Organisations are all different, with different needs. Often, standard, out-of-the-box solutions simply don’t give them everything they need.

This is particularly true in an environment of constant change and evolving business needs.

CoCre8 Technology Solutions recognises this and thinks out of the box to offer solutions that solve changing business challenges in a fast-paced world.

Proactive security with Fortitude

Security is a hot topic. The number of attacks has risen sharply, and the implications of a breach range from high costs to reputational damage – even business closure.

Abdul Moosa, chief technology officer of CoCre8, says most companies protect their environment using either offensive or defensive security.

Defensive security typically includes technologies like antivirus, anti-malware or firewalls, he explains.

Join us virtually or for a light breakfast to see how we can assist with your organisation’s cybersecurity requirements. Register here.

“If you were to compare that using the analogy of a physical building or house, you would put burglar bars on your house and you would lock the doors. Basically, defensive security is to delay someone who is potentially breaking into your property. If they really wanted to get in, they probably could – so it’s more of a delaying tactic.”

Adding intelligence to secure your property brings it into the realm of offensive security. “In your home this would be where add things like alarm systems, which, if someone tripped a beam, would send someone from the security company,” Moosa says.

“So, now you’ve got defensive and offensive solutions working together. Now imagine you had a camera system deployed across your entire neighborhood and it had some sort of artificial intelligence built into it. I could pick up suspicious activity in the area, and the AI could determine if this is a threat – maybe people are looking into windows, or a car is displaying false plates – and dispatch the security company to avert the threat.

“In this case, you are addressing potential vulnerabilities. Instead of waiting for somebody to attack you, you are proactively looking for the holes that could cause issues.”

Addressing the gap

This is how Fortitude works with an organisation’s IT systems, Moosa says. “It addresses the gap between defensive and offensive security, to identify vulnerabilities and figure out the unknown. And it uses intelligence to predict if something could happen.”

The Fortitude platform is a cloud service that can examine a company’s infrastructure or systems, using artificial general intelligence (AGI) to learn about the system and what vulnerabilities it has.

“What an ethical hacker or penetration tester can do in a month, this platform can do within hours or even minutes,” Moosa adds.

Because the engine deals with facts and figures, it’s not biased in terms of having a human opinion, but will uncover potential vulnerabilities and then exploit those vulnerabilities to determine what the potential damage could be.

“And then the AGI engine writes a report in simple English to tell you exactly how to fix the issues. And it does this 24/7. It’s almost like having your own dark Web, monitoring your infrastructure with a bunch of hackers at scale, all the time,” Moosa says.

“I will put my head on a block and say there’s no one in the industry that has anything like this technology.”

Stephan Gilliland, head of edge computing and security at CoCre8, believes that Fortitude is a unique value proposition. “We decided to onboard Fortitude because we recognised there was a gap in the cybersecurity market. Some customers are lucky enough to have the resources that allow them to do penetration testing — but even they simply can’t do it 24/7. With Fortitude, every company – from the smallest to the largest – can be protected around the clock.”

Gilliland explains that AGI is at the heart of the Fortitude solution. “It is not just normal AI, which typically allows a machine to perform a single task extremely well – but it is still just a single task. AGI, on the other hand, can be made to think and function like a human mind, with the cognitive ability to self-learn and adapt. And this is crucial for cybersecurity – it means it’s not testing just a single point of reference, but everything around it, including internet-of-things devices.”

Perhaps the biggest advantage, however, is that Fortitude doesn’t get tired, take a break or make mistakes. “AGI runs 24/7 and ensures the organisation is secure all the time and not just when an audit is running,” Gilliland says.

Fortitude not only picks up vulnerabilities, it can offer remediation and recommend how to fix those vulnerabilities, too. The system can supply reports at any time and also populates a dashboard so CIOs can examine the organisation’s security stance whenever they want to.

The local cloud runs on multiple data centres, in Johannesburg, Durban and Bloemfontein, which ensures full redundancy

As a cloud-based offering, Fortitude can be set up to point to any external IP address or domain, after which it constantly tests and reports. These reports can be used for an organisation’s ISO 27001 security audit or PCI-DSS audit.

Gilliland says companies are quickly seeing the value of vulnerability testing in an environment where cyberattacks are on the rise. “Recent statistics show that ransomware attacks have increased by 148%, with one attack every 11 seconds – and 70% of them are successful. Once hit, the cost of recovery is extortionate and, even if they pay the ransom, companies often find that 70% of their data is still corrupt. They also experience lose in terms of reputation and significant downtime. Some companies are down for as much as three weeks,” he says. “As soon as organisations see the results of a Fortitude proof of value, they realise how vulnerable they are.”

Because it is a cloud service, customers get the benefit of a powerful tool as a managed service. Once it’s set up, it’s self-service so customers can access or schedule their own reports.

The local cloud runs on multiple data centres, in Johannesburg, Durban and Bloemfontein, which ensures full redundancy, as well as data sovereignty.

Please join us virtually or for a light breakfast to see how we can assist with your organisation’s cybersecurity requirements. Register here.

About CoCre8 Technology Solutions
CoCre8 Technology Solutions was born from Fujitsu South Africa, which transformed its operating model in the region. A South African investment consortium has acquired the Fujitsu shareholding, creating a 100% locally owned entity as of 1 April 2020. CoCre8 achieved a level-1 B-BBEE rating and looks after Fujitsu’s interests in South Africa and English-speaking Africa by being the exclusive Fujitsu OEM representative for the region.

CoCre8 is able to fulfil its digital transformation mandate by partnering with vendors and solution providers to ensure that it is able to best serve its customers. CoCre8’s go to market is focused on direct touch with clients but fulfilled via the channel. This approach enables the best of both worlds where the customers’ challenges are understood and addressed first-hand, while fulfilling through partners to respect the channel. CoCre8 invests in the channel by providing training, marketing and service backing.