South Africa`s unique circumstances perpetuated a security focus which is now paying dividends as the country`s excellent network security skills are among the best in the world.
"It is typical of South Africans to undermine our competencies, but this is a flawed paradigm," says Mark Danton, managing director of Dimension Data Security.
He attributes these skills, at least in part, to the fact that many security technologies such as firewalls and encryption were not shipped to South Africa during the previous dispensation.
"Computer security people had to get hold of whatever technology they could, and develop it for the local market with no foreign support," says Danton. "As a result, our skills were boosted tremendously.
"We are also in a position to provide across-the-board security skills whereas most of the major companies in other countries, apart from Australia, focus on niche areas," says Danton.
"However, as the need for security grows in the New Age economy, so more global companies will start to try and cover the entire security service spectrum."
Danton was commenting following a recent global forum of Dimension Data Group companies involved in the IT security sector. Representatives from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Africa, Europe and Asia met to define the Group`s global security strategy and collaborate on worldwide security services.
They defined common standards, and decided on actions to improve economies of scale that would ultimately benefit their customers. A global forum was formed to achieve worldwide roll-out of Dimension Data`s security services and ensure that all group companies achieved the standards identified.
This follows on the recent launch by Dimension Data of its packaged enterprise management services, aimed at creating the first global e-commerce infrastructure support offering capable of providing high-value, end-to-end, 24x7x365 network services across the globe. Through these services customers can have access to the full spectrum of the Group`s skills and expertise on a worldwide scale. Key to the delivery of Dimension Data`s global services model is its Global Services Operating Architecture (GSOA), which has been developed to form the services operating systems platform for the Group`s online services initiatives.
Danton stressed that the global security roll-out would not negatively impact the specific local needs of Dimension Data customers.
"We will ensure that country-specific requirements in terms of products and services are still catered for, and that individual territories retain autonomy and remain innovative. The added plus will be global security services for multinationals and access to our skills base," comments Danton.
Share