Andrew Voges is the threat prevention sales leader for Middle East and Africa at Checkpoint Software Technology Limited, provider of cyber security solutions. In the interview with Jumoke Akiyode-Lawanson, he discusses the immediate need for mobile phone protection, offerings available to enterprises and the impeding generation five cyber security risks. Excerpts.
Why has cybersecurity for mobile devices become so important?
What we are talking about today is something called Generation five (V) of cybersecurity. If you think about Generation one (1), it was more about viruses attacking the computers. This happened in the 80s and 90s. In the late 90s to the year 2000 we had the networks and they were more of internet based attacks and that was Generation two. What we see from a threat landscape, specifically around Nigeria and other parts of Africa and even globally, is that customers have anti-virus protection from a generation one perspective. So, they are protected on the basic level. Generation two was more on the perimeter gateway which was the network. We have noticed that 100 percent of our global customers are protected on generation one and two.
Generation three was more on the application base and that is where IPs kind of protection comes into play and we only see about 50 customers in Lagos or Nigeria protected around that. The protection levels for generation three attacks is also very low globally. Generation four was more about expert level attacks and that is where the sandbox and anti box plays a roll. Only seven percent of Africa or globally is protected there. So, if you look at it from that perspective, there is still a lot of work to do, with regards to security, specifically around public, government and enterprises. Generation five is where you have got the mega type of attacks such as state owned type of attacks.
That also happens on the enterprise level but if you look at the attack surfaces and how they come about, and you think of how we actually access resources to our corporate environment, you will see that this is usually accessed through mobile. Mobile has become the new perimeter and these types of attacks happen across all the surfaces and that is why you need those type of protections. Specifically, with mobile, most people use their mobile phones to access email, cooperate resources, applications and all sorts. If the phone is vulnerable to attacks such as the ‘man in the middle attack’ which is highly likely when people join free Wi-Fi available in public spaces; the malicious code or application installed on your phone through that attack will give criminals full access to everything on your mobile. We normally use a capsule workspace, which is a capsulated, encrypted file storage on the phone to secure that portion of your corporate information, but if this phone is vulnerable, criminals will still gain access to it. That is why Checkpoint also says that you need to have some form of protection on the phone to make sure that it is not vulnerable.
How do you intend to successfully create awareness and increase adoption of these types of security levels in the Nigerian market?
Checkpoint has a local team in Nigeria and we also educate through channel partners. We also have cyber events, where we get customers involved to educate internally. Part of Checkpoint’s roadmap is to ensure that our customers are secure. Not just from a network perspective or desktop perspective, but also from a mobile and cloud perspective. So, the education is driven through channel partners, events and we also go face to face to customers and talk ab out the full scope of security. It doesn’t help just talking about what is currently relevant to the customer, you need to also make them aware of other benefits to them. So there is a drive on awareness on a Checkpoint internal perspective.
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Who are Checkpoint customers, are your security solutions developed only for government and large enterprises?
Our customers vary. We have got financial service companies, we have got some government agencies, public sector and some commercial and SMBs. The focus for Checkpoint is not just from an enterprise or corporate perspective, because we also see that from a consumer perspective, it is also necessary.
In percentage terms, how high are the chances of mobile phone breach globally and what is Nigeria’s risk level?
Only 7 percent are on sandboxing as I said earlier, so you can imagine that the number for mobile is much lower. Only about two percent of mobile phones are protected globally. From a checkpoint perspective, Nigeria should be at least 50 percent with regards to protecting the mobile, considering that the country is a mobile first nation and most people are accessing the internet through their mobile devices. We should be working towards 100 percent protection for mobile globally, because the amount of threats coming through the mobile channels are much higher because mobile has become a more accessible opportunity for attacks.
What is checkpoint doing to buy the cooperation of telecommunications operators to secure mobile channels?
We are engaged with the telecoms providers in Africa and not just Nigeria. We also engage the local telecoms players wherever we are present and get them on how to do the enterprise type of protection for their customers, for themselves and from a consumer base perspective because we also believe that its important. On the enterprise, we have got the sandblast, which is protection for the mobile device to make sure that it is not vulnerable, also to protect the enterprise workspace and we sell that in conjunction to make sure that the data is protected and encrypted on the phone. From a consumer perspective, we have something called Zone alarm and it is more or less the same product, but to make sure that their data is not compromised.
Apart from the Sandblast and Zone alarm, are there any other unique cybersecurity products that Checkpoint offers for mobile phone security?
Our technology is quite vast, so we have end to end security products. Apart from the traditional firewalls and gateways which offer threat prevention, which includes the zero-day protection. Zero-day protection is for things that have never been seen, so any type of new malware or ransomware can be prevented with Checkpoint solution. If you think about the network, we have a blade architecture on the gateway. There is a firewall that allows access control, identity awareness and allows IPS in that blade architecture. Then we have a cloud service that actually has the sandbox, and it is not your traditional sandbox which is first generation and only inspects on OS level, we also inspect on central processing unit (CPU) level, which is patented to Checkpoint and is important, because the zero-days come through as expert type of malware and actually goes into the CPU. We have a 100 percent invasion resistant sandbox. On the end point, we have the sandblast agent, which allows you either to have the full end point, anti-ransomware forensics which allows you to see the full insight of the malware or attack and to mitigate quicker. From a cloud perspective, we have cloud guard, which is an offering to office 365, google apps suite, drop box and the likes. That gives the same type of protection that you have physically on the network or endpoint into the cloud space or the cloud workspace. Then we have public and private cloud and we can actually have the same type of protection into the cloud environment and that can mitigate or suspend into the public cloud environment.
What are the solutions that checkpoint provides to rescue already breached devices?
If a customer does not already have Checkpoint solutions in his organisation or as a security vendor, we have got incident response as a service. What will happen is that we can actually inspect what has happened with the customer and effectively mitigate for them. These are services that we offer to customers.
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