Performanta is a cybersecurity company launched in South Africa in 2010. The company was initially focused on technology sales in the cybersecurity market – specifically data leak prevention (DLP), before moving into the managed services space where it is now operational in countries across the globe, employing around 150 people.
Co-founder, Attie Booyens, says that while the company has expanded its reach beyond South Africa’s shores, to the extent of receiving a 'significant investment' from the UK’s Beech Tree Private Equity firm and retaining many large international clients, it still retains its skills base and many customers within the country.
Martin Springer, Performanta’s COO adds that the company realised that technology is not the solution to the ever-increasing cyber threats the world faces. For this reason, the company today takes a more consultative approach to understanding the people, process and technology risks clients face. In this way it covers the full cybersecurity spectrum through a managed services approach. These cloud-based services allow the business to deal with issues anywhere in the world in real-time.
Understanding the risks and how cybercriminals implement their attacks allows the company to prepare customers for a proactive security posture against these threats. It also operates two security operations centres (SOCs) where its personnel manage their clients’ infrastructures in real-time, 24 x 7, making use of the latest technology available on the market as well as its own software designed specifically to integrate and collate data and provide real-time insights.
Key to the SOCs are the various integrations the company has developed into a host of cybersecurity products and solutions, which allows it to monitor and manage customers’ security from a central, integrated point. And while its goal is to understand clients’ risks and prepare them through its consulting services, while ensuring they are able to withstand the numerous threats companies are faced with via its SOCs and technical integrations, it also runs an incident response team which is geared to react to emergencies and get its clients up and running as quickly as possible.
Naturally, cybersecurity today includes areas that were traditionally separate departments, such as governance and compliance, and the company’s consulting incorporates these in its drive to deliver a complete service. And this does not all have to be done by people.
Booyens says that while the company is developing a solution that integrates all the security information software and hardware provided into a single dashboard, it is also focused on automation. While people will always be necessary in this complex industry, automating many of the background processes and procedures will speed up the process and leave people free to focus on more important tasks. “Skilled people are still the fine art of cybersecurity,” notes Springer.
The story of Performanta is that of a group of highly skilled individuals in South Africa that have taken their skills and capitalised on them to grow an international company with offices in South Africa, Europe, Australia and the USA. Moreover, given the critical need for cybersecurity globally, the company’s integrated, cloud-based dashboard delivers intelligence that goes beyond products and brands, offering real-time protection to clients that runs unseen until it is needed which will find it a receptive market well into the future. (Hi-Tech Security Solutions will follow up with an overview of the company’s latest product in the next issue.)
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