According to a recent SBA survey, 88% of small business owners felt their business was vulnerable to a cyber-attack. Yet many businesses can’t afford professional IT solutions, have limited time to devote to cybersecurity, or they don’t know where to begin even though the biggest cyber security threats SMEs face include phishing attacks, malware attacks, ransomware, weak passwords and insider threats. Speaking during the launch of the product in East Africa Ben Obinju, Kristen Communication Chief Executive Officer, termed the partnership with Paessler as timely at a period when the country has seen increased cyber security threats targeting businesses in Kenya and the region as a whole. “As a cybersecurity company, we have been working to ensure all our clients are cyber resilient by helping them mitigate the day-to-day risks that originate from cyber threats. Other than offering strategic advice to our clients we, therefore, deliver strategic solutions to such threats through products such as PRTG which we are launching today. Paessler says that the availability of software in the market will enable local forms to optimize the usage of their infrastructure by enabling systems managers “stay on top‘ of all processes with the help of the software. PRTG allows organizations to respond to unexpected changes in the system by triggering real-time notifications thus decreasing the downtime which can easily lead to losses and delays in delivering crucial functions. “Many organizations in the region have their IT faculties monitoring the functionalities of the various tools in their infrastructure which is not their role. PRTG will therefore enable organizations to optimize their It department focus on their roles through a powerful and flexible platform,” says Irene Gorrissen, Business Development & Technical Sales Manager for Africa. Further, Kristen terms the deployment of this product as timely, coming at a post-pandemic period when most organizations have automated their operations. “We would to see the change of the wait and see a scenario where IT practitioners would wait for some downtime to be alerted of any problems in the system by organizations automating their monitoring techniques,” says Simon Otieno, Chief Operations Officer Kristel. Among the expected early adopters for the project include the financial sector including banks, SACCOs and deposit-taking microfinance institutions especially those operating mobile applications to extend services to customers.
