Lukhanyo Zahela, Vodacom Business

Cybersecurity today is a high-stakes race against increasingly sophisticated threat actors, requiring constant vigilance and innovation. While the nirvana of a fully connected country cannot be disputed, connectivity expands the attack surface and threat actors often leverage ransomware-as-a- service models, plus AI-generated phishing and fake impersonations, both of the latter growing and of real concern.

The rising complexity of cyber threats targeting South African businesses is promoting an increasing shift towards stronger awareness about security protocols, such as the risks of connecting to an unsecure network. Prime targets are still the telecoms, finance – including ecommerce platforms – and public services sectors, given their critical nature to the cyber safety of citizens, vital basic social infrastructure services and economic and political stability.

Organisations have to be resilient and always mindful of the ever-evolving threat landscape and cybersecurity awareness is everybody’s responsibility, with an increasing amount of accountability and guidelines for every person to comply with privacy, regulatory and data sovereignty requirements. However, cybersecurity has to be balanced with agility, scope for innovation and driving forward constant cybersecurity improvements.

No amount of awareness and training seems to be making a dramatic dent in behavioural patterns and moving individuals into making cybersecurity hygiene a daily habit.

In this era of cloud computing, which has opened up a universe of life-changing technologies and changed the way of living and working – cloud sits at the core of digital transformation and expansion, however, there are multiple use-case challenges and that reside alongside cloud’s tremendous benefits and scope for positive application. The value of a secure cloud platform is well documented and cuts across every industry vertical, but it must be secure, affordable and relevant to each application.

While its scalability can now be structured to be cost-effective – from the largest enterprise to the start-up and ‘mom and pop’ businesses, it does not present an iron-clad cybersecurity solution and its use is determined and impacted by the nature of its shared responsibility model.

While cloud providers are constantly putting cyber threat barriers to entry and global standards in place, their clients are responsible for the access control and protection and management of their data, which can inadvertently open up exposure to threat actors through poor or misconfiguration, insufficient ongoing attention to password strengths, and gaps in staff knowledge, awareness and training that can undermine cloud defence and security implementations.

Cloud providers are diligent about how they go about selecting and applying partnerships and their own built-in cybersecurity services and solutions. These providers are pivotal to providing real-time threat monitoring and detection, encryption, up-to-date compliance services to meet international standards, and regional platforms and centres for growing data sovereignty requirements. They have taken significant steps forward as cloud use has evolved to meet the demands of those wanting to benefit from cloud solutions. Vodacom’s strategic focus remains on cloud-native security and its partnerships are with leading vendors such as Microsoft, Fortinet, and Zscaler to deliver scalable, intelligent, and locally relevant managed cybersecurity services.

Vodacom’s cybersecurity tools are supported by integrated and critical Security Operations Centres (SOCs), which provide 24/7 monitoring, incident response, and threat intelligence. These SOCs are equipped with advanced SIEM solutions and staffed by certified professionals trained to handle complex threat scenarios.

In conjunction, these can centralise monitoring and deploy constant cybersecurity updates that counter the barrage of new and emerging attacks and with authoritative disaster recovery tactics and solutions, keep raising the barriers to entry and mitigating the cost and stress of deflecting attacks and expensive breaches.

Cyber criminals continue to exploit human trust, making it imperative to raise public awareness across all socio-demographic levels. This includes targeted education campaigns, community outreach, and accessible cybersecurity resources. 

Most importantly, it requires closing the skills gap through collaboration on public-private training and university programmes with relevant and current curriculums overseen by the cybersecurity community.

www.vodacombusiness.co.za