Former Vodacom cyber security specialist, Vernon Fryer, has joined NEC Africa to head up the African cyber business and Cyber Defence Operation Centre.
Fryer, who was formerly Group Chief Technology Security Officer at Vodacom where he strategically aligned networks, information services, and Vodafone Group Technology Security, has over 46 years experience.
Eugene le Roux, MD and President of NEC Africa, says: “Vernon is a real thought leader in the cyber security space and with his vision for combining physical and digital security through the application of NEC technologies excites us. His passion, together with his background in service providers and government, makes him the ideal candidate to help us build this new business in Africa. He has built the Cyber Operations Centre over the last eight years for Vodacom with huge success and we are honoured to have him join our business.”
Le Roux adds that Fryer will collaborate closely with NEC’s global Cyber Defence Operations Centre to create local expertise in collaboration with local partners.
NEC already has cyber operations facilities in Japan, Singapore, Australia, Austria and America to be joined by the newly planned centre in Africa. “XON, our local associate, currently performs many consulting and installation services around security on a project-by-project basis. Our plan is to utilise NEC’s global competence with our local skill in establishing a new security-as-a-service business model,” says le Roux.
“NEC Africa is the African extension of NEC’s consolidated global intelligence and security services network,” says Fryer. “NEC Africa’s cyber defence operations centre builds on the first Cyber Security Factory in Japan created in 2014, the later Singapore Cyber Security Factory established in 2016, and several new Security Operations Centres (SOC) created in Australia, the US, and Austria.
“Our service is unique on the African continent. We are the only service provider capable of integrating physical and cyber security,” he says. “Typically that’s the extraction of facial recognition intelligence, fingerprints and so on, combined with data from social media feeds and other similar sources such as usernames, handles, hashtags, e-mail addresses, written posts, messages, location data, time stamps, photographs, and videos. We combine the data to place individuals at a location at the time of an alleged crime with identifying evidence for law enforcement officials.
An example may be the #FeesMustFall protest where several social media posts could have identified instigators of violence. Another would be the East Rand cash-in-transit heist during which the armoured car was blown apart. A third could be the cash heist at OR Tambo in which robbers made off with more than R20m destined for a bank in the UK.”
Fryer’s experience began at IBM in finances and continued through to the South African Police Service (SAPS) where he was head of information security, head of cyber crime for Interpol Southern Africa, and national head of the Computer Crime Unit.
Staff Writer
