Johannesburg, 17 Jul 2024
CIOs of leading South African enterprises report that achieving visibility across networks and managing complex and disparate environments is a top concern.
This emerged at a C-Suite roundtable hosted by NTT DATA and Palo Alto Networks, in partnership with ITWeb, in Johannesburg this week.
The event highlighted challenges in managing and securing networks and concluded that AIOps is a game-changer for supporting IT teams under pressure.
Recognising that the network is a critical enabler of business transformation, CIOs at the roundtable said they grappled with securing a hybrid workforce perimeter, achieving buy-in from their boards for security spending, and achieving visibility across multiple security solutions. One noted that visibility was important for monitoring both security and network performance and another said a balance was required between optimisation, security and cost.
Prashil Gareeb, Vice-President Managed Network and Collaboration Services at NTT DATA, said: “Nine out of 10 CIOs we speak to across Africa have been attacked. It’s crucial that networks are as secure as possible, with systems in place to assure resilience and security. But secure, resilient networks are not a one-size-fits-all: design with an experienced networking partner like NTT is critical.”
Paul Mende, Product Director: Managed Services at NTT DATA, said: “We engage with clients in a consulting and advisory capacity to understand their businesses, ecosystems and end-user requirements, and help them optimise their networks.”
On the growing adoption of secure access service edge (SASE) solutions to unify web, cloud services and application access, Justin Lee, Regional Sales Director at Palo Alto Networks, said: “Many components must come together for a successful SASE journey, and it all hinges on design. For example, a badly planned zero trust network journey could hinder later efforts to use data loss prevention solutions, or block data visibility.”
Delegates heard that harnessing Prisma SASE from Palo Alto Networks and AIOps from NTT DATA enables networking and security functions to converge within a unified cloud-native architecture to revolutionise network management and security. The Palo Alto Networks Prisma SASE solution combines AI-driven analytics with secure edge capabilities to provide a comprehensive security framework, with a better user experience and streamlined management.
NTT DATA noted that network optimisation with SASE and AIOps offers proactive monitoring, intelligent analytics and automated optimisation to help organisations realise the full potential of networks, enhance security and support digital transformation.
On future-proof, secure and modular networks as a fully managed service, Mende said: “NTT DATA’s innovative managed networks Spektra platform with Palo Alto Networks Prisma SASE is AI, ML and automation enabled, which reduces event volume by up to 90% and reduces mean time to restore. AI overcomes human error, which can account for up to 25% of outages. AI is a game-changer that significantly enhances security portfolios. On the other hand, hackers also have access to AI and ML, which means more sophisticated threats.”
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