Biodata, South Africa's specialist ICT security solutions distributor, has entered into a partnership with UK-based company Becrypt.
Becrypt is currently a market leader and largest supplier of highly specialised encryption and data security solutions to the UK government, European Union (EU) and NATO, and has a growing number of corporate clients. As per the agreement with Biodata, the company will now act as distributor of Becrypt products, solutions and services to South African resellers and customers.
Biodata has always been at the forefront of specialised encryption and security related solutions, being one of South Africa's premier ICT security distributors since 2001. “Fuelling our decision to include the Becrypt suite of products has been the impending Protection of Personal Information (POPI) Act as well as recommendations contained in King III,” says Jan De Lange, MD of Biodata.
The partnership with Becrypt will enable Biodata to provide customers with the ability and assurance to protect, manage and control data on hard drives (PCs and laptops) and removable media (CDs and USB devices).
There are significant business drivers for organisations to adopt and expand on existing mobile working strategies; virtual computing and cloud computing are but two of these drivers. Exposure of data on end points will unfortunately remain a risk to corporate CIOs. Not only will non-compliance to the proposed POPI Act result in severe financial penalties, but reputational and brand damage will have a detrimental effect on exposed companies, which could lead to lower share prices and losing public and investor trust.
Social networks and the use of Web 2.0 technologies have sparked a surge in malware reaching record numbers. South Africa has become a very popular victim of various phishing and malware attacks; this is partly due to the introduction of improved bandwidth in South Africa and the publicity received during the FIFA Soccer World Cup.
Employees are encouraged to utilise social networking to the advantage of their employer, either as a sales and marketing tool or for creating brand awareness, whereby top skills and investors are attracted. Although these actions should always be governed by a relevant security policy, enforcement of the policy has proved to be a difficult task.
The attacks are particularly prevalent in identity theft, industrial espionage and sabotage, as well as fraud and other related cyber-crimes.
The Becrypt solutions include: Disk Protect, a full disk and removable device encryption solution; Media Client, a file, folder and e-mail attachment encryption solution; and Connect Protect, a comprehensive port control and management solution offering complete end-point protection.
“We are very exited about the partnership with Becrypt, it was a natural fit into our business model,” adds de Lange. “We have the expertise and experience to implement encryption solutions in complex environments, we have being doing it for the past nine years with success, and Becrypt provides us with the technology and support to take our encryption offering to the next level.
The one solution that differentiates Becrypt from its competitors is Trusted Client, a secure encrypted working environment on a flash drive, providing security for unmanaged end points. Trusted Client gives cost-effective and highly secure access for mobile workers; it is an easy to use solution that transforms an unmanaged machine into a secure access point, simply by inserting the Trusted Client into a USB port, and by rebooting, a secure environment is launched, providing a user interface, Web browser, e-mail access and standalone applications.
The package offers a hardened and encrypted operating system (Linux) on a USB memory stick, which can be configured to offer thin client support and is configurable to include only pre-specified applications, or to restrict the user to approved IP destinations, ports, and protocols, such as the corporate intranet, virtual private network (VPN) or specific hosts.
According to Henry Peens, Becrypt Territory Manager for Africa: “Trusted Client is truly an innovative and cost-effective ultra-mobile solution for remote workers, contractors and brokers.” Trusted Client eliminates the threat of phishing, virus and malware attacks, which can lead to data exposure, corruption and/or theft, but still enables mobile workers to leverage off publicly available WiFi spots.
The solution provides flexibility and security to safely use unmanaged machines, additional plug-in files for 3G, VPN clients, e-mail clients and Remote Desktop, to name a few, can also be added.
“Since our inception in 2001, Becrypt has grown to become the UK's largest specialist encryption company providing high assurance software to government and corporate organisations,” adds Peens.
Biodata provides various best-of-breed solutions to assist customers with the development of a comprehensive data loss prevention (DLP) strategy that will deliver the highest level of data protection assurance.
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