Kathy Gibson reports from Pinnacle Tech Tour – Technology has made a lot of things in our lives simpler – but it seems that cybersecurity and data protection has become more complicated.
Jacques Smit, strategic partner executive at Acronis South Africa and Africa, points out that cybersecurity used to be relatively easy: IT departments had to worry about a firewall and end point protection, and they could be assured of a good level of security.
But technology has made our IT environments more complicated, Smit says. And there is much more data that has been generated.
In response, the industry has come out with literally thousands of security solutions. What this results in is the fact that 79% of organisations use up to 10 different security programs.
The result is more threats, more vendors, more agents in more devices, more risk, more updates, more training, more invoices – and more complexity overall.
Organisations have embraced one of two philosophies, Smit explains.
The first is to continue on the current course, which means the complexity will just continue to escalate
The other is to consolidate systems under one security provider. “One of those philosophies is going to win,” says Smit. “And we know which one it should be.”
Acronis offers an integrated cyber protection platform that is an integrated solution of cybersecurity, backup, disaster recover, management and automation – all built specifically for service providers – and all in base or advanced versions.
“We have a single pane of glass that is user friendly for administrators and technical people alike,” Smit says. “Many of the services we offer would be individual products, but we offer them as an integrated solution.”
All solutions are built on the Acronis platform which is 100% home-grown, Smit says. “This gives us maximum flexibility to provide the services required when they are requested.”
This means Acronis partners can provide their customers with a fully-managed solution that is specifically targeted to their needs.
“A lot of people ask me how simple Acronis is to use,” Smit says. “And I can tell them it is literally just a single click.”
He concludes that Acronis can help businesses solve their most pressing issues including:
* Finding and training talent as it is designed to require minimal technical skills.
* Margin pressure by using less resources and making licence costs more efficient.
* Technology failure through an integrated solution with fewer points of failure.
* Security and compliance issues via integrated backup and security.
* Lack of differentiations by offering the flexibility to customise solutions as required.
* Hitting service level agreements (SLAs) by giving control over service levels.