Growth for Kaspersky in the Middle East, Turkey and Africa (META) will come from threat Intelligence services, says Maxim Frolov, the newly appointed MD for the META region at Kaspersky.
This is due to an increase in demand for the services globally, and especially in the Middle East, says Frolov, adding he aims to double sales in the META region by 2020.
The company says in recent years it has expanded its enterprise security portfolio with solutions and services based on threat intelligence to better protect its customers.
According to Gartner, by 2018, 60% of large enterprises globally will utilise commercial threat intelligence services to help inform their security strategies.
Christian Christiansen, IDC programme VP, Security Products, at Kaspersky says it has vast experience in threat intelligence and a long history of discovering some of most high-profile advanced persistent threats that have been seen globally to date.
Due to people's increased connectedness across Africa and the continued Internet penetration growth, cyber-attacks are on the rise as cyber criminals continue to pay attention to the region, says Frolov.
One of the biggest areas of concern in African countries remains online and mobile banking, he adds.
"A decade ago, these platforms were used by a limited number of early adopters, but have since evolved to into a mainstream service - especially in Kenya. Cyber criminals are paying attention to this - and are exploiting these services for cyber crime."
Another challenge or area of concern - especially for businesses - is the bring your own device (BYOD) trend, notes Frolov.
"As BYOD becomes more commonplace, we have seen the number of incidents involving mobile devices and risk to business grow."
Therefore, ensuring the centralised management of these devices, and keeping them secure at all times, should be seen as an important and relevant need for businesses today, says Frolov.
It's inevitable that in any company, small or large, many employees will use personal devices to connect to the corporate network and access confidential data without even considering the possible dangers, he notes.
That's why companies need to implement security measures - such as policies and IT solutions - that safeguard both corporate and personal mobile devices, adds Frolov.
"There is still a lot of improvement needed in the area of cyber security in this fast-developing region, so together with our local partners, we will work on making the Internet safer for users by providing solutions and raising awareness about cyber threats."
New appointment
In his new role, Frolov will be working alongside Riaan Badenhorst, MD of Kaspersky Lab Africa.
His long term goal is to strengthen Kaspersky's leadership in the region by establishing the required partner relationships and promoting new offerings for enterprise and small and medium enterprises.
Frolov is now responsible for growing the business within more than 60 countries across the territory.
He has previously worked at Microsoft Russia as SMB director and prior to that he worked at Seagate Technology for 10 years.
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