Symantec: The Passion For Information And Business Protection

Symantec Channel Manager, Nigeria & Ghana at Symantec, Mr. Adeyemi Adeleke; Finance Director, JSP Communications Consultancy, Mr. Joseph Adeboyejo and Symantec Territory Manager, IWECA (Indian Islands, West, East and Central Africa), Sheldon Hand during the Company's Media Roundtable in Lagos

By ROMMY IMAH

Global businesses are under serious threat posed by malware proliferation and spam. Unfortunately, those businesses seem to be at a loss as to how to confront these challenges. In fact, research has shown that about 50 percent of Small and Medium businesses in the world does not have a disaster recovery plan yet, about 81 percent of the same business sector consider data their company’s most valuable asset. The most fatal is that about 71 percent of small businesses that suffered cyber attacks, never recovered to tell their story.

Today, world business is confronted by new complexities and challenges represented by security risks and threats, level of consumerization of IT and the explosion in the information realm. A situation like this needs the deployment of reliable solutions from reliable providers to tackle.

For over a decade, Symantec, a global leader in providing security, storage and systems management solutions to help consumers and organizations secure and manage their information-driven world have been helping businesses in Nigeria to remain afloat even in the face of growing cyber attacks resulting from boost in economic activities in the country.

Sheldon Hand, Territory Manager, West, East and Central Africa and the Indian Ocean Islands for Symantec recently at a media round-table in Lagos, identified four key trends that have emerged to increase fears surrounding cyber attacks on businesses. Those trends include the growth of malware attack by as much as 81 percent; expansion of targeted attacks; the expository impact of mobile attacks as well as the rise in data breaches.

“While profits remain lucrative in the Personal Computer space, mobile offers new opportunities to cybercriminals that potentially are more profitable. Mobile also creates an urgent concern to organisations around the possibility of breaches. Given the intertwining of work and personal information on mobile devices, the loss of confidential

information presents a real risk to businesses. And unlike a desktop computer, or even a laptop, mobile devices are easily lost,” Hand observed. 

The Symantec territory manager was in total support of checks and balances in the IT sector and strongly advocated robust corporate governance in the sector as a requirement for effective tackling of security risks and threats.

Already, Nigeria has moved six positions- from 65^th to 59^th position in the world according to Symantec’s Internet Threat Security Report Volume 17. This development is attributed to the explosion in the information space driven by the landing and availability of more international fibre links that has in return increased bandwidths in addition to the rising growth in mobile device usage. All these and the continued positive national economic boom have all combined to the rise in security risks and threats.

Hand said it was this worrying situation that explained why Symantec had to open an office in Nigeria since two years ago to help protect businesses from security threats and attacks. “Symantec processes and protects the information of more than 60% of Telcos in Nigeria as well as the information of more than 50% of banks in the country,” he said.

He noted that Symantec security activities are not peculiar to Nigeria as the renowned security solutions firm backs up over 50% of the world’s business. At the moment he said, 294 billion emails are globally sent every day meaning that 2.8 million emails are sent every second. He noted that this development results to more and bigger data being sent across the world in addition to ensuring tighter Storage Level Agreements (SLAs).

“We have more than 240,000 censors in 200 countries. These censors are networks in strategic places, and what this allows us to do, is gather a tremendous amount of information and intelligence about the threats that are happening in the world on the Internet,” he said.

It is in response to the security threats posed by the Internet that Symantec has introduced two new products – Backup Exec 2012 and NetBackup 7.5 to assist Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in combating cyber threats and risks.

For instance, Backup Exec 2012 eliminates complexity in business by allowing simplified user interface, flexible delivery through the use of software, cloud or appliance in addition to offering new small business opportunities. It also unites virtual and physical space through the new V-Ray Edition which sees deeper into virtual environments in addition to having the ability to recover anything anytime through granular and the cloud.

The NetBackup 7.5 product breaks the backup window, unites the snapshots and backup in addition to fighting finite retention. The new product provides a 100 times faster backup, simplifies the management and recovery of storage level snapshots from a single console.

Hand said Symantec through its operations, builds confidence in business by way of protecting both people and information through the development and enforcement of IT policies, authenticating identities, managing systems and protecting the infrastructure.

It is a global knowledge that Symantec software and services protect against more risks at more points, more completely and efficiently, enabling confidence wherever information is used or stored.