Akana has appointed IndigoCube as one of its preferred partners in South Africa. Akana helps businesses accelerate digital transformation by securely extending their reach across multiple channels – mobile, cloud and Internet of Things.
Akana enables enterprises to share data as APIs, connect and integrate applications, drive partner adoption, monetize their assets, and provide intelligent insights into their business and operations.
“This is a significant milestone for IndigoCube because Akana adds an important piece of the security jigsaw, particularly as applications become more and more important to businesses,” says Godfrey Kutumela, who heads up IndigoCube’s security division. “Apps allow companies to interact more easily with customers and business partners, but they also put corporate and personal data at risk.”
Kutumela explains that in order to compete in the digital economy, companies are reshaping their business models to make data and applications available as application program interfaces (APIs), which specify how software components should interact. These APIs are used to connect enterprise systems with mobile apps, the cloud and, increasingly, with smart devices as the Internet of things develops.
This connected economy enables totally new ways of doing business, but it also creates new risk, particularly as data is transmitted via different communication protocols, each of which has different levels of security.
An additional consideration is that each device to which the data is transmitted has itself a distinct security profile—or lack of it. Deployed at the network perimeter, the policy-based Akana API Security Gateway is designed to secure this complex environment by streamlining management, deployment, development and operation of APIs; enhancing security and regulatory compliance through authentication, authorisation and audit capabilities at the edge of the network to provide perimeter security and defence; protecting the enterprise by handling authentication and authorisation; encrypting data; and preventing threats and attacks. It can be deployed in the cloud or on-premise.
Kutumela says that IndigoCube will also support clients by providing in-depth consulting around the implementation of Akana.
“Hackers target the weakest point of any system, and that’s often where it interacts with systems or devices outside the firewall. We will also help clients to understand what data each channel carries, and in what quantities, so that security initiatives match the risk,” he says. “Using Akana, we can protect all channels at the correct level, and gather invaluable intelligence for security planning.”
IndigoCube will implement Akana at client premises or supply it as a service via the cloud.