Local ICT Company, J2 Software, has scooped the exclusive distribution rights to SkyView Partners security and compliance offerings for Africa. Skyview Partners specialises in Security and Compliance solutions specifically aimed at IBMi (previously iSeries), AIX and Linux platforms.

John Mc Loughlin, MD of J2 Software says that in the tough economic environment of today, companies are constantly looking for ways to survive, and protect their market share. Organisations have less time to focus on security and compliance than ever before – and tight budgets have made system security specialists a luxury in modern day organisations.

Social networks are posing a massive security threat to companies worldwide as malware and spam increase. With Twitter, MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn becoming essential business tools, preventing staff from accessing these networks is no longer a solution. Companies merely have to apply sound security measures to ensure they are protected.

Events across the globe over the past 18 months have seen internal information security breaches escalate to an unprecedented level. As the complexity of data and the ease of access keeps increasing, companies have a golden opportunity to push information security to the top of their agenda to protect their information assets and the privacy of their electronic identity.

Driving down the cost of compliance is not only the key to competitive advantage, but compliance also needs to be taken seriously and become part of a cost-effective executive risk management strategy. Compliance must be turned into competitive advantage whereby the opportunity cost of being compliant is vastly reduced. This is according to J2 Software managing director John Mc Loughlin.

Compliance roles should not be separated from the business; they should be seen as business enablers, integrating the compliance needs of audit and IT and must be communicated at board level. In order to turn governance, risk and compliance into competitive advantage, it must be perceived and experienced as a 'business enabler' as opposed to a function that leads to 'business prevention'.

Sharp Electronics, a division of Seartec Industries (Pty) Ltd, has announced that it has implemented SystemSkan to control and manage its IT infrastructure. SystemSkan is an internal security management system that is focused on policy enforcement by tracking and controlling all user activity on a computer network.

The solution provides the ability to view, record and restrict activities, including Internet, email, instant messaging and application-specific activities. According to SHARP Electronics IT manager Immo Steffens, they decided on SystemSkan because it not only offered them a powerful IT policy enforcement tool, but also covered other areas of their requirement with the additional utilities offered by the system. "In the past, other products were tried and none had actually been able to work on our infrastructure to a satisfactory level.