Dolos launches WatchGuard Africa for simplified security with one platform

Dominic Richardson

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Dolos (previously Panda Security Africa) has unveiled WatchGuard Africa’s capabilities to unify and simplify IT security in South Africa. 

During a webinar hosted in partnership with WatchGuard Technologies and ITWeb, Dolos outlined the current challenges in enterprise IT security, and how WatchGuard addresses them.

Dolos CEO Dominic Richardson said managing complexity was one of the key challenges in IT security today. "Most companies don’t realise how many solutions they actually have in place in their environments. The more systems you have, the more the complexity and the higher the risk that something will be mismanaged,” he said.

A poll of webinar participants found that 26% of them have five or more different brands, and 34% have two or more, in their security stacks.

Richardson said: “One of the most persistent challenges we see is implementing and managing a cyber security strategy with disparate systems. There is also a huge skills gap, with 2.72 million unfilled security positions worldwide. Adding to this problem is the fact that 43% of cyber attacks now target smaller organisations with limited resources. There are so many different and complex threats that organisations feel challenged to stay cyber resilient.”

He said WatchGuard addressed these challenges through intelligent protection, simplifying management of the security environment, and delivering actionable visibility with the WatchGuard Unified Security Platform. The platform offers a complete portfolio of endpoint, multi-factor authentication and network security products and services, with a single pane of glass for management and complete visibility.

Matthew Stevens, Chief Technical Officer at Dolos, outlined how WatchGuard Endpoint Protection enables Zero Trust. “Zero Trust has become a buzzword in the industry, and is generally seen as the paradigm for going forward in the modern work environment,” Stevens said. “With Zero Trust, the endpoint is now the perimeter and this works well for protecting hybrid workforces. But there are some challenges, including consistent day to day monitoring and maintenance, and creating and maintaining policies.”

He noted that Zero Trust had not yet been widely adopted in the South African market.

Stevens highlighted WatchGuard Zero Trust services, offering complete visibility with tried and tested procedures for managing Zero Trust in the environment.

“Its value-adds include the Zero Trust Application Service to enforce policies to protect the endpoint, classifying applications as goodware, malware or unknown, and delivering superior protection with no effort, delegation or alerts,” he said.

Stevens also highlighted how WatchGuard’s proactive Threat Hunting Service detects previously unknown threats leveraging telemetry from endpoints and sending the data to analysts. Protection is extended through WatchGuard’s patch management, advanced reporting, encryption and systems management modules.

Miguel Carrero, VP, security service providers & strategic accounts at WatchGuard Technologies, said SOCs’ main obstacles in the way of fast detection and response included a shortage of skilled staff, alert fatigue, a lack of integration in the SOC tech stack, and a lack of consistency in security operations.

“We have too much visibility that is non-deterministic of what is really happening. Staff are challenged in understanding what is going on, and truly understanding the incident to effectively apply remediation. There is also a lack of consistency in processes underpinning security operations in prevention, detection and response,” he said.

“To address the challenges, we advocate adding proactivity to the security posture; with intuitive deterministic and consistent investigation; procedural operations and automation; and collaboration between security analytics and incident response.”

Carrero outlined how WatchGuard Orion empowered SOCs through proactive threat hunting and effective investigations.

He added: “WatchGuard Threat Hunting Services proactively searches and investigates early indicators of attack, and enables SecOps teams to conduct their own threat hunting practice. Dolos and WatchGuard is an extension of the security team, offering a specialised portfolio for SOCs with proactive threat hunting and continuous 24/7 service.”

Clint Abrahams, senior technical specialist at Dolos, said: “Passwords are a top cyber security threat, increasing the risk of account compromise. But why not just encourage better password hygiene? Historically this approach doesn’t work and creates an overly complex user experience. Multi Factor authentication (MFA) is the solution, providing an additional layer of security that is more convenient for users than passwords, and provides greater visibility into who is accessing an account.”

He demonstrated how WatchGuard Authpoint is a user friendly, flexible and customisable mobile app for MFA, with single sign on capabilities for multiple applications. “It is easy to deploy and manage, and offers scalable enterprise grade security”, he said.

Brendan Patterson, VP of product management at WatchGuard Technologies, outlined current ransomware trends, saying attackers were now using targeted, ‘big game’ ransomware, targeting vulnerable industries, demanding huge monetary ransoms and launching synchronised attacks across organisations.

“Ransomware as a Service lowers the technical bar for criminals, and cyber criminals are now stealing data in addition to encrypting it, and are extorting victims’ customers and using their data too. We’ve also seen Business Email Compromise and Spear Phishing remain dominant, with over 90% of attacks and malware infections starting with malicious emails. We are also seeing messaging apps and even SMS used for phishing,” he said. “WatchGuard is in a great position to collect a lot of telemetry and see trends on hackers and what we see is about half of the malware is Zero Day malware that can’t be detected with the signature.”

He highlighted WatchGuard’s family of Firebox Appliances, the next generation of firewalls available in a range of sizes. “Our data shows the average Firebox stops an average of 250 network attacks and blocks 1300 malicious files each year,” he said.

Patterson also noted that WatchGuard had just launched its new XDR capability with ThreatSync to address challenges such as alert fatigue and a lack of cyber security skills. “It centralises detections from WatchGuard products and correlates events to create new incidents, with an intuitive interface for incident responders. ThreatSync is included with WatchGuard Total Security,” he said.