Port Elizabeth has become home to one of the world’s leading cyber crime combating centres.
UK networking cyber security company KHIPU, which extended its footprint to South Africa six years ago, on Thursday launched its global cyber security centre – which will be based at its Newton Park offices.
The company, which also delivers online safety to the British royal family, will be providing cyber security to companies in 35 countries across the world – right from PE.
The launch of the centre also means KHIPU will more than triple its local staff compliment to more than 50 employees, company co-founder Matt Ashman said.
“The cyber security operations centre will be manned 24/7. They will have complete visibility of all of our customers’ IT networks and will be able to see all of our customers that have subscribed to the service,” he said.
“We’ll be able to see if their networks are up, if there’s a problem, if they’ve been attacked, and, based upon the severity on the issue, we’d call the customer and take action.
“We’re probably one of few, if any, companies in Port Elizabeth that provide this level of networking cyber security services along with a 24/7 cyber security centre.”
Ashman said cyber crime was “a huge problem worldwide”.
“In South Africa, like many countries like the UK, there are still problems like choosing the right solutions to address the problem,” he said.
“But it’s not just limited to solutions, but also educating people that there are a lot of things around cyber attacks you need to be aware of because the user, in our view, is the first and last layer of defence of any organisation.
“The risks are high – to an individual there are risks to their own personal information, like banking [information], photos, confidential information, and parallel to that there’s a risk to an organisation. For example, if the user has shared confidential information to an attacker, they [the attacker] now have a route into that organisation.”
According to the SA Banking Risk Information Centre (Sabric), the world’s thirdhighest number of cyber crime victims were last year recorded in South Africa, resulting in a loss of more than R2bn each year to cyber attacks.
Included among Sabric’s safety tips are:
Never list your main email addresses publicly anywhere. This includes online advertisements, blogs or any place where your information can be harvested by spammers.
Use strong passwords for all your accounts.
Change your password regularly and never share it with anyone else.
Be wary of e-mail attachments and free software from unknown sources.
Ashman said cyber attackers had become increasingly sophisticated.
“So what we do is to ensure that the right levels of security are in place to prevent those [cyber] attacks from occurring,” he said.
KHIPU SA manager Gareth Trollip said: “We’ve been in business in Port Elizabeth for more than six years and we’ve done a lot of work in South Africa, but not as much work as we would like [to do] in the Eastern Cape just yet.
“So our goal as the company for the next six months is to really focus on PE and the Eastern Cape and we think it’s a great place to be.”
About the British royal family, Ashman said: “Worth mentioning also is that we provide cyber security services to the Royal household. It’s very prestigious, cool and unique as it’s one of the most sensitive security networks in the world.”