NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec 13 – Acronis, a global leader in cyber protection is planning to launch operations in Kenya in 2022, the firm’s CEO Patrick Pulvermueller has said noting that the East African country is among those earmarked as growth targets between 2022 and early 2023.
Pulvermueller, who spoke to capital business on the sidelines of Acronis CyberFit Summit in Dubai -the industry event series dedicated to bringing cyber protection to businesses everywhere- said that firm is actively building its presence in Africa with a key focus on areas where its managed service providers (MSPs) have a strong connection.
MSPs, which are businesses that offer multiple, managed, information technology (IT) services to other businesses are among the key focus for Acronis.
“We launched 14 locations in 2021, we want to do the same next year and we want to do the same next year I am sure Kenya is on the list in 2022 or 2023, ” he said.
Africa Expansion
He said that Africa is a huge market for the company which already has operating offices in Nigeria and South Africa.
“We are looking for markets that are driven by our service providers and have the strongest connection with MSPs. Our first step is multinational corporations, small, medium, and large companies that have subsidiaries in Africa and we offer them cyber protection, that is how we build our footprint,” he said.
The firm has also announced plans to open two data centers in Nigeria, and South Africa, in Q2 2022, helping to fulfill the company’s ongoing plan of building 110 data centers worldwide within two years.
Among the growth dimensions put in place by the firm in Africa include a need to invest from a people’s perspective with a priority in digital payment platforms and mobile penetration sectors.
According to the Acronis boss, these two sectors are the most vulnerable areas in cyber threats owing to their increased usage and penetration in the continent.
“Digital payment is a big topic in Africa, especially micropayments and other systems which are more used in the continent, mobile penetration to other devices is also very different in Africa compared to other regions, these are two main areas we really are going to focus on,” he said.
Evolving cyber attack
During the 3rd cyber fit summit, Acronis also released its annual Acronis Cyberthreats Report 2022, which among other things, warned MSPs of their increased vulnerability to supply chain attacks due to their own management tools, such as PSA or RMM, used against them by cybercriminals.
Candid Wuest, Acronis VP of Cyber Protection Research reiterated the worrying growth of the cybercrime industry using cloud and machine intelligence to scale and automate operations.
“While the attack surface is growing and 2022 will surely bring us surprises, cyber protection automation remains the only path to greater security, reduced risks, lower costs, and improved efficiency.”
The malware data collected by the firm’s network of Acronis CPOCs across more than 650,000 unique endpoints around the world raised the concern of the criminals’ venture into Cryptocurrency where Info stealers and malware swap digital wallet addresses.
‘We can expect more such attacks waged directly against smart contracts in 2022 — attacking the programs at the heart of cryptocurrencies. Attacks against Web 3.0 apps will also occur more frequently, and new and increasingly sophisticated attacks, such as flash loan attacks, will allow attackers to drain millions of dollars from cryptocurrency pools,’ he said.
The report listed phishing as the main attack vector with 94 percent of such attacks being delivered by email — using social engineering techniques to trick users into opening malicious attachments or links.
“Phishing has been topping the charts even before the pandemic. It still continues to grow rapidly: just this year, Acronis reported blocking 23 percent more phishing emails and 40percent more malware emails in Q3, as compared with Q2 of the same year,’ the firm said…
Big companies and SMBs, according to the report, face Ransomware as their main threat with high-value targets being the public sector, healthcare, manufacturing, and other critical organizations.
‘Ransomware continues to be one of the most profitable cyber attacks these days. Acronis predicts ransomware damages will exceed $20 billion before the end of 2021,’ the report added.
