Guy Golan, Performanta

Top local organisations are under attack on the cyber front, and are deeply concerned about stepping up their information security.

This emerged at a Websense Executive Briefing Centre (EBC) session, held for a select group of top CIOs and CISOs, alongside the ITWeb Security Summit.

The session was hosted by Performanta, in partnership with ITWeb.

Guy Golan, CEO of Performanta, said the Executive Briefing Centre sessions are top-level executive briefings modelled on the EBC series abroad, where CIOs and CISOs are updated by product managers and strategic information security executives on solutions that deliver on strategic business imperatives. Performanta brought the first of a series of sessions to South Africa for the first time, to coincide with the ITWeb Security Summit, of which Performanta was also the event sponsor. The EBC sessions are designed to facilitate interactive discussions between key information security vendors and enterprises, with a focus on organisations’ security challenges and business imperatives, and the vendors’ ability to align with them.

Golan said the Websense EBC saw information security professionals from varied industry verticals, the state, and parastatals opening up about the real challenges facing them. “Among their key concerns are that they are under attack,” said Golan. “They need the right tools to address this challenge. Other key challenges they face are putting the correct processes in place and the fact that business does not understand information security imperatives.”

Websense outlined the current threats facing organisations, based on the findings of the 2013 Threat Report from Websense Security Labs. The report indicates that a new breed of sophisticated attacker is intent on compromising increasingly higher-yield targets.

The report said the Web became significantly more malicious in 2012, both as an attack vector and as the primary support element of attacks originating through social media, mobile devices, and e-mail. Malicious content was hidden within social media, behind shortened Web links 32% of the time. Social media attacks took advantage of the confusion of new features, changing services and unsophisticated users.

Performanta will host further EBC sessions, featuring Checkpoint and McAfee, at the end of Q2 this year.