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Security and Service Assurance Must Rule Financial Services as Threat Actors Remain Relentless

Risna Steenkamp, General Manager: ESM Division at Networks Unlimited Africa The rise of the pandemic last year meant that corporates around the globe had to embrace a highly dispersed, virtualised environment to keep the wheels of business turning. This is now changing the way that banks need to move forward, with both their security as well as their service assurance. So says Darren Anstee, Chief Technology Officer for security at NETSCOUT, a leading global provider of service assurance, security and business analytics. He explains that, at the start of 2020, digital transformation in the financial services sector was already well underway, and the intervening year has only accelerated this transformation. Writing in a recent blog, he notes that, “The COVID-19 lockdown shut branches, forc...

Your Data has Left the Building: Don’t Let it Take You on a Bumpy Ride

“Ladies and gentlemen: Michael Jackson has left the stadium.”  These are the dramatic words spoken just after Michael Jackson, one of the most famous performers and entertainers in history, flew off the stage at the end of his 1992 – 1993 ‘Dangerous’ tour. It was one of the smoothest and most awe-inspiring endings to a stadium performance the world had ever seen – and Jackson did it for concert after concert during that spectacular global tour. However, as was later revealed, the truth is that Michael Jackson didn’t actually fly out of any stadiums via a jetpack – it was a professional stuntman in his place. So, it wasn’t really correct to think that the King of Pop had left the building. But it surely is correct, nearly 30 years later, to know that your data has certainly left the bu...

Tintri Drives Intelligent Infrastructure so You Can Get Ready to ‘Let Go of the Wheel’

The concept of self-driving cars is controversial and tends to polarise opinion. At the heart of it is the idea that a car will be capable of the same split-second decision-making as a human – or even better – with the ultimate goal of creating accident-free roads. For a vehicle to be autonomous, it needs to be continuously aware of its surroundings: firstly, by identifying and classifying information, and then by acting on the information through the computer control of the vehicle. And for this to happen, artificial intelligence (AI) is required, it is a critical technology in the goal of realising autonomous driving.  “One of the main premises of self-driving cars is the idea that autonomy equals safety,” says Michael Donaldson, Tintri Product Manager at value-added distributor Net...

ProLabs and the ‘New 5G Backhaul Economy’

Marcel Fouché, Networking and Storage General Manager at Networks Unlimited Africa As we navigate our way through the COVID-19 pandemic, we are finding that economic and social survival is tied to the ability to work and play at a distance. If ever there was a time for a revolutionary new internet technology to take hold, now would seem to be that time. So says Raymond Hagen, Americas Product Manager at ProLabs, a global leader in optical networking infrastructure. He notes in a recent blog entry that: “Visionaries may state that 5G will offer access to new applications like artificial intelligence and smart city infrastructure that could define the next industrial revolution. Companies and countries failing to act now will find themselves left behind global and regional powers that a...

Insult added to Injury as DDoS Extortion Attacker Impersonates well-known Threat Actors

Extortion and robbery while wearing a disguise are not new crimes in human history, but a threat actor has recently taken this into the online arena on the global stage, using distributed denial of service (DDoS) as the weapon, while pretending to be someone else. This is as reported in a recent threat advisory released by NETSCOUT’s ASERT division (ATLAS Security Engineering & Response Team), which is tasked with providing threat intelligence trends and research. Risna Steenkamp, General Manager: ESM at value-added distributor Networks Unlimited Africa, says, “We have seen DDoS ransom attacks before – for example in October last year, South African banks were hit by a wave of ransom-driven DDoS attacks, as were other targets in other countries around the same time. However, with...

Networks Unlimited Wins 2 Channel Awards at Fortinet Africa Virtual Security Day

Networks Unlimited Africa, a leading value-added distributor operating within sub-Saharan Africa, received two awards, namely the Technical Support Distributor of the Year: Southern Africa award and the DLB Growth Distributor of the Year: East Africa award at the recent Fortinet Africa Virtual Security Day. This was the first time that the event took place via a virtual platform, due to the current restrictions around the global COVID-19 pandemic. The online nature of the awards ceremony also ensured that this broadened its reach to other parts of Africa, and not only within South Africa. Stefan van de Giessen, General Manager: Cybersecurity at Networks Unlimited Africa, comments, “We have proudly maintained our business partnership with Fortinet, a global leader in broad, integrated and a...

Altaro Endpoint Backup Brings MSPs Relief during Pandemic

Risna Steenkamp, General Manager: ESM Division at Networks Unlimited Africa Managed service providers (MSPs) know that even though they may try to enforce group policies to store data only on their network or in the cloud, end users often store some files locally on their laptops and PCs. Wherever it may reside, the fact is that data can also be lost or damaged due to physical disasters, loss, theft or cyberattacks. And so, with more employees than ever working remotely, there has never been a greater need to make sure that offsite resources are regularly backed up. Altaro, a leader in backup solutions for MSPs, IT resellers and IT departments, has designed a solution to simplify backup for an organisation’s on-premises and roaming Windows desktops and laptops. Its solutions are distribute...

Thinking Beyond the Pandemic with Silver Peak SD-WAN

Organizations will have to look at re-engaging with their customers and business prospects in an entirely new way in a post-COVID-19 economy. This will most likely force an assessment of business model design and delivery, in which the wide-area network (WAN) will play an important role in defining success. So says Kristian Thyregod, vice president for Europe, Middle East, and Africa at SD-WAN solution provider, Silver Peak. Writing in a blog entry, Thyregod explains, “Forward-thinking companies continuously plan and execute their enterprise architectures to not only accommodate current requirements, but also foresee developments of future requirements – e.g. a temporary, or even permanent, shift in business model design and execution. “…The WAN is the connecting tissue across the enterpri...

Networks Unlimited Africa Embraces the Power of Three with its Value Offering to Partners

Anton Jacobsz, Networks Unlimited CEO There is a mysterious alchemy about the number three. As the saying goes, ‘Good things come in threes’ – which is why Networks Unlimited Africa is embracing this ‘magic number’.  “A triangle, with its three sides, is one of the most stable shapes that you will find, which is why it’s used in building bridges and other structures where supporting a lot of weight is required,” says Anton Jacobsz, CEO at this leading value-added distributor in the sub-Saharan Africa market.  “In the world of colour, we find three primary colours that make up all the rest – red, yellow and blue. In sport, we invariably award medals to the top three competitors, while in photography and design, artists often work in the rule of thirds for perspective. And so here ...

Networks Unlimited Africa Makes a Generous Donation to a School in Tembisa

“South African businesses have an ethical responsibility towards educating the country’s less-privileged children and should not lose this commitment when times are economically and socially difficult. It is even more important during these tough times to continue supporting the educational needs of society’s most vulnerable.” So says Anton Jacobsz, CEO at Networks Unlimited Africa, a leading value-added distributor within the Sub-Saharan Africa market. He was commenting after a recent donation of nearly R130,000 from the company’s annual golf day was made to its chosen beneficiary, Nokuphila School, in support of early childhood development.  The 2020 golf day took place earlier this year, prior to the lockdown brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. It is an annual event which bring...

The New Normal: Managing Networks from Home with Uplogix

As the COVID-19 lockdown continues into the foreseeable future, IT managers still need to maintain their ‘normal day job’ tasks of running networks – in addition to managing employees who currently need to make significantly increased use of online meeting platforms and remote working arrangements.  According to Uplogix, which provides integrated remote management solutions, many companies still have mission-critical internal systems that need to be accessible to home-based workers over VPN connections – even though some applications have moved to the cloud and are available through a website from a browser.  Risna Steenkamp, ESM Business Unit Manager at value-added distributor Networks Unlimited Africa, which distributes Uplogix throughout sub-Saharan Africa, clarifies, “During ...

Silver Peak SD-WAN: as Simple or Complex as Required to Maximise Business

The ‘business of business’ is not always easy on the ‘business of telecommunications’. Mergers, acquisitions, consolidations, closures, new applications and new business needs – which are all staples of the corporate world – can make designing and managing an enterprise wide area network (WAN) into a never-ending, complicated task.  So says Duane Henigin, Senior Systems Engineer at SD-WAN solution provider Silver Peak. Writing in a blog entry, Henigin notes that: “Most likely your Wide Area Network (WAN) has grown in complexity over time or you have inherited a network with its own challenges… Add in the constant balance between dependability and performance with cost and you have just scratched the surface of architecting and managing an enterprise WAN.” Henigin says that software-de...

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