Cybersecurity specialist Exclusive Networks Africa has announced a new local partnership with Akamai Technologies, the cloud company that powers and protects life online, with a view to assisting the organisation to further entrench itself across the African continent.

According to Stefan van de Giessen, Security & GSI Lead Africa at Exclusive Networks Africa, the two businesses have already worked together on a significant local project, which saw the successful implementation recently of a microsegmentation strategy for an African telecommunications group. 

“Having collaborated for the past six months on this particular deal, Akamai opted to broaden our partnership and leverage Exclusive Networks Africa’s extensive partner base across East, West and South Africa, as well as the Indian Ocean Islands and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, in line with the company’s strategy. Together, we will focus on delivering the benefits of microsegmentation to local enterprises, governments and telco organisations in particular.”

Software-based microsegmentation is an emerging security best practice that offers several advantages over more established approaches, like network or application segmentation. These traditional methods rely heavily on network-based controls that are coarse and often cumbersome to manage, notes Van de Giessen. However, the software-based segmentation element of microsegmentation separates security c  ontrols from the underlying infrastructure and provides businesses with the flexibility to extend protection and visibility anywhere.

The added granularity that microsegmentation offers is essential at a time when many organisations are adopting cloud services and new deployment options, like containers, that make traditional perimeter security less relevant.

Says Van de Giessen: “Microsegmentation is essentially a software-defined network overlay that, through AI intelligence, allows for greater visibility around all assets within the network. This infrastructure visualisation is helpful in that it makes activity in the environment easier to identify and understand.

“This approach allows companies to ringfence their applications and servers and define which ones are able to talk to each other. This is critical in the case of, for instance, a ransomware attack, as the malware is not able to spread to other machines within the network due to these authorisation parameters. The ability to lock down a device individually allows for greater control over the blast radius of an attack, which would not be possible with the use of a firewall, for instance.”

Furthermore, he explains, a software-based microsegmentation solution can be rolled out faster, seamlessly and with far less capital expenditure (Capex) than would be required to purchase firewall appliances and additional hardware. 

“Microsegmentation also allows businesses to avoid lengthy implementation timelines – taking rollout timelines from over a year down to weeks - as well as the unavoidable related downtime, which comes with a hefty price tag. In addition, the reduced maintenance - and reduced management effort needed - results in far lower operating expenses (Opex) over time, in the form of labour and resource savings.”

“Microsegmentation may be a newer concept to many, but it is becoming an increasingly important tool for IT teams challenged with ensuring that security policies and compliance keep pace with the rapid rate of change in today’s dynamic data centre, cloud, and hybrid cloud environments,” Van de Giessen concludes.  

Speaking about the partnership, Hans Nipshagen (Regional Vice President of Channels and Alliances EMEA at Akamai) said: ‘We are excited to team up with Exclusive Networks and their strong ecosystem of local partners to deliver our microsegmentation services, enhancing cybersecurity for customers across the African markets.’