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GSMA Pleias launch African language AI model. (Image source: GSMA)

Commerce

Pleias and the GSMA have introduced CommonLingua, a new open-source language identification model designed to significantly improve the processing of African language data at scale

The model forms part of the GSMA’s 'AI Language Models in Africa, by Africa, for Africa' initiative, which brings together partners working to bridge the persistent gap in African language representation in artificial intelligence systems.

With more than 2,000 living languages spoken across the continent, Africa presents a uniquely diverse linguistic landscape. However, many of these languages remain poorly represented in AI datasets, leading to reduced accuracy in language identification systems, especially when handling closely related languages or mixed-language content. Accurately identifying a language is a critical first step before building models in languages such as Swahili, Yoruba or Wolof, yet this stage has often proven unreliable for African datasets.

A major reason for this challenge lies in the design of existing language identification tools such as fastText, GlotLID and OpenLID, which were primarily trained on high-resource European and Asian languages. As a result, African-language content is frequently misclassified, often labelled incorrectly as English or French. Even advanced models show a notable decline in performance, with accuracy levels dropping by around 30 points when applied to African languages compared to widely used global languages.

CommonLingua is specifically developed to address this foundational limitation. On the CommonLID benchmark, it achieves an accuracy of 83% and a macro F1 score of 0.79, surpassing leading models by more than 10% points under similar testing conditions. Notably, it does so with a significantly smaller footprint, using approximately one three-hundredth of the parameters required by comparable systems. The model contains just 2 million parameters and is distributed as an 8 MB checkpoint, allowing efficient deployment across different environments. It can process around 20 text samples per second on a CPU and up to 3,000 texts per second on a single GPU.

The model supports a total of 334 languages, including 61 African languages spanning eight major language families. These include Bantu, Niger-Congo and West African, Afro-Asiatic and Semitic, Cushitic and Chadic, Berber, Nilo-Saharan, as well as various pidgins and creoles. By operating directly on UTF-8 byte sequences rather than relying on language-specific tokenisation, CommonLingua ensures consistent performance across multiple scripts such as Latin, Arabic, Ethiopic, N’Ko and Tifinagh.

“African languages are not an edge case. They are the working languages of hundreds of millions of people, and they deserve AI infrastructure built with the same care as any other language. CommonLingua is deliberately the first brick we are laying: you cannot curate what you cannot identify” said Pierre-Carl Langlais, co-founder and chief technology officer, Pleias.

The model has been trained entirely on open-licensed and public domain datasets compiled through the Common Corpus project. These sources include Wikipedia, OpenAlex, VOA Africa, WaxalNLP, Cultural Heritage collections and Pralekha, all released under permissive licensing frameworks.

Louis Powell, director of AI Initiatives at GSMA added, “Closing the gap in African-language AI is is fundamental to digital inclusion and unlocking economic opportunity. Progress has long been held back by the lack of foundational infrastructure, beginning with something as essential as language identification. CommonLingua addresses this critical gap, enabling the development of richer datasets and more representative AI systems at scale. Through our initiative, the GSMA is bringing partners together to move beyond fragmented efforts towards shared infrastructure that can power Africa’s digital ecosystem.”

The discussion around advancing African-language AI will continue at MWC26 Kigali, where GSMA and its partners will convene industry stakeholders to accelerate collaboration and innovation in this space.

Rössing Uranium deploys LTE towers with MTC. (Image source: Rössing Uranium)

Internet

Rössing Uranium has rolled out four private Long-Term Evolution LTE towers at its mining site, significantly enhancing connectivity across its decades-old open pit and nearby operational zones

Delivered in collaboration with MTC, the deployment represents a key milestone in the company’s digital transformation strategy, enabling the adoption of advanced technologies that support modern smart mining practices.

The LTE rollout involved an investment of N$3.7 million for the towers, forming part of a wider infrastructure upgrade programme valued at more than N$10 million.

During the commissioning event held at the open pit, Managing Director Johan Coetzee underlined the importance of reliable communication in mining operations.

“Every truck we dispatch, every drill reading we analyse, and every safety alert we rely on depends on strong, uninterrupted communication. Without it, we are not just inconvenienced, we are exposed. Reliable connectivity gives us full visibility across operations,” he said.

He further emphasised that safety remains paramount in the constantly changing open pit environment. “Conditions can change instantly; slopes shift and machinery is constantly in motion. In those moments, communication is vital. A robust network allows real-time monitoring, rapid response, and ultimately helps protect lives. Sometimes, seconds make all the difference.”

Coetzee also pointed to the role of connectivity in boosting operational efficiency, noting that systems such as fleet management, GPS tracking and automated dispatch rely heavily on stable network performance.

“With this upgraded infrastructure, we are reducing uncertainty and enabling smoother operations, improved coordination, and stronger overall performance,” he noted.

Dr Licky Erastus, Managing Director of MTC, highlighted the wider impact of the initiative, stating; “This project is about improving how people connect and work on the ground. It is an enabler of safer, smarter, and more efficient mining operations. By bringing reliable, high-performance communication into complex industrial environments, we are empowering teams with the tools they need to make better decisions in real time and operate with greater confidence.”

As Rössing Uranium continues to upgrade its operations, enhanced connectivity is expected to remain central to driving safer, more efficient and technologically advanced mining performance.

Terra Industries expands into Ghana with Pax-2. (Image source: Terra Industries)

Commerce

Terra Industries, a company focused on autonomous security systems designed to protect Africa and its critical infrastructure, has announced the construction of Pax-2, its second manufacturing facility

The new 34,000-square-foot drone production site in Accra will become Terra Industries’ main regional defense manufacturing hub for drone and counter-drone systems.

The announcement comes after the company secured US$34mn in funding to expand manufacturing capacity, speed up deployments, and strengthen engineering teams in Nigeria and allied African nations.

Pax-2 will be Terra’s second Pax Factory, following the 15,000-square-foot Pax-1 flagship site in Abuja. Once fully operational, Pax-2 is expected to become the largest drone factory in Africa, exceeding the scale of Pax-1. By 2028, the facility is projected to reach annual production capacity of 50,000 units across Terra’s aerial systems portfolio.

The Ghana operation is expected to create 120 engineering jobs and run on a continuous production schedule to meet increasing regional demand. Systems to be manufactured there include the Archer VTOL, a long-range surveillance and strike platform; the Iroko UAV, built for rapid tactical deployment; and Terra’s latest platform, Kama, a high-speed interceptor drone developed for counter-drone defense.

Kama is capable of speeds up to 300 km per hour and has been designed for large-scale production to meet growing demand for kinetic interception capabilities.

The expansion into Ghana supports Terra’s broader objective of developing Africa’s sovereign defense-industrial base. It also comes at a time when conflict dynamics are shifting across the Sahel and sub-Saharan Africa, where non-state actors are increasingly using modified commercial and fibre-optic drones as attack systems. Similar tactics seen in recent conflicts in the Middle East and Eastern Europe are driving demand for integrated defense solutions combining surveillance, electronic warfare and kinetic response.

“ The only way Africa can have lasting peace is by uniting to build sovereign defense, not by relying on foreign security architecture. We need to control our own destiny by building the tools and systems needed to protect ourselves. That's how this continent defeats terrorism. This is the beginning of that vision playing out more concretely, and we chose Ghana for Pax-2 because of its talent, strategic position, and political will to become a serious defense exporter and prove that this can be done at scale,” commented Nathan Nwachuku, co-founder and CEO of Terra Industries.

Construction of Pax-2 is currently in its final phase, with the facility expected to become fully operational by the end of June 2026.

Terra Industries said the Pax Factories network is central to its long-term Pax Africana vision, centred on achieving lasting peace through African security sovereignty and a future where the continent builds, deploys and controls its own defense technologies.

NEW interactive digital platform

Cassava Technologies and SAAIA join forces to boost AI development across Africa.

Cassava Technologies, a global technology leader with African heritage, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the South African Artificial Intelligence Association (SAAIA) to deliver advanced artificial intelligence (AI) solutions and GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) across Africa

The strategic partnership aims to bolster AI development by giving SAAIA’s community of over 3,000 AI practitioners—including entrepreneurs, researchers, and industry professionals—access to Cassava’s state-of-the-art data centre GPU infrastructure. This will enable them to develop, test, and deploy AI applications that address local and regional challenges.

As part of the collaboration, Cassava Technologies and SAAIA will also work together on joint initiatives that support the broader African AI ecosystem, promoting innovation, research, and sustainable growth.

“We are proud to partner with SAAIA to support the growth of Africa’s AI ecosystem. By extending our advanced AI infrastructure and capabilities to SAAIA’s growing community of AI professionals, we’re enabling greater access to the compute power required to build, test, and scale innovative local solutions. We believe this partnership will deliver meaningful value to both organisations and, more importantly, to the business and research communities driving AI development on the continent,” said Ziaad Suleman, CEO of Cassava Technologies South Africa and Botswana.

SAAIA, a leading force in South Africa’s AI landscape, is dedicated to promoting responsible AI by connecting AI practitioners from academia, government, private enterprise, startups, and NGOs. It is also the organiser of AI Expo Africa, the continent’s largest AI-focused event, and plays a key role in driving investment in Africa’s smart technology sector.

“SAAIA is pleased to be partnering with Cassava Technologies in strengthening AI in South Africa. Supporting local AI entrepreneurs is a key pillar of SAAIA, and access to GPU-as-a-Service is a key enabler to growing the emerging AI startup ecosystem,” said SAAIA Founder and Chairman, Dr Nick Bradshaw.

The partnership underscores Cassava’s commitment to advancing digital transformation across Africa. It follows the company’s recent announcement of plans to build the continent’s first AI factory, a move aimed at providing local businesses, governments, and academic institutions with access to cutting-edge AI computing capabilities. This initiative aligns with Cassava’s vision of becoming the leading provider of digital solutions across its markets and empowering Africans to thrive in the digital economy.

Top Stories

Grid List

Internet

Rössing Uranium deploys LTE towers with MTC. (Image source: Rössing Uranium)

Internet

Rössing Uranium has rolled out four private Long-Term Evolution LTE towers at its mining site, significantly enhancing connectivity across its decades-old open pit and nearby operational zones

Delivered in collaboration with MTC, the deployment represents a key milestone in the company’s digital transformation strategy, enabling the adoption of advanced technologies that support modern smart mining practices.

The LTE rollout involved an investment of N$3.7 million for the towers, forming part of a wider infrastructure upgrade programme valued at more than N$10 million.

During the commissioning event held at the open pit, Managing Director Johan Coetzee underlined the importance of reliable communication in mining operations.

“Every truck we dispatch, every drill reading we analyse, and every safety alert we rely on depends on strong, uninterrupted communication. Without it, we are not just inconvenienced, we are exposed. Reliable connectivity gives us full visibility across operations,” he said.

He further emphasised that safety remains paramount in the constantly changing open pit environment. “Conditions can change instantly; slopes shift and machinery is constantly in motion. In those moments, communication is vital. A robust network allows real-time monitoring, rapid response, and ultimately helps protect lives. Sometimes, seconds make all the difference.”

Coetzee also pointed to the role of connectivity in boosting operational efficiency, noting that systems such as fleet management, GPS tracking and automated dispatch rely heavily on stable network performance.

“With this upgraded infrastructure, we are reducing uncertainty and enabling smoother operations, improved coordination, and stronger overall performance,” he noted.

Dr Licky Erastus, Managing Director of MTC, highlighted the wider impact of the initiative, stating; “This project is about improving how people connect and work on the ground. It is an enabler of safer, smarter, and more efficient mining operations. By bringing reliable, high-performance communication into complex industrial environments, we are empowering teams with the tools they need to make better decisions in real time and operate with greater confidence.”

As Rössing Uranium continues to upgrade its operations, enhanced connectivity is expected to remain central to driving safer, more efficient and technologically advanced mining performance.

MTN Zambia brings 5G smart living home. (Image source: MTN Zambia)

Vertiv strengthens AI cooling strategy with STL acquisition. (Image source: Vertiv)

Mobile

Digitally track and locate tools with Brady’s RFID solution. (Image source: Brady Corporation)

Mobile

Get a real-time list of equipment present in a vehicle and see what is missing versus an established vehicle equipment list. Select missing tools on-screen. Quickly home in with proximity-increasing sounds and visuals on a portable RFID reader

Discover the affordable RFID Scan & Drive solution from Brady!

Have you ever arrived at an intervention without the necessary equipment? Ever lost tools during field interventions? How much time do you spend to make sure all equipment is accounted for, and present in your vehicles? Now you can confirm vehicle inventories digitally and automatically, highlight any missing assets, and home in on misplaced items to quickly complete your vehicles. How much time could you save?

Everything present

Instantly see which tools are present in a vehicle - and what is missing. Easily save substantial time per vehicle, per intervention, with automated equipment inventory checks that take only seconds.

By labelling equipment with passive, battery-free UHF RFID labels, we can let an RFID reader in your vehicle detect which tools and items are present. The RFID reader can check detected tools versus a list of expected items to confirm a complete vehicle inventory or to highlight missing equipment on your phone.

Be fully equipped before leaving for a field intervention. Avoid losing tools after interventions. Don’t waste time checking visually where every piece of equipment is. Just scan, get confirmation in seconds, and drive to your next destination.

Home in on assets

Quickly find misplaced equipment. Home in on specific items with a portable RFID reader and proximity-increasing sounds and visuals.

Passive, battery-free UHF RFID labels bounce back radio signals from a portable RFID reader up to 15 metres. By measuring the strength of the returning radio signal with patented data capture technology, our portable RFID readers guide users towards a unique RFID label applied on a specific tool. When closing in, auditive and visual feedback strength from the reader increases.

Brady RFID vanscan 400x340RFID labels can include an LED, powered by an RFID reader from a 1.5 metre distance, to let a tool light up or to find it in a dense inventory of equipment.

Solution components

Brady develops and manufactures every component in our solution. Tested in in-house laboratories, each component is designed to withstand the wear and tear of field interventions, including exposure to UV, dust and moisture. 

  • RFID labels: Brady offers industrial grade on- and off-metal RFID-labels and tags that stay attached and remain legible on your equipment.
  • Fixed RFID readers: Equipped with patented data capture technology, Brady’s fixed RFID readers collect data on items passing through their read range.
  • Portable RFID readers: With intuitive displays, Brady’s portable RFID readers and SLEDs deliver unmatched mobility, data collection and interaction.

Are you interested in automated inventory checks solution from Brady? Visit our website, watch the short video and download the free RFID labelling guidebook.

Find out more now!

BRADY in Africa
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
T: +27 11 704 3295
 

Financial inclusion grows through mobile money usage

Bringing direct-to-cell satellite connectivity to 4G smartphones in no coverage areas

Satellite

Amazon Leo adds D2D with Globalstar merger

Satellite

Amazon and Globalstar have announced a definitive merger agreement under which Amazon will acquire Globalstar

The move will allow Amazon Leo to introduce direct-to-device (D2D) services within its low Earth orbit satellite network, expanding cellular connectivity to areas beyond traditional terrestrial coverage.

Alongside this development, Amazon has also reached an agreement with Apple to enable Amazon Leo to support satellite-based services for iPhone and Apple Watch devices, including Emergency SOS via satellite. These advancements form part of Amazon’s broader strategy to build a space-based connectivity ecosystem, working with mobile network operators and partners to deliver dependable, high-speed connectivity worldwide.

“There are billions of customers out there living, traveling, and operating in places beyond the reach of existing networks, and we started Amazon Leo to help bridge that divide,” said Panos Panay, senior vice-president of devices & services, Amazon. “By combining Globalstar’s proven expertise and strong foundation with Amazon’s customer-obsession and innovation, customers can expect faster, more reliable service in more places, keeping them connected to the people and things that matter most. We’re excited to support Apple users through the Leo D2D system, and look forward to working with mobile network partners to help extend coverage to every corner of the planet.”

Globalstar is recognised as a major mobile satellite services operator, with extensive experience in non-geostationary orbit satellites and D2D technology, as well as providing essential and emergency communications worldwide. Through the agreement, Amazon will take ownership of Globalstar’s satellite operations, infrastructure, and assets, including globally authorised MSS spectrum licences.

By integrating Globalstar’s spectrum resources and satellite capabilities with the scale and performance of Amazon Leo, the combined platform aims to deliver seamless connectivity for consumer, enterprise, and government users. This will support users in remote regions as well as those moving in and out of conventional network coverage. Globalstar’s current satellite fleet, along with its upcoming enhanced satellites, will operate in conjunction with Amazon Leo’s broadband and planned D2D systems.

“We have long believed low Earth orbit satellite constellations offer the most effective path to truly connect users and devices anywhere and anytime,” said Paul Jacobs, CEO, Globalstar.

“For more than 30 years, Globalstar has executed on this vision through sustained, long-term investment in technological innovation, operational excellence, and development of globally harmonized spectrum across both satellite and terrestrial applications. The combination with Amazon Leo will advance innovations in digital connectivity that will benefit our customers and advance us toward a more intelligent, continuously connected world.”

From 2028, Amazon Leo is expected to roll out its next-generation D2D satellite system, delivering advanced voice, messaging, and data services directly to mobile devices. The system is designed to offer improved spectrum efficiency compared to existing direct-to-cell technologies, resulting in faster speeds and enhanced performance. It will integrate with Amazon’s broader satellite infrastructure, creating a unified network that supports both fixed and mobile connectivity use cases across a global user base.

As part of the Apple collaboration, Amazon will continue supporting satellite services currently enabled through Globalstar’s infrastructure for devices such as iPhone 14 and later models, as well as Apple Watch Ultra 3. These services include emergency messaging, location sharing, roadside assistance, and communication with contacts. Future developments will involve collaboration between Amazon and Apple to expand satellite-enabled features using the enhanced Amazon Leo network.

“Since launching more than three years ago, our groundbreaking safety service Emergency SOS via satellite has helped save many lives around the world, from a scout troop stranded on a winter hike in British Columbia, to a woman who was airlifted to safety in Colorado after her car rolled down a 250-foot cliff,” said Greg Joswiak, senior vice-president of Worldwide Product Marketing, Apple.

“Apple and Amazon have a long and proven track record of working together through Amazon’s core infrastructure services, and we look forward to building on that collaboration with Amazon Leo. This ensures our users will continue to have access to the vital satellite features they have come to rely on, including Emergency SOS, Messages, Find My, and Roadside Assistance via satellite, so they can stay safe and connected while off the grid.”

The partnership aims to expand broadband access nationwide. (Image source: Eutelsat)

Boeing to line-fit SES satellite connectivity systems. (Image source: SES)

Commerce

GSMA Pleias launch African language AI model. (Image source: GSMA)

Commerce

Pleias and the GSMA have introduced CommonLingua, a new open-source language identification model designed to significantly improve the processing of African language data at scale

The model forms part of the GSMA’s 'AI Language Models in Africa, by Africa, for Africa' initiative, which brings together partners working to bridge the persistent gap in African language representation in artificial intelligence systems.

With more than 2,000 living languages spoken across the continent, Africa presents a uniquely diverse linguistic landscape. However, many of these languages remain poorly represented in AI datasets, leading to reduced accuracy in language identification systems, especially when handling closely related languages or mixed-language content. Accurately identifying a language is a critical first step before building models in languages such as Swahili, Yoruba or Wolof, yet this stage has often proven unreliable for African datasets.

A major reason for this challenge lies in the design of existing language identification tools such as fastText, GlotLID and OpenLID, which were primarily trained on high-resource European and Asian languages. As a result, African-language content is frequently misclassified, often labelled incorrectly as English or French. Even advanced models show a notable decline in performance, with accuracy levels dropping by around 30 points when applied to African languages compared to widely used global languages.

CommonLingua is specifically developed to address this foundational limitation. On the CommonLID benchmark, it achieves an accuracy of 83% and a macro F1 score of 0.79, surpassing leading models by more than 10% points under similar testing conditions. Notably, it does so with a significantly smaller footprint, using approximately one three-hundredth of the parameters required by comparable systems. The model contains just 2 million parameters and is distributed as an 8 MB checkpoint, allowing efficient deployment across different environments. It can process around 20 text samples per second on a CPU and up to 3,000 texts per second on a single GPU.

The model supports a total of 334 languages, including 61 African languages spanning eight major language families. These include Bantu, Niger-Congo and West African, Afro-Asiatic and Semitic, Cushitic and Chadic, Berber, Nilo-Saharan, as well as various pidgins and creoles. By operating directly on UTF-8 byte sequences rather than relying on language-specific tokenisation, CommonLingua ensures consistent performance across multiple scripts such as Latin, Arabic, Ethiopic, N’Ko and Tifinagh.

“African languages are not an edge case. They are the working languages of hundreds of millions of people, and they deserve AI infrastructure built with the same care as any other language. CommonLingua is deliberately the first brick we are laying: you cannot curate what you cannot identify” said Pierre-Carl Langlais, co-founder and chief technology officer, Pleias.

The model has been trained entirely on open-licensed and public domain datasets compiled through the Common Corpus project. These sources include Wikipedia, OpenAlex, VOA Africa, WaxalNLP, Cultural Heritage collections and Pralekha, all released under permissive licensing frameworks.

Louis Powell, director of AI Initiatives at GSMA added, “Closing the gap in African-language AI is is fundamental to digital inclusion and unlocking economic opportunity. Progress has long been held back by the lack of foundational infrastructure, beginning with something as essential as language identification. CommonLingua addresses this critical gap, enabling the development of richer datasets and more representative AI systems at scale. Through our initiative, the GSMA is bringing partners together to move beyond fragmented efforts towards shared infrastructure that can power Africa’s digital ecosystem.”

The discussion around advancing African-language AI will continue at MWC26 Kigali, where GSMA and its partners will convene industry stakeholders to accelerate collaboration and innovation in this space.

Brady Corporation unveils i4311 portable printer. (Image source: Brady Corporation)

The Minister of Communication, Digital Economy, and Innovation, Mourana Soumah. (Image source: MCENI)

Power

Mozambique’s energy sector to receive a boost from the African Development Bank following the institution’s participation in Maputo at the Africa50 summit

Power

Mozambique’s energy sector is to receive a boost from the African Development Bank (AfDB) following the institution’s participation in Maputo at the Africa50 shareholders meeting

Africa50 is an investment platform established by African governments with the AfDB, which has now surpassed US$1.4bn in managed assets directed at infrastructure provision.

At the 2025 summit, a memorandum of understanding was signed with Electricidade de Mozambique (EDM) for the development of three transmission lines under an Independent Power Transmission (IPT) framework.

“This will help support the government’s ambition to achieve universal electricity access by 2030 and become a significant exporter of power across the Southern African Development Community,” a statement released by AfDB noted.

Finalisation of the project development agreements is now underway for three lines under an IPT framework, partnering with Power Grid and EDM, it added.

A separate MoU was also signed with the Ministry of Communications and Digital Transformation to build a new data centre facility in Maputo and to modernise the existing one.

Africa50’s Mozambique portfolio already includes equity investment in the 175MW Central Termica de Ressano Garcia (CTRG) gas-fired power plant.

According to Dr Akinwumi Adesina, president of the AfDB Group, investments by Africa50 complement broader support from the bank itself that have delivered some US$1.6bn to Mozambique over the past decade.

This investment includes US$400mn in senior debt financing for the country's flagship US$20bn liquified natural gas (LNG) project in Cabo Delgado, as well as the US$34mn Mozambique Energy for All Project, which has connected more than 45,500 households to electricity.

The bank claims its energy sector investments have helped to double Mozambique's national energy access rate from 30% in 2018 to 60% in 2024.

The AfDB has also supported agricultural transformation through special agro-industrial processing zones, including the Pemba-Lichinga corridor, while financing critical transport infrastructure along the Nacala and Beira corridors that enhance regional trade connectivity for the African Continental Free Trade Area.

Earlier this year, the AfDB approved US$43.6mn in funding for the construction of the Namaacha-Boane transmission line and related electricity infrastructure

EDM will implement the project in partnership with Central Eléctrica da Namaacha (CEN), a private sector-led development group involving Globeleq Africa Limited and Source Energia that is building the 120 MW Namaacha wind farm in the southwestern part of the country. 

The Vertiv PowerDirect 7100 Energy supplies up to 52 kW of scalable 48 V DC power and delivers efficiency levels of up to 98%. (Image source: Vertiv)

International Power Control Systems (IPCS) has been named as a distribution partner in Malawi by Vertiv, a specialist in critical digital infrastructure

Security

ASM strategies to protect digital assets

Security

Attack surface management (ASM) has seen significant growth in recent years, evolving into a recognised market category that provides businesses with the visibility and strategies needed to safeguard their digital assets, reports Kyle Pillay, security as a service manager at Datacentrix

As Forrester’s Attack Surface Management Solutions Landscape, Q2 2024 notes, ASM “delivers insights on assets that ultimately support business objectives, keep the lights on, generate revenue, and delight customers.”

At its essence, ASM involves continuously discovering, identifying, inventorying, and assessing the exposures of an organisation’s IT asset estate, a foundational step in maintaining a strong security posture.

Knowing your environment

Fundamentally, ASM helps organisations ‘know your environment’, highlighting gaps in defenses before attackers can exploit them.

Every threat actor or hacker begins with reconnaissance, mapping out your external-facing assets. This is why External Attack Surface Management (EASM) exists: it concentrates on what attackers can see. Without viewing your environment through this external lens, organisations cannot know which access points are visible or exploitable, leaving them unable to proactively detect or prevent threats before incidents occur.

First steps in protecting your attack surface

The first step in ASM is identifying external-facing touchpoints such as public IPs and domains. For instance, you might recognise your primary domain (e.g., mydomain.co.za), but visibility into similar domains, like mydomain.com, mydomain.net, mydomain.tech, or mydomain.ac.za, is also crucial. These can be targeted for domain squatting or cybersquatting, where attackers exploit similar names to mislead users and enable phishing attacks.

A strong ASM solution not only maps your current footprint but also identifies domains worth securing before malicious actors register them.

If a deceptive domain is registered, like mydomain-tech.co.za, you need an effective takedown process. International domain takedowns can be complex, requiring a partner capable of legally liaising with registrars across jurisdictions. With the right procedures and partnerships, such domains can often be removed within four to eight hours, limiting potential damage.

Keeping pace with today’s infrastructure

One of ASM’s biggest challenges is keeping up with the rapid growth and sprawl of modern IT environments. While multiple tools exist, none fully match the speed of change, even as vendors iterate frequently, often in weekly development sprints, to maintain relevant detection capabilities.

Beyond speed, perspective matters. While an organisation may have visibility from one viewpoint, attackers do not limit themselves to a single angle. To defend effectively against modern threats, you need to view your environment as attackers do and understand vulnerabilities exploitable from within. This is where distinguishing between external and internal ASM becomes crucial.

External ASM (EASM) focuses on publicly exposed digital assets, whereas internal ASM addresses vulnerabilities inside the network. Internal ASM uses network exposure activity tools to simulate real-world attack techniques, often following frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK, to identify weaknesses from the inside. These simulations test whether known attack methods bypass security controls, whether sensitive data can be exfiltrated, whether passwords are weak or compromised, and if lateral movement within the network is possible.

Combining internal and external ASM provides a more accurate view of your security posture, allowing organisations to close gaps before exploitation.

Making the business case for ASM

Cost is often a concern with ASM investments, but when weighed against the reputational and financial impact of a breach, or the risk of sensitive data appearing on the dark web, the case for prevention is clear.

The reality is simple. Without a combination of internal and external ASM, organisations remain essentially blind to vulnerabilities. The ability to identify, monitor, and remediate gaps before adversaries exploit them has become a business imperative.

African regulators in Kenya and Ghana are leading the way, strengthening digital asset safety and trust

Integrity360 acquires Redshift in South Africa, boosting cybersecurity services, expertise, and regional expansion

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