Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 14 | Page 15

NEWS South Atlantic Cable System makes landfall on Brazilian coast T elecommunuications multinational Angola Cables has reported that the South Atlantic Cable System (SACS) has made landfall at Fortaleza on the Brazilian coast. Its arrival is an important strategic milestone for the company, Angola and Africa because it will be the first direct link between the Americas and the African continent, offering faster routing with higher capacity. SACS is expected to be fully operational later this year, with the undersea cable being one of the most advanced submarine telecommunications systems. “Once SACS has been fully commissioned, we will see a significant improvement in communications and content sharing between Angola, African countries and the Americas,” said Angola Cables’ CEO António Nunes. “Investments made by Angola Cables and its partners in underwater cable systems, such as the West African Cable System “With SACS, the delay in transporting digital content, known as latency, will be reduced five-fold, from the current 350 thousandths of a second to just over 60 thousandths of a second. It is also re-orienting worldwide Internet traffic and is effectively positioning Angola as a telecommunications hub in sub- Saharan Africa.” Celebrating the milestone, from left: Moroni Torgan, Deputy Mayor of Fortaleza; Manuel Homem, Angolan Secretary of State for Information and Technology; António Nunes, CEO of Angola Cables; Inácio Arruda, Secretary of Science, Technology and Higher Education of Ceará; Camilo Santana, Governor of Ceará; and César Ribeiro, Secretary of Economic Development of Ceará (WACS) and Monet – connecting North and South America – combined with other investments in terrestrial infrastructure such as data centres, is opening up global communications networks. The South Atlantic Cable System (SACS) between Africa and South America makes landfall at Fortaleza on the Brazilian coast ///////////////// RSA issues security warning about need for early detection G lobal cybersecurity company RSA has highlighted the importance of early detection and a rapid response in combating a targeted attack on your network. Experts accept the strong possibility that criminals will be able to enter their network at any point, meaning that the issue becomes less about being able to keep them out and more about detecting them and taking remedial action as soon as their presence is discovered. “The report from RSA Incident Response Services notes that, once detected, rapid response is needed to mitigate the potential damage and prevent them from achieving their objectives,” said Anton Jacobsz, managing director at Networks Unlimited, which distributes RSA products and solutions in Africa. “RSA’s Advanced Cyber Defense (ACD) services for incident response enable www.intelligentcio.com organisations to prepare for security incidents without having to accept the inevitability of loss.” The report outlines the comprehensive forensic analysis framework in the RSA approach to threat response and mitigation, noting that the response process takes into consideration data from multiple sources, including in-house systems, open source research, RSA Live threat intelligence and the customer’s threat intelligence sources. The approach taken includes network analysis using host forensics, harvesting threat intelligence and malware analysis, as follows: • Network analysis: Data from packets and logs collected by RSA NetWitness is used to identify suspicious or risky communications • Host forensics: Executables, files and libraries are used to identify unauthorised services and processes deployed by the attacker and running on end points • Threat intelligence: Research is conducted to gain insights about the attack infrastructure, tools and techniques, which is particularly helpful in gaining insight about threat actors that are persistently targeting the organisation • Malware analysis: Malware tends to be relatively small in terms of file size, which helps the attackers to avoid detection. Malware analysis allows an incident response team to develop blocking techniques and make the organisation more resilient “Attackers do leave clues to their presence and analytic intelligence, as offered by RSA, is key in being able to offer early detection and rapid response,” added Jacobsz. “On-going analysis and threat intelligence further allows an organisation to bolster its defences into the future.” INTELLIGENTCIO 15