Category: Vox 4 Thought

Integrated ICT and infrastructure provider, Vox, has announced the launch of Kaspersky Total Security, a cost-effective solution that blocks viruses, secures your passwords, and helps manage Internet access for children, providing the ultimate level of protection for families in the digital age.

“Kaspersky Total Security provides a premium level of protection to maintain privacy of families online, as well as corporate networks and data, while employees are working from home. There are several cost-effective monthly packages on offer, including ones that are designed to protect multiple users or devices, regardless of whether they are using a Windows PC, a Mac, or a mobile,” says Ryan McGee, Head of Security Solutions at Vox.

While the lockdown has been reduced to level 3, social distancing guidelines mean that companies still can’t have all their employees back at work, and are having to juggle between either creating rosters so employees can take turns coming into the office, or by letting employees continue to work from home.

Maintain security on your home network

These changes have been a boon for cyber criminals too, who have been targeting remote workers. While some companies have their own IT department to maintain the security of their data and networks, the situation isn’t the same when employees are working from home.

While their work laptop might be secure, what about all their other devices, all of which are connected to the same home network?

“Kaspersky Total Security is simple to set up and use, and goes about its tasks while having a minimal impact on your device’s performance. Its features include an award-winning antivirus to block viruses, malware and ransomware; privacy protection, to stop phishing attacks or webcam hijacks; a smart VPN, which is automatically activated when you connect to unsafe/public WiFi; and an encrypted web browser to protect your online transactions on PC or Mac,” says McGee.

Protect and manage your family’s online activity

Other handy features include a password manager to keep track of all your logins and synchronise them across your devices; file protection to backup your valuable data locally and online; and advanced parental controls that help block certain content across children’s devices, and even includes a GPS tracker.

There are currently three packages, developed around the number of devices covered – that are available on a 12-month contract. This includes protection for one device, at R37 per month, for three devices at R54 per month, and for five devices at R64 per month. Note that all devices that you want to protect and manage need to have their own license.

The discontinuation of copper lines in several areas countrywide is set to begin in less than two months.

While ADSL has long been a staple for South Africans wanting to connect to the Internet – especially the early adopters – they will have to start thinking about alternatives.

In an announcement sent out to its IPS customers, Openserve says that it will discontinue ADSL services in areas that are covered by the company’s Fibre network on 1 September 2020, with affected customers across all provinces.

It further calls on ISPs to ensure that affected customers are migrated to other forms of connectivity before the cut-off date.

While the shutting down of copper lines that carry traditional voice and ADSL connectivity was first mentioned over a year ago, this decision now makes it a reality.

It is old technology that is difficult to maintain, is not as reliable, and is no longer suited to meeting the Internet bandwidth requirements of users in a digital age.

This is especially true under the current circumstances, with many employees having to work from home as a result of the lockdown restrictions, and discovering the limitations of using ADSL or even mobile/fixed-mobile as their primary means of connecting to the Internet – the former not being fast enough, and the latter not being affordable or stable enough.

Why Fibre is the better technology

Remote working has seen an explosion in the use of online productivity tools and applications, as well as video conferencing, all of which require a quality broadband connection. More importantly, unlike just consuming media – such as streaming a TV series or movies – working from home also requires that users upload huge volumes of data.

With Fibre, they can not only choose whether their line speed and whether their package is capped or uncapped, but they can also select if they want a service that is symmetric – with the bandwidth equally shared between uploads and downloads – or asymmetric – with more bandwidth set aside for data traffic in one direction, usually for downloads.

In addition, Fibre offers line speeds that far exceed what was available on ADSL, with some network operators offering up to 1Gbps – or up to 100 times faster than the standard 10Mbps copper line.

As for mobile or fixed-mobile connectivity options, they simply cannot match Fibre when it comes to the cost-effectiveness of uncapped packages, the per-gigabyte cost of data, or even in terms of offering lower latency.

Then, there is the issue of contention – the more people that connect to a cellular base station, the slower the network speed becomes.

Beyond helping those working from home, switching to Fibre is ideal for the modern household, with family members having multiple devices, streaming on-demand video content, and making personal voice and video calls.

Furthermore, online gamers will know that one of the biggest issues affecting their gameplay is latency, which is especially noticeable when using ADSL or mobile connections – making Fibre the only effective option.

Switching made easy

Some of the reasons why people have been hesitant to move away from their traditional ADSL lines include a lack of familiarity with new technology, a perceived inconvenience resulting from having to switch, as well as not wanting to lose their existing telephone line and number.

To make things easier for consumers, some ISPs are beyond just simple providers of internet connectivity, and can easily provide these customers with a voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) line, with number portability making it fully possible for them to retain their existing telephone number.

Switching to VoIP further allows them to make calls, locally and internationally, at lower rates than their existing landline connection.

As user behaviour shifts toward a more digital lifestyle, including working from home, consuming more online services, watching video content in higher quality, and adding more Internet of Things devices – think of connected security cameras, or smart lighting and smart locks that allow for keyless entry – Fibre will be critical to connecting all of these different elements.

Fibre providers have recognised this demand for high-quality broadband, and some have made it a strategy to extend their networks beyond the main urban centres in South Africa. But for the rest of us, the decision around Internet connectivity should be fairly straightforward: if you live in a neighbourhood that has Fibre coverage, you should switch to Fibre as soon as possible.

Service Level Agreements are effectively a warranty on the level of service quality delivered by the service provider, while managing expectations and defining responsibilities.

This drives the framework for handling timely customer support and repairs when failures occur.

Mission critical business operations depend on the reliability of these services and whether it’s the IT Infrastructure, PABX or Communications, a higher level of SLA becomes increasingly non-negotiable.

An SLA will ensure that there is some pressure for the provider to get the service up and running again as soon as possible.

A wide selection of smart solutions

Similar to choosing your household insurance, the highest plan will give you the most extensive cover when the unexpected arises. You should have the peace of mind that your business, much like your home is covered.

Ensuring the best level of service

If you are outsourcing your IT Operations, this will give you leverage you need in the event that the service is underperforming. You are then safe guarded by the SLA and, in some cases, reimbursed for the downtime experienced. In this respect you can think of it as an insurance policy for that service.

Proactive protection of what matter most

You may feel that the premium or top of the range SLA is unnecessary but when failures do occur, you will realise just how valuable it is. This rings especially true for mature organisations that cannot afford major disruptions in their operations that will ultimately result in lost productivity, eroded confidence and lost opportunities with their customers.

If you want to know more or to sign up for the Advanced SLAs, please contact your Account Manager or email us at  salesenterprise@voxtelecom.co.za and our team will respond promptly.

Capitalising on the anxieties and fears caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the past several months have seen cybercriminals increasingly target home networks to steal personal data.

International research shows that there has been a 350% increase in the number of phishing attacks from January to March, the period most countries started entering lockdown conditions.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was predicted that cybercrime would cost the world more than $6 trillion annually by 2021. Given recent developments, this is likely to increase even further. Parents have been working from home and their children attended online classes with many schools embracing e-learning offerings.

But with all family members now relying on connectivity from home to do everything from working, online shopping, gaming, watching movies, going to virtual classes, and so on, they are also opening themselves up to more sophisticated cyberattacks that can significantly compromise their personal information.

Even Microsoft has warned that ransomware attacks have started becoming more widespread as hackers look to monetise their attacks at a time when they can make the most financial gain.

No industry has been immune, but it has been especially home users who have suffered the most.

This should hardly come as a surprise as many people think that their antivirus provides equally effective protection.

The reality is quite different. With so many connected devices (just think how many devices you have connecting to your home network), each one signifies a potential weak point in the chain. It only takes one compromise to impact the entire environment.

This enables hackers to install malware on any of the devices at home. And when a laptop or smartphone is used to access the corporate network, the malicious users can more easily steal usernames and passwords to breach business systems.

Integrating security

This is where a total approach to cybersecurity for the home environment becomes critical. It is no longer good enough just to safeguard the work laptop. Today, every single home device needs to be protected whether it is the smart TV in the living room all the way through to the tablets and other devices children use to go online.

A solution such as the Kaspersky Total Security suite becomes critical to deliver multi-device family security. An effective cybersecurity solution like this can still deliver antivirus features, but extends its scope to:

• Protect passwords
• Provide webcam security
• Detect ransomware
• Offer a user-friendly way to set up a virtual private network
• And numerous other features.

Unlike the traditional way that requires a software (or hardware) solution to be installed for every aspect of this, total security means this can be done from one system with multiple licences to support all the devices on the home network.

And because this is a software-driven environment, home users can easily set up and maintain their own cybersecurity without having to struggle setting up complicated hardware and other infrastructure solutions.

A total security offering can be applied to multiple devices irrespective of whether they run Windows, Mac OS, or Android. It is centred on providing the entire family with the most sophisticated protection in as user friendly a way as possible.

Protecting the family

For example, using a total security solution, a person can lock, locate, and reset a missing Android phone. Advanced parental control features ensure parents can block access with content filters, limit the use of devices, monitor their children’s social media activity, and even ring fence their physical location using their devices that show real-time alerts if they move out of that zone.

For example, with schools reopening for some of the grades, a parent can easily ring-fence their child to the school from 08:00 to 14:00 and receive an alert if they leave the school property without their knowledge.

Furthermore, you can monitor all online activities of all the users on the home network.

Whether that is online shopping or banking, a total security solution can proactively check whether a user is connecting to a legitimate site before submitting their credit card details.

Of course, this protection not only extends to financial sites. When the lockdown started, there were over 700 fake Netflix sites scanning for credit card details. It is therefore imperative to check the authenticity of every site a person visits especially when personal information must be submitted.

Related: Vox unveils estate-focused visitor management solution

Such has the significance been of cyberattacks focused on home networks, that 12.1% of South African systems have been infected by some form of malware in May alone. So, even though these are strange times, the new normal will continue to require a more effective way of protecting personal devices and home networks.

Fundamentally, a total security solution such as the one provided by Kaspersky (available from Vox) is one of the most effective ways of doing so to ensure your loved ones remain safe in the digital world.