CyberKnight has announced its strategic expansion into the Central, East, and West Africa (CEWA) region, reflecting its commitment to extending cybersecurity expertise and building resilient ecosystems across emerging markets. As part of this regional growth, CyberKnight has appointed Yaadhna Singh Gounden as the Regional Sales Director, CEWA & IOI (Indian Ocean Islands), to support enterprises and government organizations across CEWA to embrace the Zero Trust Security model, helping to safeguard critical assets and meet complex compliance mandates.

With over 17 years of extensive experience in cybersecurity and IT Distribution, Yaadhna brings a wealth of expertise in managing customer and partner relationships and driving business development across the African region. With the CEWA expansion, CyberKnight continues its focus on capacity building, offering advanced cybersecurity technologies and expertise that empower enterprises to tackle evolving threats. The company will leverage its extensive portfolio of Zero Trust solutions, combined with Yaadhna’s leadership, to deliver actionable strategies that enhance regional cyber defences.

“CEWA expansion with the regional key hire marks an important milestone for CyberKnight. This market is witnessing rapid digital adoption and an increasing focus on cybersecurity resilience. CyberKnight’s expansion seeks to address the rising need for advanced solutions and expertise to help enterprises and governments in the region secure their digital ecosystems. Our goal is to bring effective and pragmatic cybersecurity strategies along with Zero Trust Security framework while addressing region-specific challenges,” commented Avinash Advani, Founder and CEO at CyberKnight.

“Joining CyberKnight during such a pivotal time is an exciting opportunity. The challenges in CEWA’s cybersecurity landscape demand tailored approaches. My focus will be on fostering trust, strengthening partnerships, and ensuring that our solutions not only protect but enable businesses to thrive in an increasingly digital world. I look forward to collaborating with our customers and partners while helping CyberKnight deliver on its mission to expand Zero Trust Security across emerging markets,” commented Yaadhna Singh Gounden, Regional Sales Director, CEWA & IOI.

Researchers at Kaspersky keep a close eye on Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) and are observing 9 active threat actors that currently target organisations in Africa. Whilst these threat actors target a wide range of entities, Kaspersky researchers identified Government, Energy and Telecommunications as the top targets in Africa.

APT groups are complex threat actors that deploy targeted attacks, active for years on end. These groups are often motivated by espionage, monetary gain, or in some cases, hacktivism. According to Kaspersky Intelligence, some of the most prominent groups in the region are MuddyWater, FruityArmor, Sidewinder. Kaspersky also works with legal authorities, providing them with the intelligence needed to track cybercriminals behind these attacks.

These threat actors use a wide range of techniques to infiltrate their victims in the region. Social engineering is a common tactic used on social media or email, such as posting a fake job advert targeting software developers. APT groups also deploy sophisticated modular malware like DeadGlyph and StealerBot, as well as weaponising legitimate, remote applications, online services and cloud platforms – a technique used by MuddyWater APT group to penetrate the targeted site. Furthermore, these groups can target third-party providers and infiltrate their victims through supply chains.

“The current geopolitical climate is a hotbed for APT activity, therefore, investigating these attacks and gaining intelligence on their movement is vital for security teams and corporations in Africa. Our research allows businesses and government entities to determine the significance of the threat posed, understand the attackers’ next move and accordingly be able to take the appropriate security steps to protect themselves,” said Amin Hasbini, Head of Global Research and Analysis team for Middle East, Turkiye and Africa at Kaspersky.

With every APT investigation, Kaspersky’s Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) publish comprehensive reports, available on Kaspersky’s Threat Intelligence Portal (https://apo-opa.co/3XTZYyc). The reports offer crucial APT detection and forensic capabilities, enabling effective mitigation and remediation.

To avoid falling victim to a targeted attack by APT groups, Kaspersky researchers also recommend implementing the following measures:

1. Limit access to third parties and require continuous inspection of access within their supply chain.
2. For endpoint-level detection, investigation, and timely remediation of incidents, implement EDR solutions such as Kaspersky Next.
3. In addition to adopting essential endpoint protection, implement a corporate-grade security solution that detects advanced threats on the network level at an early stage, such as the Kaspersky Anti-Targeted Attack Platform.
4. The energy sector and other critical infrastructures should use security solutions for operation technology endpoints and networks, such as Kaspersky Industrial CyberSecurity, to ensure comprehensive protection for all systems.
5. Upskill your cybersecurity team to tackle the latest threats with Kaspersky online training, developed by GReAT experts.
6. Educate employees depending on their IT knowledge with cybersecurity courses such as those available within the Kaspersky Security Awareness Platform.

Liquid Networks, a business of Cassava Technologies, a pan-African technology group, today announced the launch of its Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Secure offering to its customers. The solution is designed to proactively mitigate attacks by scrubbing traffic and blocking known attackers or malicious traffic.

“Cyber Attacks are at an all-time high; cyber security threats cost the African GDP almost a whopping US$4.1 billion in 2021. And, DDoS are on top of the cyber security attacks; the staggering cost to our GDP is proof enough that no business can afford to be without a layer of protection against them. While DDoS attacks have evolved over the years, our offering is equally sophisticated. With traffic scrubbed at one of our four scrubbing centres, customers can focus on their core business requirements while keeping them safe from DDoS attacks,” says Ahmad Mokhles, CEO of Liquid Networks.

The service is being offered to all potential Internet & IP transit clients and provided to all existing customers in regions where Liquid has operations across Africa access to a proactive protection service. With DDoS Secure, clients can have peace of mind, knowing that their business’s reputation, income, and network are protected. The service also offers them the potential for growth and partnerships through DDoS compliance.

While protecting clients’ networks and operations, DDoS Secure also gives them a line of sight about attempted attacks through post-incident reports on all mitigations completed. In addition, with the recent launch of  Liquid’s Next-Gen Cyber Security Fusion Centre, the organisation will be able to monitor all online activity live and deter an attack before it reaches your network.

“With this measure in place, there will be higher visibility of potential attacks, and we will be able to mitigate threats and proactively secure businesses automatically. In addition, we can now manage and protect our customers in real-time. Yet, another achievement as Liquid Cyber Security introduces a solution that brings the world’s best practices in protecting against DDoS attacks,” concluded Mohkles.