• Thursday, March 28, 2024
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Cyber threats blocked by Trend Micro

cyber threats

Trend Micro, a global cyber security and defence company, with offices in more than 50 countries, said it helped organisations and government institutions to detect and ward off 6.9 million cyber threats in 2018.

The company’s vice president, sub-Saharan African region, Indi Siriniwasa disclosed this at recent a partner meeting in Lagos, Nigeria. The company unveiled its new channel partner programme for sub-Saharan Africa region during the meeting. According to him, cyber threats to businesses are becoming widespread as hackers are exploring loopholes in justice system to grow their confidence.

“It is big business,” he said during an interview with reporters. “It is much easier to hack organisations and steal money than breaking an ATM machine. An ATM machine can bring publicity and probably get the police involved. But if you are good hacker, you can hack an organisation and steal money and get away with it. The legal system is still far behind in terms of the hacker community.”

He noted that the evolving tactics of hackers call for organisations to always stay alert and ensure that their digital assets are protected round the clock. This is more important now that data has become the digital oil and any hacker will do everything to get their hands on sensitive information belonging to organisations and customers.

Trend Micro has been the world’s leading hybrid cloud security provider for the past eight years in a row. Siriniwasa said it is due to commitment to stay ahead of the trends and anticipate every potential cyber security threat.

“20 years back cybersecurity was the IT guys’ problem. It is not IT anymore, the CEOS have a big role to play no. when a firm in South Africa was hacked, the CEO had to come and apologise to the customers. Everyone is responsible it is not about IT anymore. It is about responsibility to protect the information and their customers,” he said.

To be sure, hybrid cloud is a cloud computing environment that uses a mix of on-premises, private cloud and third- party, public cloud services with orchestration between the two platforms. On the security side, the VP explained that, Trend Micro provides different security strategies for the various components of data storage. This is even more important for organisations where there are various classifications of information such as highly sensitive data and public data. These may require different protection plans.

Siriniwasa disclosed that it was increasing its investment in West Africa following the growth of channel ecosystem in the past two years. The channel programme, among other benefits, has seen significant improvement in knowledge of the cloud leading to more customer adoption.

The programme was designed to assist existing partners to grow their business and pave way for new partners to get onboard with as few roadblocks as possible; delivering everything needed to quickly get up to speed, close new business, and ensure success. Following a tiered approach, the programme is made up of bronze, silver, gold and platinum partners with varying benefits based on the sales and technical competencies of partners.

“We believe that with our reenergised channel programme we can fast track the development of our partners and ensure they meet the ever- changing security demands of an industry bombarded by disruptive technologies,” Siriniwasa said.