A STUDY conducted in South Africa and the Middle East & Africa (MEA) indicates that majority of organisations recognise the benefits of integrated security.
The findings of the study were released recently by Sophos, a network and endpoint security company, which established that MEA countries recognise the benefits especially in the concept of linking network firewall and endpoint security for better insights.
However, the report revealed that although MEA organisations were unlikely to increase the number of vendors they interact with, they were likely to increase the number of products in use, which highlights that organisations in the region currently do not tend to follow an integrated strategy when it comes to security.
The Sophos-sponsored InfoBrief Synchronised Security Market Analysis – Middle East & Africa, developed by International Data Corporation (IDC), revealed that the MEA countries represented a total security solutions market potential of nearly $1.89 billion in 2015, which is expected to increase at a CAGR of 8.1 per cent to a total of $1.94 billion in 2020.
Some of the key findings reveal that in South Africa, mobile device security is the highest priority, with 35 per cent of companies, followed by DLP and security governance and management (28 per cent each).
While DLP is a top priority for both SMBs and enterprises, it indicates that security governance and management, business continuity and attack and penetration testing are higher priorities for larger organisations in the region.
The report also indicates that malware detection and prevention were the next most prevalent solutions, being more widespread in Turkey 85 per cent and South Africa 78 per cent while it was surprisingly low in the UAE (40 per cent).
In terms of security appliance penetration, almost half (40 per cent) of African respondents stated that they planned to invest in unified threat management appliances while 42 per cent of MEA companies have high confidence about their security posture, some companies, especially in KSA (3 per cent) and South Africa (5 per cent) are not confident at all.
“IT security is a top priority for companies in this region, as it can impact uptime and overall service levels. In terms of plans to deploy, there is a major focus on end-to-end coverage with advanced security systems, making it apparent that respondents want to simplify and improve control over securing their organization’s assets. This is followed by plans to deploy mobile device security and cloud-specific security solutions.
MEA’s mobile device proliferation is among the highest in the world, making it important to secure devices and content on devices. Increased deployment of private and public cloud services makes it critical for organizations to integrate security as a part of their cloud strategy,” said Harish Chib, Vice President, Middle East & Africa, Sophos.
“It is clear from the responses that, in addition to threat landscape complexity, organizations do not have a holistic strategy when it comes to deploying their security solutions. With the increase in sophisticated attacks across the region, companies are now looking for smarter and simpler IT security solutions.
The majority of respondents across all four countries agreed with the concept of linking network firewall and endpoint security for better insights. The acceptance is higher among larger enterprise. Synchronized security is the new key for protection against cyber threats,” MrChib added.
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