Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 39 | Page 15

Arcserve Southern Africa tackles ransomware threat Cloud uptake shifts in South African enterprise sector A rcserve Southern Africa has announced the availability of the Arcserve Ransomware readiness assessment which enables businesses to measure their capabilities and chart a path to a ransomware-free future. Byron Horn-Botha, Arcserve Southern Africa Lead: Channel and Partnerships, said: “Ransomware has become one of the largest business risks and serves as the most menacing threat to IT organisations. It’s reached epidemic proportions globally, with costs projected to reach US$20 billion by 2021.” Information security management is an essential part of good IT governance, particularly with respect to protecting critical business and personal data from ransomware. Horn-Botha says the assessment is constructed around a scorecard that outlines the important areas that companies should be scrutinising within their businesses. He said: “The scorecard describes a five-level evolutionary path of increasingly organised and systematically more mature processes. For each of the items in the ransomware-free framework, you can assess your organisation’s maturity score and consider your priorities. Mark the box that best fits your company profile. The assessment shows businesses where they should be restricting access to common ransomware entry points, such as personal email accounts and social networking websites. It also shows how web filtering may be used at the gateway and endpoint to block phishing attempts for users who are tricked into clicking on a link.” Andrew Cruise, MD of Routed T he managing director of a vendor neutral provider of cloud infrastructure says that while there is an increase in cloud adoption within the enterprise, there is a shift in how these organisations are choosing to engage. Andrew Cruise, MD of Routed, said: “While the RightScale State of the Cloud report states that hybrid cloud is a dominant enterprise strategy, locally we are seeing the sector shifting from being ‘all-in’ with a hyperscaler or native cloud provider to a more measured hybrid cloud approach with providers such as VMware.” Byron Horn-Botha, Arcserve Southern Africa Lead: Channel and Partnerships www.intelligentcio.com He said that a hybrid cloud strategy, defined by Routed as a combination of owned infrastructure and public cloud, enables an organisation to diversify spend and skills, build resilience and carefully select features and proficiencies depending on where a vendor’s strength lies, doing this without any fear of the dreaded vendor lock-in. “In line with this cloud-first strategy increase among the enterprise sector, we are seeing a need for a greater focus on establishing cloud Centres of Excellence. It is imperative that there are controls, tools and best practices available to help accelerate the use of cloud, while also trying to mitigate any costs or risks,” said Cruise. INTELLIGENTCIO 15