The continued digitisation drive by businesses is driving a cybersecurity transformation and businesses that can adapt and leverage the new cybersecurity landscape will be better prepared to grow sustainably in an increasingly digital world, says information and communication technology multinational T-Systems South Africa security specialist sales executive Lukas van der Merwe.

Modern cybersecurity must become integrated at every business level, he stresses.

He notes that it needs to evolve into a pervasive and active presence, ensuring operations and data integrity are not disrupted, as it is vital that intellectual property remains confidential and customer privacy is protected in accordance with regulations. Advanced cyberdefence enabled by Security Orchestration Automation and Response (Soar) technology offers organisations an opportunity to detect and respond much faster, limiting the extent and the cost of a breach.

"Cyber threats are increasing in sophistication and frequency. The attack surface of companies has expanded far beyond the traditional enterprise perimeter and cybercriminals are resourceful, professional, persistent and well-funded. Cyberattacks now regularly bring businesses to a standstill in South Africa and globally," Van der Merwe points out.

The key contributing factor to the cost of a data breach is time – time to detect and time to respond. Protection, while vitally important, is not enough.

More focus should be placed on an organisation’s resilience post-attack or -breach.

"According to Gartner, 15% of South African organisations will use Soar technology in 2020. For some, the shortage of skills are prohibitive and for many it is the associated costs.

"However, Soar technology could reduce the extent and cost of cyber events exponentially, turning weeks or months into hours or even minutes," Van der Merwe says.

"In terms of cybersecurity, this represents a difference in financial risk of millions versus thousands of rands. For example, a local organisation suffered a ransomware infection that caused three-and-a-half weeks of production outage in 2019. A few changes in policy and an injection of technology would have reduced the impact to hours or even minutes."

Soar technology, combined with Artificial Intelligence, enables organisations to detect and respond, and, thereby, limit the extent and the cost of a breach.