It has been on the cards for some time and while global cybersecurity research and endpoint security firm ESET is well known for its service to the SME space, senior executives at the company believe the time is right for its South African operation to officially service the country's enterprise market segment.

The company has invested heavily in R&D to firmly position its EDR software solution, Enterprise Inspector, incorporating threat hunting and monitoring, as well as its LiveGrid preventative system.

The value proposition put to enterprise customers is twofold and based on the level of skills a company has in place to be able to maximise the software solutions.

ESET can actively monitor a network and if there is an issue, the company will alert the customer who could then utilise ESET to analyse and investigate.

Or the customer monitors their own network and should anything suspicious be discovered, they will call ESET to investigate and analyse further.

The company advocates multi-layered technology because it claims this assures the best detection rates and minimal false positives.

Increase in threats

Threats continue to increase. According to Robert Lipovsky, a Senior Malware Researcher in ESET's Security Research laboratory in Bratislava, Slovakia, the company's detection engineers are picking up an average 300 000 malware with unique malicious binary globally every day.

In November 2017, the company referenced statistics from PhishMe service which stated that over 97% of phishing emails contained ransomware delivered in 2016.

Moreover, in 2017 there was a 2500% increase in cases involving ransomware, with individuals targeted every 10 seconds and businesses every 40 seconds.

While the threats continue, the company's executive leadership acknowledges that the enterprise segment has different requirements and there are different dynamics at play – particularly in terms of the supply chain.

ESET has always provided its technology via resellers to the SME customer. In the enterprise market, go-to-market inevitably involves direct consultation with companies and the emphasis is on partnerships.

It is a competitive space with a great deal of service delivery and competition within the government vertical said Carey van Vlaanderen, CEO of ESET Southern Africa EDR.

According to Gartner worldwide spending on information security products and services will reach more than US$114 billion in 2018, an increase of 12.4% from last year. In 2019, the market is forecast to grow 8.7% to US$124 billion.

This growth is fueled by ongoing skills shortages and regulatory changes, according to Gartner researchers.

ESET has also cited research by Forrester which suggests that buyers want an "endpoint security suite that consolidates capabilities and minimises complexity when possible."

Van Vlaanderen said EDR is definitely a baseline prerequisite. "Without that solution in place at least, you cannot claim to be in the enterprise space."

She also emphasised the relevance of Gartner's CARTA (Continuous Adaptive Risk and Trust Assessment) approach.

ESET has been identified as the only challenger in Gartner's 2018 Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms.

Botnets, education and awareness, effective strategy, responsibility, organised crime and compliance with industry regulation (specifically POPI and GDPR) are considered areas of critical influence and importance going forward.