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From the editor's desk: Security and resilience

Andrew Seldon, Editor

It’s often said that South Africans are a resilient bunch, and history has proven this correct. When it comes to security, both cyber and physical, resilience is key to an effective defensive plan. Resilience is not a matter of products or even integrated technologies, although they play a critical role, it is about continuity.

The concept of continuity means being able to weather an attack and get back to normal in as short a time as possible. Naturally the first option is to prevent the attack from happening at all by covering all your bases, but if this is not possible, you need to have all the bits and pieces in place to recover, restore and get back to business.

In this issue we include a feature on cyber resilience. Sadly, because of space issues, the round-table we held on the topic could not be included, but it will be online. I will also be including it in the Smart Cybersecurity Handbook 2023, which will be finalised in October, where we will continue to explore cyber resilience and the standards to follow to ensure organisations’ cyber resilience.

Cyber resilience is not really rocket science. We know that despite a vast number of cybersecurity products available on the market, breaches still happen, often as a result of a mistake by an employee. We therefore need to ensure we are able to ‘bounce back’ from a breach and get back to business quickly.

The most publicised and therefore most feared cyberattack is ransomware, and these criminals make every attempt to ensure you can’t easily bounce back. It’s not unheard of to see them hanging around in their victim’s network for a while in an attempt to corrupt backups so that restoration is impossible. This is one reason why it takes more than IT security to be resilient, as is explained in the feature.

Resilience is not just for cybersecurity. We also take a look at the transport and logistics verticals in this issue, which really need to be resilient in South Africa. We have combined the feature to include both verticals in one as they are closely tied in terms of security and the ability to deliver to and for customers. With the latest crime statistics and the odd riot here and there being accepted as normal in the country, security in these two verticals, especially in terms of food security, is critical.

Hi-Tech Security Solutions spoke to DeltaTrak’s local representative about its cold chain monitoring solution which helps African exporters get their goods moved, stored and sold overseas by monitoring container environments every step of the way.

Residential Estate Security Conference

And, as a shameless self-advertisement, Hi-Tech Security Solutions is running another Residential Estate Security Conference on 18 October in Johannesburg. Check out www.resc.co.za for more information. We have a packed agenda aimed at the residential estate security market.

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