Breaches are one thing that any modern company must be wary of and invest to protect. As we are getting more exposed in the virtual world, the 21st century company is digitally savvy and the need to be online is critical, protecting these online credentials and assets becomes imminent and imperative. Zoracom, an indigenous IT firm located in the upscale are of Lagos has one of the best facilities in the sub- Saharan Africa to protect your assets against any breach of any kind. Known as NSOC Centre (Network Security Operations Centre), this facility has been described as one of a kind in ECOWAS region.
The ZORACOM NSOC Centre holds significant importance for Nigerian businesses in the realm of cybersecurity and safeguarding their digital infrastructure. In today’s interconnected world, where businesses heavily rely on technology and data, the need for robust cybersecurity measures is paramount. The ZORACOM NSOC Centre plays a crucial role in addressing this need by providing advanced security services, proactive monitoring, and incident response capabilities.
First and foremost, the ZORACOM NSOC Centre serves as a centralized hub for monitoring and protecting the networks and systems of Nigerian businesses. It employs cutting-edge technologies, sophisticated tools, and a team of skilled cybersecurity professionals to continuously monitor network traffic, detect any suspicious activities or potential threats, and respond swiftly to mitigate risks. This proactive approach helps in identifying and neutralizing security breaches before they can cause significant harm to businesses.
By leveraging advanced threat intelligence and analytics, the ZORACOM NSOC Centre can identify emerging threats, vulnerabilities, and attack patterns. This allows them to stay one step ahead of cybercriminals and implement effective countermeasures. Nigerian businesses can benefit from this intelligence-driven approach as it enhances their ability to protect sensitive data, intellectual property, and customer information, thus fostering trust and reliability.
Moreover, the ZORACOM NSOC Centre offers real-time incident response capabilities. In the event of a security incident or breach, the NSOC team promptly responds to contain the threat, minimize the impact, and restore normal operations. This rapid response is crucial for businesses as it reduces downtime, prevents financial losses, and protects their reputation.
Additionally, the ZORACOM NSOC Centre provides round-the-clock support, ensuring that Nigerian businesses have constant access to cybersecurity expertise. This support extends beyond incident response to include proactive advice, best practices, and security awareness training. Such guidance helps organizations develop robust security policies, implement effective security controls, and educate their employees about potential risks, thereby strengthening their overall security posture.
Furthermore, the ZORACOM NSOC Centre plays a vital role in compliance management. It assists businesses in meeting regulatory requirements and industry standards related to data protection and cybersecurity. This is particularly crucial for sectors such as finance, healthcare, and telecommunications, where compliance is highly regulated and non-compliance can result in severe penalties. The NSOC Centre helps Nigerian businesses navigate these complex compliance landscapes, ensuring they adhere to the necessary security protocols.
In summary, the ZORACOM NSOC Centre is of utmost importance to Nigerian businesses due to its role in enhancing cybersecurity, providing real-time monitoring and incident response, offering expert support, and ensuring compliance. By leveraging the services of the NSOC Centre, Nigerian businesses can safeguard their digital assets, mitigate cyber threats, and foster a secure environment that enables growth, innovation, and sustained success in the ever-evolving digital landscape.
The rise in finance and accounting cybercrime through phishing and Business Email Compromise (BEC) has made headlines with massive implications for South African companies with gaps in their payment systems. “However, robust financial controls together with strong server, IT, and email monitoring processes aren’t enough if staff aren’t savvy to the psychological tricks scammers use to manipulate people, making them more vulnerable to tricker and deception,” says Ryan Mer, CEO at eftsure Africa, a Know Your Payee™ (KYP) platform provider.
Mer says it’s a myth that only gullible, unskilled professionals are susceptible to scams. “The misconception that only foolish individuals fall victim to cybercrime and payment fraud is dangerous because it leads to complacency in the highly educated who occupy senior positions within organisations. Criminals engaging in payment are often well-skilled, well-resourced and armed with enough industry knowledge to appear legitimate.”
Manipulating trust and competence
Scammers rely on human impulses to be helpful, avoid conflict, and problem-solve quickly and effectively to extract information or manipulate targets into taking action.
A common modus operandi is an attempt to win the trust of a potential victim by impersonating a known or trusted figure. Examples include an employee receiving a mail from an organisation’s financial director instructing them to arrange urgent payment to a supplier or an HR manager receiving a polite email from a member of staff requesting their bank details be changed for payroll purposes.
“An employee’s desire to perform their duties swiftly and competently, especially for a trusted figure of authority, is manipulated by criminals who rely on an instruction being actioned without question for a scam to be successful. In such instances, only an automated system for detecting red flags in outbound payments can offer the level of protection organisations really need to counter human error,” says Mer.
Banking on urgency
While scammers become increasingly inventive, an age-old tactic cybercriminals routinely rely on is creating a sense of urgency in their victims. Mer says phishing messages and business email compromise scams are designed to make employees more likely comply with a potential threat that they know they should report. “Scammers lure victims into acting quickly before they have time to think rationally about the activities they’re undertaking. Implementing processes that require staff to slow down and double-check any actions that involve payments is vital.”
He adds that a sudden change in customer or supplier business practices, such as a new point of contact, change of email address or banking details should be viewed with caution and thoroughly verified before complying with an urgent request. “In many organisations, there is a concerning disconnect between the theoretical controls in place and what actually happens in everyday business contexts. Cybercriminals often rely on the herd principle in which people in organisations adopt the behaviour of those around them. The risk that one person in a team complies with a scammer may result in others being deceived in the same way. Sound business processes and educated staff, while essential, can only protect a business so far as sophisticated phishing and BEC scams can defeat the internal controls of even the most vigilant teams,” says Mer.
Extra, automated protection
Cybercrime is constantly evolving which makes it a moving target. Interpol’s last African Cyberthreat Assessment Report published in 2021, placed South Africa as having the third-highest number of cybercrime victims in the world, costing the country a staggering R2.2-billion annually. “Ongoing education on the latest scams and the tactics used to execute them is crucial for South African companies. In addition, independent third-party verification systems like eftsure can offer a much-need extra layer of protection by automating payment checking and supplier verification, saving time on manual processes and reducing human error,” notes Mer.
Throughout 2022 (https://bit.ly/3wQqhGM), 40% of industrial control system (ICS) computers globally were attacked with malware. In Africa, the figure sits at 47% according to Kaspersky (www.Kaspersky.co.za) ICS CERT*. For countries monitored on the African continent, the three countries which experienced the most attacks on ICS infrastructure were Ethiopia (62%), Algeria (59%), and Burundi (57%). Among others, they are followed by Rwanda (46%), Kenya (41%), Nigeria and Zimbabwe (both stand at 40%), Ghana (39%), Zambia (38%) and South Africa and Uganda (both stand at 36%). This is a high growth threat landscape in Africa that no public or private sector entity, especially in critical sectors like energy and mining, can ignore.
“One infected USB drive or a single spear-phishing email is all it takes for cyber criminals to bridge the air gap and penetrate an isolated ICS network. Traditional security is not adequate to protect industrial environments from rapidly evolving cyber threats. As attacks against critical infrastructure increase, choosing the right approach to secure systems has never been more important,” says Brandon Muller, Kaspersky tech expert and consultant in the Middle East and African region.
Think of an ICS as a collection of personnel, hardware, and software that can affect or influence the safe, secure, and reliable operation of an industrial process. IT is one component of this environment with operational technology (OT) another key element. While traditional cybersecurity solutions focus on data-oriented businesses, ICS protection is geared towards OT security where it is all about cyber-physical companies such as utilities, mining, manufacturing, and so on.
Effective OT cybersecurity measures must therefore include industrial endpoint protection to prevent accidental infections and make motivated intrusion more difficult, OT network monitoring and anomaly detection to identify malicious actions on the level of programmable logic controllers, and dedicated expert services to investigate the infrastructure, conduct expert analytics, or mitigate the impact of an incident.
“However, despite all the innovations in modern cybersecurity solutions, human error still plays a significant role in compromising ICS systems. As such, it needs to be managed much more proactively than what is currently happening. This requires utility companies, mines, and others operating in the industrial environment to look at building a Human Firewall,” adds Muller.
As attacks against critical infrastructure increase, choosing the right approach to secure systems has never been more important
One of the best ways to achieve this is through the right security awareness and training solutions that go beyond basic training. Instead, it is about delivering training that is easily digestible, practical, and memorable so it will always stay top of mind. Companies must provide training to ensure staff are armed with the very latest skills and knowledge, especially given how quickly cyber incidents evolve.
Beyond the Human Firewall, there are sector-specific interventions to consider. For instance, modern electrical power systems are complex environments requiring protection, automation, and control solutions covering all areas of electric power facility operation. Notwithstanding the technical challenges of securing this environment, organisational issues must also be considered. For instance, a lack of guides defining actions to be taken when suspicious activity is detected within automated systems. There is also a lack of documents and practices relating to the investigation of disturbances in technological environments including malicious influence on control systems.
Mines are also hotbeds for potential attacks especially at a time when Industry 4.0 digital technologies link key operational systems to data analytics and cloud environments. Mines are confronted by escalating cybersecurity threats but lack the in-house skills to adequately protect their OT and ICS environments. Combining ICS cybersecurity solutions with ongoing user education and training are non-negotiables especially when human lives are at risk.
“It is a holistic approach towards ICS cybersecurity that incorporates hardware, software, and user awareness training components that will result in a hardened defensive posture around all aspects of OT security processes,” says Muller.
For more information on Kaspersky’s product offering for Industrial Cybersecurity, visit: https://ICS.Kaspersky.com/
Kaspersky Industrial CyberSecurity is a portfolio of products and services specially designed by Kaspersky to secure Operational Technology layers and elements of industrial enterprises. Aimed to provide a holistic approach to industrial cybersecurity, Kaspersky Industrial CyberSecurity brings value on any stage of the OT security process – from cybersecurity assessment and training to advanced technologies and incident response.
Introduces Sophos Marketplace and $1 Million Breach Protection Warranty
Sophos X-Ops Identifies LockBit 3.0 Similarities to BlackMatter; Attackers Use Pentesting and Credential Theft to Evade Detection, Requiring Specialized MDR Skills to Spot Them
Dec. 05, 2022 – Sophos, a global leader in innovating and delivering cybersecurity as a service, has announced the general availability of Sophos Managed Detection and Response (MDR) with new industry-first threat detection and response capabilities.
Sophos is the first endpoint security provider to integrate vendor agnostic telemetry from third-party security technologies into its MDR offering, providing unprecedented visibility and detection across diverse operating environments. Sophos also introduced the Sophos Marketplace and $1 million Sophos Breach Protection Warranty.
The need for MDR services and specialized defenders has never been greater, as shown in today’s new research, “LockBit 3.0 ‘Black’ Attacks and Leaks Reveal Wormable Capabilities and Tooling,” from Sophos X-Ops, the company’s cross-domain threat intelligence unit. The research analyzes tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) used by LockBit, one of today’s most prolific ransomware gangs, that are similar to BlackMatter, and explains how the latest version of the ransomware, LockBit 3.0, adds wormable capabilities and uses legitimate pentesting tools to evade detection.
In a second article, “Detection Tools and Human Analysis Lead to a Security Non-Event,” Sophos X-Ops details a recent Sophos MDR use case involving credential theft, another technique that allows adversaries to impersonate legitimate users. In this case, the Sophos MDR team combined its threat hunting intelligence with information from the customer’s third-party security appliance to thwart an attack.
“The only way to reliably detect and neutralize determined attackers who increasingly combine the use of pentesting tools, stolen credentials and other stealthy tactics to maneuver undetected is with 24×7 eyes on glass, operating on signals from a diversity of event sources and employing actionable threat intelligence into real-time attacker behaviors,” said Joe Levy, chief technology and product officer at Sophos. “Organizations are struggling to keep pace with well-funded adversaries who are continuously innovating and industrializing their ability to evade defensive technologies alone. Sophos MDR can discover and intercept these steps before they result in a data breach, ransomware or other type of costly compromise. Sadly, ransomware persists as one of the greatest cybercrime threats to organizations, as evidenced in the Sophos 2023 Threat Report. We’re raising the industry standard for how critical MDR services can be delivered to broaden visibility for better, faster detection and response.”
Industry-First Detection and Response and the New Sophos Marketplace
Sophos is the first leading endpoint security provider delivering MDR across both its own product portfolio as well as end users’ existing security deployments. To support this effort, Sophos launched the Sophos Marketplace, an open ecosystem of more than 75 technology integrations, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Check Point, CrowdStrike, Darktrace, Fortinet, Google, Microsoft, Okta, Palo Alto Networks, Rapid7, and many others. Expanded visibility across these integrations and diverse operating environments enables Sophos MDR experts to better detect and remediate attacks with speed and precision, regardless of customers’ existing security solutions.
In addition to Sophos MDR, Sophos Marketplace provides third-party integrations for Sophos’ portfolio of services, products and technologies. Telemetry is automatically consolidated, correlated and prioritized with insights from the Sophos Adaptive Cybersecurity Ecosystem and the Sophos X-Ops threat intelligence unit.
Extended Protection Warranty
Sophos stands behind its MDR customers with the new Sophos Breach Protection Warranty that covers up to $1 million in response expenses for organizations protected by Sophos MDR Complete, Sophos’ most comprehensive MDR offering. Underwritten solely by Sophos, the warranty covers endpoints – both Windows and Mac devices – and servers, and unlike competitive offerings, there are no warranty tiers or duration limitations for active customers. This Sophos Breach Protection Warranty is automatically included with all purchases and renewals of Sophos MDR Complete annual subscriptions through Sophos’ global reseller partner network.
Availability
More than 13,000 organizations already rely on Sophos’ existing MDR service for 24/7 threat hunting, detection and response by an expert team as a fully-managed service. The newest offering with third party integration capabilities is available now, and the service is customizable with different tiers and threat response options, enabling customers to choose whether to have the Sophos MDR operations team execute full-scale incident response, provide collaborative assistance for confirmed threats, or deliver detailed alert notifications for their security operations teams to manage themselves.
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The Sophos Marketplace, which provides integrations for the entire Sophos portfolio, including Sophos MDR, Sophos Central, Sophos Factory, and Sophos Cloud Optix
SLVA Cybersecurity, in collaboration with ContraForce are bringing enterprise-scale cyber security to small and medium enterprises with 24/7 threat detection, actionable response plans, time-saving automation processes and more.
SMEs today face the challenge of navigating a complex threat landscape complete with technical jargon and the minefield of choosing a vendor with a comprehensive solution to meet their needs.
These factors have been a crucial driver in the development of ContraForce, which strives to make security accessible and affordable through partners like SLVA CyberSecurity.
“By partnering with SLVA, we’re able to expand our offerings to both South Africa and the broader African continent,” says Stanislav Golubchik, CEO and Co-Founder of ContraForce. “Cybersecurity from SMBs to small and mid-sized enterprises isn’t just a problem in the United States— it’s a global issue that needs to be addressed. ContraForce and SLVA CyberSecurity share this vision and together, we can make major strides to ensure businesses of all sizes have access to cybersecurity.”
Patrick Evans, CEO of SLVA CyberSecurity, indicates that because a majority of SMEs utilize a Microsoft ecosystem, ContraForce has integrated deeply with native Microsoft technologies— especially Microsoft Sentinel, Defender and Microsoft 365.
“ContraForce’s availability in the Microsoft ecosystem extends SLVA’s reach to a broader customer base, making cybersecurity more attainable for businesses that need it most. Further, its availability in the Azure Marketplace enables customers to simply and efficiently procure ContraForce through their existing contracts with Microsoft.”
“Believe it or not, if you’re unsure how to start (but are reading this article), you are actually way ahead of most organisations. The key to getting started is to find tools that are built for simplicity with your specific needs in mind,” Evans adds.
“ContraForce delivers a radically simple security operations tool. It’s designed specifically for SMEs to be used by IT generalists, not experienced cybersecurity professionals. The platform provides around-the-clock threat detection and response, then verifies each threat so IT teams aren’t sifting through insignificant alerts. It walks users through guided remediation steps so there’s no learning curve on how to respond to threats. With incident report playbooks, users can resolve threats with a single click.”
Until now, managing security operations required a highly-skilled, expensive SecOps team, available 24/7 who relied on manual or semi-automated processes to respond to events.
“By way of contrast, ContraForce is a highly automated solution for SMEs which works in an organization of five people equally as well as it works in an organization of 5,000 people.” Evans adds that the financial implications of a ransomware attack are staggering. “SMEs are often under-resourced and understandably cannot direct sufficient time and attention to security. However, 50% of SMEs will experience a breach in the coming year and 60% of SMEs that do experience a ransomware attack can expect to be out of business within six months.”
ContraForce implementation is seamless as installation and deployment takes place online within minutes. In addition, the platform connects to existing security investments, making it easy to set up. And because it is AI/ML-based, it immediately adapts to each business’s unique environment to categorize threats accordingly and respond automatically to incidents as and when then they occur.
“This is no-code security automation that considers SMEs’ IT environments, whether on-prem or in the cloud, and ticks all compliance and analytics boxes within a single easy-to-use dashboard. Ultimately, 90% of attacks can be remediated, many of which can be done automatically, provided a business has the right technology in place,” says Evans.
By: Steve Flynn, Sales and Marketing Director for ESET Southern Africa
After two years of unexpected events, how will 2022 stack against what is becoming a much more sophisticated approach to cybercrime? While cloud technology enjoyed an unprecedented increase in its adoption, entire industries were held back after major cyberattacks. To cap off an eventful 2021, many organisations entered the festive season with some form of threat from the Log4J vulnerability hanging over their heads too. Awareness is, in effect, a form of prevention and understanding the increasing trends, which set the tone for the year to come in cybersecurity can only help build appropriate defence mechanisms.
As the world continues to move towards the increasingly common distributed workforce and the steady shift towards the cloud, ESET, a global leader in cybersecurity, says that there has been a greater and understandable demand for reliable end-point security with increases in targeted ransomware attacks. Despite the concern that remote computing has caused, it does present an opportunity for many organisations to modernise their infrastructure and move more of the workloads into the cloud. The result, in many instances, is a more reliable, recoverable and scalable infrastructure set not only for its clients but for ESET too.
The cloud is the limit
Although more of a gradual upgrade rather than a dramatic shift, organisations are moving their infrastructure off-premise as they opt for more reliability, the scalability offered from Cloud solutions that can adapt to the needs of the business.
Employees are returning to work, but it seems more likely that the new workplace will be more hybrid, necessitating unique security requirements. A far greater emphasis on protecting end-point devices is required as security to The Edge is only reasonable in on-premise solutions. As a result, In 2022, it will be necessary for every organisation to evaluate their return to work policies and ensure that the security measures they have in place suit the needs of a hybrid workforce and the protection of their data. Many of the existing security technologies that organisations have in place are inapplicable.
Cyberattacks on small businesses had a massive impact in 2021. Upwards of 60% said they could not recover financially from a severe cyber or ransomware attack. And the massive cyberattacks on the Department of Justice and another South African parastatal, Transnet, in 2021, showed that even large organisations could suffer irreparable harm.
Consequently, there will be increasing demand for high-quality, reputable security software for laptops, which are the backbone for many SMBs and end-user mobile devices.
ESET LiveGuard is a feature that adds a layer of cloud-based protection specifically designed to mitigate threats that are new in the wild by intelligently moving to a protected cloud-based sandbox, virtually eliminating any threat of malware or suspicious scripts unknowingly being opened.
In the partner landscape, ESET provides efficient tools to enable how its partners solution their customers with the best support and cloud-based security products.
System-driven efficiencies
The pandemic continues to unsettle activities that partners and clients relied on previously: face to face get-togethers and engagements, training and other on-premise support. Support services and training – typically delivered in-person in the past – will continue to become the norm to facilitate online, but still, several systems at organisations need to be adapted to facilitate this move.
The benefit of this shift to online-based interactions is that many organisations, including ESET, have found new ways of providing customer support, training and business development, forcing a critical review of many systems and processes.
This fundamental shift will improve efficiency and efficacy in how ESET engages with its partners, clients and customers.
Recently IDC MarketScape acknowledged ESET for the continued reinvestment of its profits into software development, core threat research, and threat hunting. The acknowledgement is a cornerstone of why ESET remains Europe’s favourite cybersecurity brand and fast becoming a significant player in South Africa, too.
Partnering for success
ESET Southern Africa’s engagement with its partners continues to deliver results. Successful partnerships are the core of a vendor’s success. ESET’s re-imagined engagement platform increased support and dedication to helping managed services providers and resellers achieve their sales goals is expected to build on the success that the company enjoyed in 2022.
We expect this to be helped by excellent new products in the consumer and enterprise Cloud space.
Looking ahead
Organisations large and small saw – to some extent – the effects of not having adequate protection in place. Cyberthreats are sophisticated, and cybercriminals will stop at nothing to hold a business or individual to ransom, acquire data, or steal funds. And cybercrime is increasing unabated.
Sophisticated attacks are going to become more personalised, which will drive an even greater need to protect vulnerable proprietary applications from attack.
Organisations cannot operate today without some form of a protective solution in place regardless of where the infrastructure is located or what device it is on.
Ethnos IT Security Solutions Limited is celebrating 10 years as an IT Security solution provider. Can we know how it all started?
As a company we were designed to provide security solutions to organisations, businesses and others. As technology keeps improving we came to knowledge that security is the backbone of technology. We can’t talk about technology advancement without thinking of how to secure your business assets and human to human engagements. We, at Ethnos IT Solutions have grown with the growth of technology, Today, technology is looking at artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, metaverse, digital transformation, Holography and many others. We have grown with these new technologies and also improved in our capacity and skillset to support our customers as they consume these technologies. We have grown our market base, personnel, in terms of global technical engagements we have grown also. That is the journey. Someone said if I survive 5 years it means we would be in business for long and thank God we have survived these 5 years and we are ten today. Ten years has been a good experience for us. We have our ups and downs but we keep evolving.
Are you focused in B2B relationship or B2C relationship as it pertains to cyber security business?
Currently, we have a wealth of experience and we have changed our thinking and vision as a company. What we do now is to solve real problems for organisation and we are not limited in our thinking. We are not limited in any area of cyber security. Companies and organisations are on a journey as it pertains to business and we come in to solve problems for organisations in terms of security. We are no longer at this stage delivering products but solving problems. Some customers we evaluate them, some we train them and improve their cyber hygiene culture, some we deploy technologies to control their touchpoints, some we help on their regulatory compliance and certification journeys. We do firewall, application security, database security or perimeter security. So, we look at businesses and implement threat management and we have platforms that we can plugin your environment and help you control and detect threats from internet exposure to data base etc. We detect and remediate these threats. We also conduct threat hunting and keep checking what criminals will check for, we detect it before the criminals. We specialise in solving problems for customers regardless of what you are doing.
Do you do Penetration and vulnerability testing for companies?
Yes, we always do that for customers, before we implement anything, we first assess your threat and risk level… we do what we call threat assessment. This is the first level we take. Currently, we are conducting vulnerability and assessment testing for most of the stockbrokers as required by the Nigerian Stock Exchange.
What do you think about security breaches in Nigerian banking system?
There is the roadmap from Central Bank for banks on the levels of protections that should be in place. They have gone to define some framework that the banks must have, they are also looking at mobile environment such as mobile applications. If the CBN defines a roadmap, then banks must follow them because they are developed from expert experience and advise. So, banks must follow these guidelines. I’m not aware the Nigerian government has enacted a law that compels every organization to make their breaches public. This is what a responsible government must do. Banks are making huge efforts and investment to protect their data and that of their customers. I do sympathize with them because as they borrow new frameworks and technologies, they sometimes run into difficulties and no organization is breach proof and I know that the banks and CBN aren’t sleeping.
https://ethnos.com.ng
What about independent merchants and those deploying mobile apps?
As of the merchants, I don’t know how much regulatory frameworks are into this area. People are spinning out all kinds of mobile app, depending on what they are offering and these apps collate critical information from people and we do not know how they store and process it. We do not know the level of investment and I do not know how they do their source code analysis etc? We know how much source code analysis cost. The criticality of source code environment determines how strong the app is and criminals are now looking in that direction to launch attacks… there is the need to regulate them because if the apps are vulnerable, the users are in trouble.
Now, what do you think about public sector and what do you think that the government can do?
In business you have to know that there is what is called “focus”. Our focus as a business is to offer solutions to private businesses, it is easier and faster to deal with the organized private sector. Government isn’t an easy client to deal with, we do not want to be distracted while chasing or engaging with government. We know the political side of it and we are apolitical as a firm. If the government wants to engage us, we are open to consultancy but as per chasing government contracts, we are strictly focused on private sector. Although, we are engaging with NITDA as a DPCO (Data Protection Regulator Organization) that has been certified by NITDA. We want the lawmakers to make law on security of critical public infrastructure. There are couple of experts who are speaking to government here. We believe that it will come out positive.
You changed your corporate logo, why the change?
When we started as a company, we wanted to create an identity but as we have come of age, we tweaked our logo a bit to reflect whom we are as of today. The concept of the circle you find in our logo shows a network of our customers. If you look at it clearly it is not broken, we meant here that our customers are safeguarded and we are supplying the livewire they need to grow. We wanted that to reflect in our logo as a problem-solving organization.
What have you learnt this past 10 years as a CEO of an IT firm?
As a Chief Executive Officer of this organization and the leader of this team, I have learnt a lot of things. As a person, I have learnt to create a platform for people to thrive. We recently created an academy where people are recruited and made to know the rudiments of cybersecurity. We created a platform that will have skills available to the young ones and we trained them at no charges. We are building a platform of security experts. We are also a strong and bonded team; we encourage people to try. Opportunities abound in the market and we encourage people to take advantage of them. I also learnt that you just have to put in your best strategically and see where life take you. I enjoy what I do, it is no longer like a work to me but a lifestyle.
How did you gain market acceptance during your early years as an indigenous firm?
Well, it is mindset which has become cultural where Nigerians believe that foreign firms are better but we met some Nigeria who were of different opinion and they gave us a chance and here we are today. The industry has grown today, we were early birds that came to the industry when it was young or green. The security industry has grown so wide and today a lot of people have joined and the industry has grown. What sets us apart is that we do not only provide products but we provide services. We go to companies with questions like; what have you tried and failed? What are your plans for security? what fears do you nurse and your plan? We help organization answer these and even equip the people with skillset. We help organization to optimize their products. These are few of the things that sets us apart. We appreciate those that gave us a chance during the early days. A good number of Nigerian companies died off due to the acceptability of their products where many business owners think that foreign firms are better. Some companies are built from scratch to survive and we are built to stay in business and provide an environment for many others to thrive and grow.
What do we expect from you in future?
Currently, we are running a platform that allows us to conduct detection and response. It is a managed service that is focused on threat hunting. We want to grow that platform and see many organizations cost effectively enjoy security protection. We want to expand our capacity and give people opportunity to express themselves and contribute to protecting national assets. Cyberspace is getting more dangerous today with software everywhere, we have houses, watches, phones and a whole lot that is powered by software and because software is everywhere, it means that risk is everywhere. We want to stay relevant and ensure that these software are protected because they carry critical information from health, flight, defense, education to financial to others.
Today, technology is looking at artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, metaverse, digital transformation, Holography and many others. We have grown with these new technologies and also improved in our capacity and skillset to support our customers as they consume these technologies. We have grown our market base, personnel, in terms of global technical engagements we have grown also. That is the journey. Someone said if I survive 5 years it means we would be in business for long and thank God we have survived these 5 years and we are ten today. Ten years has been a good experience for us. We have our ups and downs but we keep evolving.
