Trend Micro Incorporated (https://apo-opa.info/3QCmUP1) [TYO: 4704 (https://apo-opa.info/3OXOFjC); TSE: 4704 (https://apo-opa.info/3KK0esd)], a global cybersecurity leader, has announced Trend Vision One™ – Endpoint Security, the latest offering in its next-generation cybersecurity platform, which unifies prevention, detection, and response for user endpoints, servers, cloud workloads, and data centres. This comprehensive solution aims to support customers throughout their IT modernisation.

Zaheer Ebrahim, Solutions Architect at Trend Micro MEA: “Surging IT complexity is placing unprecedented demand on teams and providing determined adversaries with more opportunity to infiltrate an ever-expanding attack surface. In response to this challenge, our customers want to simplify security without compromising effectiveness. Trend Vision One – Endpoint Security is a direct answer to this need, helping IT and security organisations stop threats faster and take control of risk.”

By leveraging the consolidated power of Trend Vision One, customers gain access to powerful attack surface risk management, cross-layer protection, and leading XDR capabilities to streamline and harmonise security operations while simultaneously enhancing protection, scalability, and performance. This approach enables security teams to holistically manage the attack surface, including and extending beyond the endpoint to achieve faster, more accurate threat defence and risk mitigation.

Trend Vision One – Endpoint Security (https://apo-opa.info/445XH2s) is built on market-leading capabilities. With a consistent history of endpoint security success, Trend has earned Leader recognition in every Gartner Magic Quadrant™ for Endpoint Protection Platforms since 2002^*1.

Trend has also ranked as the top provider for Cloud Workload Security Market Share (https://apo-opa.info/44bKJjF) (IDC) for an impressive five consecutive years.

By bringing industry-leading and context-rich visibility for user endpoints, servers, and cloud workloads to the platform, security organisations can significantly streamline operations:

• Consolidate products, enhance visibility, and improve correlation: According to Gartner*², “A recent Gartner survey found that 75% of organisations are pursuing security vendor consolidation in 2022, up from 29% in 2020.” Minimise the cost and complexity associated with cybersecurity tool spread by consolidating point products and integrating user endpoint, server, and cloud workload security — reducing IT operation inefficiency and alert fatigue and closing exploitable security gaps while benefiting from high-fidelity detection and response alerting.
• Optimise and customise hybrid IT protection: Leverage specialised security features designed and optimised for physical servers, virtual machines, and cloud workloads.
• Improve the IT and SecOps workflow: Access prevention, detection, and response capabilities at your fingertips — including ransomware rollback, predictive machine learning, device control, host-based intrusion prevention, application control, file integrity monitoring, log inspection, and generative AI support — to accelerate and connect SecOps and IT Ops goals.
• Reduce risk and pre-empt attacks: Proactively quantify and reduce endpoint and cross-layer risk with complete attack surface risk management (ASRM) with native network, cloud, and email data ingestion.

Trend Vision One provides security for every layer of an organisation’s diverse IT infrastructure, including endpoint, servers, email, cloud services, networks, 5G, and OT (operational technology).

With centralised visibility and policy management for all endpoint types, this latest development provides comprehensive protection, detection, and response (EDR) for Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems, whether on-premises or in the cloud, from within a single, user-friendly console.

Trend Vision One is now available on AWS Marketplace. Designed to seamlessly integrate into AWS environments, Trend Vision One offers a cybersecurity platform with a focus on empowering organisations to safeguard their cloud workloads. The platform provides advanced threat detection capabilities and in-depth insights, ensuring a resilient defence against evolving digital threats.

For more detail, please visit AWS Marketplace: https://apo-opa.info/3qor9De

GARTNER and MAGIC QUADRANT are registered trademarks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organisation and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

To learn more about Trend Vision One – Endpoint Security, please visit: https://apo-opa.info/445XH2s

The Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR) is delighted to announce its commitment to fostering success and exceeding expectations, as expressed by NIPR’s President/Chairman, Mallam Muhktar Sirajo, during a recent courtesy visit to the Honorable Minister of Information & National Orientation, Alhaji Mohammed Idris.

Mallam Muhktar Sirajo conveyed the institute’s dedication to serving as a formidable force that will wholeheartedly rally around individuals and initiatives. He assured that NIPR is poised to provide unwavering support, both professionally and otherwise, to ensure not only success but also the attainment of exceptional outcomes.

The occasion, marked by a visit from the Governing Board of NIPR, highlighted the institute’s steadfast commitment to promoting excellence within the realm of public relations and beyond. The NIPR leadership’s commitment echoes the institute’s mission to uphold the highest standards of professionalism and to contribute significantly to the advancement of the public relations landscape.

NIPR recognizes the importance of collaboration and synergy with esteemed partners such as the Honorable Minister of Information & National Orientation, Alhaji Mohammed Idris. This visit serves as a testament to NIPR’s dedication to fostering productive relationships that result in positive contributions to the public sphere.

More than one in three of corporate employees in Africa are vulnerable to phishing attacks and social engineering scams. However, regular training can significantly reduce their chances of falling victim to such cyber threats.

This is among the key findings of KnowBe4’s 2023 Phishing by Industry Benchmarking Report for Africa (https://apo-opa.info/3KJj9nc), which measures organisations’ Phish-prone Percentage (PPP) – an indication of how many of their employees are likely to fall for phishing or a social engineering scam.

The report is based on data from over 12.5 million users across 35,681 organisations in 19 different industries. The results of over 32.1 million simulated phishing security tests are also included. This year’s report details international phishing benchmarks from North America, The United Kingdom and Ireland, Europe, Africa, South America, Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

In Africa, 412 organisations from South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria and Botswana participated in the phishing simulation tests, with a total of 337,937 emails sent. The majority of these organisations (58%) were small (1-249 employees), followed by medium (26%, 250-999 employees) and large (16%, 1000+ employees) ones.

The resulting baseline PPP measured the percentage of employees in organisations that had not conducted any KnowBe4 security training and clicked a simulated phishing email link or opened an infected attachment during testing.

African business users had a lower baseline PPP than many other regions, meaning they were less likely to fall for phishing attacks before any training. However, their improvement after 90 days of training was also lower than other regions. After a year of ongoing training, African users achieved a 79.8% improvement in their PPP, showing the effectiveness of consistent security awareness education.

Africa’s human firewall

“The report underscores the fact that while technology plays an important role in preventing and recovering from an attack, organisations cannot afford to ignore the human factor,” says Anna Collard, Senior Vice President of Content Strategy & Evangelist for KnowBe4 Africa. “The root cause of most data breaches can be traced to the human factor.”

The report shows that without security training, 33.2% of employees across all regions and industries are likely to fall for phishing attacks or fraudulent requests. Africa’s average was 32.8%, slightly better than the global average and much better than South America, where the average was 41.1%. Asia had the lowest rate of phishing – 30%.

Collard notes: “Africa’s baseline phishing security test results shows that one out of three employees are likely to click on a suspicious link or email or comply with a fraudulent request before receiving training. This is very concerning considering that Africa has seen the fastest growth in cyber crimes in recent years, especially among small and medium-sized organisations.”

Training slashes risk

90 days after training, Africa’s PPP average was 20.5% compared to the global average of 18.5%. After a year of consistent training, Africa’s PPP was 6.6%, compared to a global average of 5.4%, indicating that new habits become normal, fostering an improved security culture.

At baseline, Africa’s medium-sized enterprises had the lowest PPP – at 29.4%, followed by small enterprises at 30% and large enterprises with a surprisingly high 33.3%. After training, large enterprises performed best, with a PPP average of 19% 90 days after training and 5.7% after a year. Medium sized enterprises improved to 22.7% 90 days after training, and 10.5% after a year. Small enterprises’ PPP improved to 25.2% after 90 days and 9% after a year.

The report also revealed which industries are most vulnerable to cyber threats and have the highest PPP, indicating more vulnerability and a greater need for security awareness training. Across small and medium organisations globally, the healthcare and pharmaceuticals industries had the highest PPP of 32.3% and 35.8%, respectively. In large organisations, the insurance industry remained the most at risk for a second consecutive year with a PPP of 53.2% globally. With consistent training for a year or more, the global average PPP improvement across sectors was 82%.

“These findings highlight the importance of ongoing, consistent cybersecurity awareness training and testing to achieve significant risk reduction,” says Collard. “Simply warning users or having a once-off training session is not enough. Cybersecurity needs to be ingrained into company culture.”

To download a copy of the 2023 KnowBe4 Phishing by Industry Benchmarking Report, visit https://apo-opa.info/3KH885z.