managed Security Services (MSS) partner in SA. Symantec recently announced the introduction of its MSS offerings to the South African market and its intention to deliver these services through selected partners.
Faritec is a JSE-listed IT services company that provides managed business and technology infrastructure solutions. Already a Symantec Enterprise Security Partner, Faritec has satisfied rigorous criteria necessary for qualification as a Managed Security Services partner.
In terms of the partnership, Faritec will provide complete management of client environments, including the provision of risk profiling, vulnerability assessment, BS 7799 auditing and consulting, security roadmap design and implementation, firewall management and anti-virus updating from its secure operations centre in Woodmead. 24x7 monitoring will be provided by Symantec's Security Operations Centre from its location in the UK, where a massive 38-terabyte database is leveraged to constantly analyse activity on the networks of Faritec's clients.
According to Gordon Love, director of Faritec Strategic IT Services, the company is uniquely providing a complete managed security service to South African clients with the backing of Symantec's extensive monitoring facilities.
"As a fully outsourced solution, managed security maximises customers' investment in all security technologies with the added intelligence required to isolate real threats. Managed security services also removes the burden of having to keep up with the latest security technologies, as well as the need to recruit, train and retrain security professionals," says Love.
Love explains that managed security provides a vendor-neutral, comprehensive array of outsourced security management, monitoring and response services that help organisations to solve security problems cost effectively.
"In the past a company would be on its own in the event of an attack. MSS gives organisations access to the knowledge of Internet security experts in order to protect the value of their networked assets and infrastructure," says William Beer, Symantec's director for Symantec Security Services for Southern EMEA.
He explains that corporate firewalls, intrusion detections systems, and other security devices generate an immense volume of data that is virtually impossible to interpret without consuming significant in-house IT staff resources.
"With Symantec, Faritec is providing the only managed security service available in SA today that is fully capable of detecting, analysing and responding to the mass of security data a network produces - all in real-time, providing better protection than ever," says Beer.
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