Leading pan-African telecoms group Liquid Telecom has partnered Kenyan IT firm, Serianu, a pan-African cybersecurity specialist firm to combat cybercrime on the continent and ensure protection of clients.
The partnership will serve customers across a wide range of industry verticals, including banking and finance, insurance, governments, healthcare, manufacturing and hospitality. It will particularly benefit SMEs, which are among the most vulnerable to the risk of cybercrime.
This partnership brings together Liquid Telecom’s award-winning fibre network, data centres and cloud-based offerings with Serianu’s dynamic, business-focused security monitoring and analytics solutions to offer end-to-end protection for businesses of all sizes.
In addition to providing organisations with all their connectivity and hosting needs, Liquid Telecom will now be able to offer cybersecurity assessment, monitoring, training and incident response through a combination of Serianu’s consulting, managed services and threat intelligence.
Cyber security has over the years become a serious concern among countries and businesses as the globe forges ahead with industrialisation that has inevitably seen a rise in use of the cyberspace to conduct business.
Of late governments and private companies are battling cybercrime as the internet is prone to manipulation by cyber criminals.
Liquid Telcom chief technology information officer Mr Ben Roberts said cybercrime presents a great danger to internet users.
He said his firm was working towards ensuring a safe operating environment for its customers. The company’s operations stretch across Eastern, Central, and Southern Africa, including Botswana, South Africa, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.
Liquid Telecom will make use of Serianu’s consulting infrastructure to expand the scope of its services.
“While digital transformation presents a vast opportunity for businesses today in Africa, the risk of cybercrime has never been greater. Through this partnership with Serianu, Liquid Telecom is not only ensuring that customers using our network and data centres facilities have access to the very latest cyber-security solutions, but that we are also raising the overall level of cyber-security standards and practices across the region,” he said.
Customers will also have access to Serianu’s new state-of-the-art Africa Cyber Immersion Center in Nairobi. The research, innovation and training facility provides an experimental environment for businesses to test their cybersecurity capabilities, and will help address the cybersecurity skills shortage facing the region by providing additional training for IT professionals across the public and private sectors.
According to the latest Africa Cyber Security Report by Serianu, the estimated cost of cyber-crime across Africa reached $3.5 billion in 2017. Surveying organisations from across Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ghana, Mauritius, Namibia, Lesotho and Botswana, the report reveals that over 90% of African businesses are significantly exposed to cybersecurity risks.
The company’s chief executive officer, Mr William Makatiani, concurred adding that the partnership would provide home-grown solutions to cyber security on the continent.
“Supporting local businesses and initiatives is one of the key pillars that both Serianu and Liquid Telecom share in common. Through this partnership, we will explore new ways to empower existing and future customers with quality, home-grown cyber-security solutions that will help reduce the risk and cost from cybercrime across the region,” he said.
Government last year set up a cyber-security threat detection and mitigation arm, which now falls under the Ministry of ICT, to defend the nation from cyber threats posed by the abuse of social media.
In the same year, the National University of Science and Technology (Nust) and the Harare Institute of Technology (HIT) were hacked with the hackers demanding a ransom of 1 000 Bitcoins to restore information to their websites. The global cost of cybercrime is expected to annually reach $2 trillion by next year and $6 trillion by 2021.
