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By 10 August 2011 | Categories: news

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Our friends up north in Kenya are preparing to host the IDC IT Security Roadshow, taking place tomorrow (11 August) at the Hilton Hotel in Nairobi. Taking part in the roadshow is IT security firm Kaspersky Lab, which has announced that it aims to stress the importance of proactive security measures which businesses operating in East Africa need to understand and implement for future success.

“91% of companies have experienced at least one IT security event from an external source in the last 12 months,” said Sergey Novikov, head of EEMEA Research Centre, Kaspersky Lab. “This high statistic certainly proves just how crucial corporate IT security is now more than ever. The reality is that cybercriminal activity targeted at the corporate has, and will continue, to grow on a global scale, especially as newer, more innovative technologies evolve and become critical business competitive tools.”

“And with the prediction that East Africa will be a significant contributor to Africa’s forecasted growth of 3.7% in 2011 - the African continent will continue to boom economically where the business landscape will grow – making businesses operating in African countries an ideal target for cybercriminals.”

In their recently released report, Worldwide Security Products and Services 2011 Top 10 predictions, the IDC drew some interesting conclusions. For instance, the IDC predicts that consumers and enterprises will continue to grow their spending on Endpoint Security at surprising rates, with the reason being obvious - corporate IT security is a necessity.

Customers and enterprises are looking for an integrated approach that offers a broad  range of protection from malicious cyber attacks, accidental disclosure of sensitive  information (consumer and corporate), usage by unauthorised users (identity fraud), and applications (botnets).

“For many years now, Kaspersky Lab has taken an integrated approach to protection in our product offering and believe that IT Security should be top of mind for all businesses operating within the African continent,” Novikov explained. “Apart from the traditional organisation of DDoS attacks, cybercriminals today have a main focus of targeting corporate servers for stealing corporate data and African businesses are not excluded”.

The IDC further predicts that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) globally will see more targeted attacks against data and resources, whilst small businesses will see increasing attacks on customer data. Attempts to take full control of servers, PCs, and storage arrays for botnets, DDoS attacks, spam, phishing, hacktivism and other uses are also expected to increase.

“With SMEs accounting for an estimated 60% of all employment in East Africa, and contributing up to 30% of gross national product, the SME sector in East Africa cannot afford to experience such attacks on their organisations, as the results could be detrimental likely having a ripple effect on the economy,” Novikov added.

Novikov aims to provide his security insight at the IDC IT Security Roadshow, to ensure that businesses operating within the African landscape are made aware of such threats that exist and take the necessary action required to avoid the impact of these attacks. “The reality today is that proactive security is a requirement for all businesses, to ensure effective protection against such threats and attacks. Corporate servers are being attacked continuously and should such activity continue to take place, a business could stand to loss everything.”

“Implementing the necessary corporate IT security measures now is the next major step for East African based businesses in effectively protecting enterprises – ensuring success and as such, continued positive growth of the African continent,” Novikov concluded.
 
In related news Kaspersky Lab also recently announced the release of an update for its Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2011 for Mac, making the software fully compatible with Apple’s newly released Mac OS X Lion operating system.

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