South Africa’s local managed IT services provider, Troye, has pointed out a number of defence mechanisms to protect businesses from cyber threats
Recent local cyberattacks are a forewarning of things to come and it clearly shows the vulnerabilities of South African companies. Although in recent attacks customers have not necessarily suffered any financial losses, this could quickly change with personal and financial information in the hands of cybercriminals.
“Ensuring the integrity of company data is not a simple task, especially as cybercrime, fraud and data breaches are on the increase. Today, both small and large companies need world-class security solutions to safeguard confidential information, ranging from internet threat protection to policy control for secure web traffic,” said Troye.
Businesses need proper protection against cyber threats and intellectual property leaks whilst also ensuring compliance with corporate content and access policies. Network and user activity monitoring is crucial as threats are not always external, companies need to secure all roaming users and mobile devices.
Kurt Goodall, technical director of Troye, said, “These could include malicious URL requests, viruses, Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), zero-day malware, adware, spyware, botnets, cross-site scripting, and much more.”
“Troye provides a world-class Web Application Firewall which is ICSA, Common Criteria and FIPS-certified. It analyses bi-directional traffic including SSL-encrypted communication, protecting customers against a broad range of security threats,” he explained.
Goodall said that there are tools to perform deep-packet inspection of HTTP, HTTPS and XML, as well as protection against OWASP, SQL injection attacks, cross-site scripting attacks, and cookie tampering. “One should also do form validation and protection, HTTP and XML reply and request format validation, plus JSON payload inspection, signature and behaviour based protections, and data loss prevention (DLP).”
“In addition, one should do traffic monitoring for intended and unintended data exposure, Denial-of-Service (DoS) protection, authentication, authorisation and auditing support and reporting, and policy tools that provide for easier PCI-DSS compliance verification,” he warned.
Troye’s solutions which include the Citrix NetScaler ADC/WAF provide for unmatched security, superior Layer 4 - Layer 7 (L4-L7) load balancing, reliable GSLB, and increased uptime. Performing application-specific traffic analysis to intelligently distribute, optimise and secure L4–L7 network traffic for web applications, helps prevent Application Layer attacks.
“An available built-in firewall protects web applications from Application Layer attacks, including buffer overflow exploits, SQL injection attempts, cross-site scripting attacks, and more. In addition, the firewall feature provides identity theft protection by securing confidential corporate information and sensitive customer data,” he concluded.
