10 Years in South Africa – Where Are We Now?

J2 Software was born 10 years ago to service African markets with leading Information Security & Governance solutions and related services. We aligned ourselves and started the business with Dtex Systems – a young and dynamic company – and the powerful insider risk detection solution SystemSkan.

We saw the requirement for real visibility of user activity to prevent risk and reduce losses long before it was “cool”. The last decade has given us amazing insight into what really takes place out there across corporate networks of all sizes. We have gained insider views on what the everyday man and woman will do for their own benefit and in the weeks to come we will bring this information to you.

The last 10 years have not always been plain sailing – we endured one of the worst financial meltdowns in history, we have seen political turmoil across the continent and have had to navigate exchange rate fluctuations more violent than any storm off Cape Point. The last 10 years have truly proven that business in Africa is not for the faint hearted and by surviving we have proven that by providing relevant solutions which bring real value and help manage risk while lowering costs there will always be a way. J2 Software have shown that with the support of loyal customers, supportive business partners, friends and passionate colleagues we can bring about real change and drive growth. What a ride it has been!

10 years ago Jason and I started with a shared desk in a warehouse and today we are proud to be able to see offices in Johannesburg and Cape Town and have amazing customers with sites in Angola, Botswana, Kenya, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia. We provide solutions and/or services to the USA, UK and Australia – and we are not done yet.

Where are we now? We are here… 10 years in and continuing with our vision to provide best of breed solutions and offerings to the African market; and beyond. We are African, proudly African with our roots in South Africa and our tree branching out northwards and this will continue – please keep your eyes open for our powerful red logo….

I ask that you stay with us for the next part of this journey. We will be updating our communication channels with real and ACTUAL data around threats and issues which we are seeing in our markets. This will not be about businesses on the other side of the world and it will not be baseless scenarios – this is African information – from African businesses. We will be highlighting threats, discussing actual incident numbers and we will follow this up with practical recommendations to improve your position and better manage the complexities of risk and legislation. We will bring you all this information to help improve the information security position across all our markets.

As a sneak peek into the findings coming out of our research team, headed by our Senior Security Specialist Kevin Halkerd CISSP:

• 1 in 40 End Users mishandle sensitive corporate information – 2.5% of the trusted user base is a direct threat
• Less than 1% of businesses encrypt information copied to external USB drives and eve less know what has been copied!
• Less than 1% of businesses encrypt their users’ hard drives
• 70% of businesses have NO CONTROL and NO VISIBILITY on administrative rights across their environments
• 70% of businesses have out of date versions of Java, Anti-Virus and Microsoft products opening up the estate to known vulnerabilities
• 90% of businesses have users who are infringing copyright laws on company equipment and on company time every day
• 30% of businesses have users that are downloading and watching pornography on company assets during the work day

What’s Next? We will continue to provide leading information security and governance solutions to our clients and with our reseller partners, we will strive for the highest level of customer service from the initial engagement to long after the sale is concluded because it is only with long term value that we all benefit. It is our goal to do all we can to continually improve information security understanding and to continually strengthen our continent’s ability to reduce cyber threats through continuous monitoring, behavioural analytics and open communication.

I look forward to providing these insights in coming weeks and thank you for the support and guidance over the last 10 years – we hope to see you all for the next 10.

Feel free to comment or get in touch so we can talk some more.