Telspace Africa – securing the SME

Dr Manuel Corregedor, CEO of Telspace Africa.

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Telspace Africa is a leading South African information security provider, 100% focused on, to name a few, providing offensive security services and specialising in penetration testing, vulnerability assessments, red teaming, purple teaming and cyber incident simulations.

With the ever growing cyber threat landscape and with threat actors increasingly targeting any and all organisations, which could result in financial, operational and/or strategic advantages, this has resulted in SMEs in particular becoming at risk due to their limited security budgets, valuable data, lack of dedicated security resources and supply chain vulnerabilities. It is thus imperative that SME-sized businesses have an in-depth understanding of their risk and exposure to attacks and breaches.

“You first need to understand the specific risks that your business is exposed to before you can create the roadmap to secure it. We often see security controls that have been implemented; however, they are not the correct controls for the risk exposure of that specific business. It’s for this reason very important to understand the difference between having controls in place and having effective controls in place,” says Dr Manuel Corregedor, CEO of Telspace Africa.

“With limited budgets in the SME market, we often see vendors positioning their solution as the silver bullet through fear, uncertainty and doubt tactics, which often leads to SMEs depleting their limited budgets on solutions that don’t solve their specific risks, leaving them exposed to attacks. It is for this reason that we always recommend that businesses first take a step back in order to understand their security risk,” says Dr Corregedor.

“With so many security controls and vendors available, it can often be an overwhelming task to understand what security your business needs, which frameworks are best suited to you and which controls will address your security risks, while maximising the limited available budget,” he says.

“Two of the biggest misconceptions in cyber security are that, number one, technology can solve all of your problems and, number two, security can be addressed as and when required, like in the case of compliance related to onboarding with a new client. This approach of disparately deploying controls without first understanding the actual specific risks that your business is exposed to usually leads to wasted resources and improperly secured environments,” he says.

“It’s also important to understand that compliance doesn’t mean that you’re secure if the controls that you’ve deployed are not correctly configured or effective at addressing your actual risks,” says Dr Corregedor.

“It is for this reason that companies first need to understand where their security gaps exist through conducting cyber risk assessments and penetration testing,” says Tim Quintal, COO of Telspace Africa.

“Through conducting penetration testing, companies are able to get a clear picture of whether the security controls that they have implemented are actually effective in stopping attacks, understand where their true risks lie and receive the necessary advice on the correct frameworks to follow in order to implement the most effective security controls needed to address their specific risks,” he says.

“With this bird's eye view of their risk landscape and through trusted security advisors, even businesses with limited security budgets are able to deploy controls that maximise their security posture, while drastically minimising their overall security risk,” he says.

“For this reason, we always recommend that companies engage with providers such as Telspace Africa, so we can assist them in gaining a clear understanding of where their risks and vulnerabilities lie, in order to effectively remediate and reduce their critical risks, thus reducing their overall exposure and preventing attacks and breaches that may lead to operational disruption, reputational damage and financial loss”, he says.

“Through using trusted security partners, SMEs are able to mitigate some of their biggest challenges, including lack of security awareness, maximising limited budgets and addressing the lack of dedicated security resources through outsourcing,” says Quintal.

Telspace Africa will once again be exhibiting at the 2024 ITWeb Security Summit. We invite you to pay us a visit at stand 5 to discuss your penetration testing requirements, as well as overall information security needs with our experienced and knowledgeable team, who will gladly assist you with any questions or advice that you may require.

For additional insights on the cyber security risks faced by SMEs, organisations can refer to the 2024 EMEA Cybersecurity Report for SMEs that Telspace Africa took part in recently by going to https://www.numata.co/resources/2024-emea-cybersecurity-report/.