Information and communication technology multinational T-Systems South Africa has relaunched its security operations centre (SOC) as a cyber defence centre (CDC), which leverages the latest cognitive technology and will offer its advanced cyber defence portfolio to customers as a managed service, says T-Systems South Africa Security specialist sales executive Lukas van der Merwe.

The CDC has been operational since January and will officially be launched to the market soon.

The CDC’s security offering leverages artificial intelligence (AI), security orchestration, automation and response (Soar) technologies and advanced threat hunting capabilities, which place significant emphasis on the detect and response elements of cybersecurity, Van der Merwe explains.

"This is the first commercial CDC in South Africa to offer these services to customers. While there is a significant appetite among local enterprises to adopt these security solutions, uptake has been virtually nonexistent owing to the prohibitive costs and lack of skills to configure, maintain and operate this technology.

“We are now able to offer this level of protection in a shared services model, as part of our managed cyber defence portfolio, to customers – especially small and medium-sized enterprises – that would otherwise not be able to afford to deploy this technology,” says Van der Merwe.

Given the frequency and sophistication of cyberattacks in the current landscape, a security breach is inevitable, he states.

“When it happens, how fast you are able to detect and respond to the breach is the differentiator. Our investment in state-of-the-art technology has enabled us to respond much faster, with more confidence and, thus, limit the cost of a security event to a significant degree.”

Van der Merwe notes that the CDC is the culmination of ten years of investment in security operations, drawing on the best that T-Systems International has to offer globally.

“Our CDC is part of an integrated network of 17 similar facilities around the world, and we are now able to offer our South African customers security solutions with AI and Soar components, combined with proactive and anticipatory cybersecurity practices,” he concludes.