On 26 August 2019, Pan-African telecommunications service provider SEACOM announced a partnership with cybersecurity Sophos. This partnership will see the two companies develop a “next-generation” security solution called ‘On-Premise Security.’ This solution is aimed at cost-conscious small and medium enterprises (SMEs) across South Africa.
SEACOM’s ‘On-Premise Security’ is said to be a full-suite solution that utilizes Sophos’ XG Firewall as its foundation. It functions as the “out the box” security product which will bundle all licenses and combine essential functionality, such as intrusion prevention, Web Application Firewall and email security together with protection and control measures for web users and applications on the network. Additional features included in the bundle are traffic shaping in order to ensure optimal performance for business-critical systems and features, and comprehensive reporting with automatic identification of employees whose online behaviour may leave the organisation vulnerable to cyberattacks.
“Although many smaller businesses buy into the ‘It won’t happen to me’ mindset, SMEs are as much at risk as big corporates when it comes to threats to their networks. The driving force behind ‘On-Premise Security’ was to create a cost-effective solution to help South African SMEs improve their security posture with minimal effort on the customer’s part,” said Robert Marston, Global Head of Product at SEACOM. ‘On-Premise Security’ is a similar solution to SEACOM’s pre-existing Hosted Security product which is also delivered in partnership with Sophos.
“We want to give our customers more choices that better align with their needs and budgets, and we realised that hosted solutions can be too expensive for some small companies. Working with Sophos allows SEACOM to meet growing security demands in the SME sector by providing synchronised, next-generation cyber-threat protection for networks and endpoints for businesses of this size. With Sophos, we can deliver important cybersecurity and protection to our customers faster and more effectively,” Marston further explains.
“With cyber threats evolving and changing daily, organisations of all sizes need a technology company that’s on the frontline of developing highly effective security solutions that are simple to use. We are committed to building a solid relationship with SEACOM so that they can bring the most innovative and advanced IT security to their customers,” said Pieter Nel, Regional Head, SADC, Sophos.
Edited by Kojo Essah
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