South Africa is the only country showing equal data leak score due to internal and external violations (38%), which means that a company has to protect both from external and internal security threats equally.

This is according to Sergey Ozhegov, chief executive officer of risk management solution firm SearchInform, which recently launched an information security outsourcing services for companies that face the problem of corporate fraud and data leakage.

Ozhegov says the global cyber security market size stood at US$131.3-billion in 2018 and is projected to reach US$289.8-billion by 2026.

"(The) data security market is expected to account for the second largest category of expenditure in South Africa by 2023."

SearchInform says it is offering a turnkey solution, a complete outsourcing package that includes DLP management, employee monitoring, internal threat detection and productivity monitoring.

"If a company does not have the employees responsible for information security, employee monitoring, and internal threats prevention, then personal data and company secrets remain unprotected from leaks, and corporate incidents are not detected. This is usually about small and medium business, which can't hire expensive staff and buy professional software. Moreover, it is difficult for owners to assess the feasibility of spending money on serious tools implementation. The outsourcing service shows an objective picture of information security and risk management of a business and allows you to get high-quality protection at a reasonable price and be proactive," adds Ozhegov.

He says that the service is differentiated in the South African market because it provides analyst services, software, and the ability to deploy a server in the cloud.

"In other words, there is no need to buy, configure and maintain hardware specifically for the solution," says Ozhegov.

SearchInform believes its service will empower clients to protect their data and pick up on any corporate fraud detection (including kickbacks, bribes and sabotage).

"I'd like to outline a very important factor ... a specialist from a team of analysts providing SearchInform services doesn't know employees of a client company in person, thus the human factor can't affect investigation process," Ozhegov continues.

SearchInform experts note that the service is also provided as the SaaS version, which means that the company provides software, cloud server and information security analyst's services for rent.

Alexey Parfentiev, the Head of Analytics at SearchInform, says, "According to Gartner, most information security vendors abroad have already begun the transition to cloud solutions, including cloud servers for DLP systems."

The company is convinced the South African market is ready to capitalise on the outsourced security services model.

Says Ozhegov, "On the one hand, 62% of South African companies don't have a specific department monitoring information usage and assign IT officers to manage data safety issues, but IT staff has its own responsibilities. On the other hand, the number of companies that want to spend less time and money while protecting data is growing. So we face the situation when companies are ready to buy outsourcing services and focus on main business tasks."

The company has an office in Centurion, Pretoria and this is viewed as being the base from which it will expand into Africa.