Raphael John-Lall

Vice pres­i­dent of Icons Com­pa­ny Ltd Tar­quin Joseph says more needs to be done in T&T to im­prove the stan­dards of cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty."I think the stan­dard in T&T, and this is based on speak­ing with cus­tomers we have, the stan­dards in the way we ap­proach se­cu­ri­ty needs to be im­proved. "You can lis­ten to some of the things you hear in the news about in­for­ma­tion leaked and things like that. There is a need for greater cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty stan­dards and be­ing able to ad­dress those con­cerns is im­por­tant," he said.

Joseph made the com­ment yes­ter­day at the part­ner­ship launch be­tween Icons, a lo­cal com­pa­ny, and Pa­lo Al­to Net­works, a lead­ing Sil­i­con Val­ley provider of net­work and cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty so­lu­tions, at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, Port-of-Spain.Pa­lo Al­to has clients that in­clude the US Army, Ap­ple and Cana­di­an multi­na­tion­al bank RBC, and Pa­lo Al­to fire­wall so­lu­tions in­clude ap­pli­ca­tion iden­ti­fi­ca­tion in the fire­wall func­tion, in­te­grat­ed user iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, ad­vanced net­work­ing and re­port­ing against threats and ze­ro-day at­tacks.

Joseph said the part­ner­ship with Pa­lo Al­to pro­vides so­lu­tions that ex­ist in the cy­ber world for not on­ly busi­ness users and peo­ple in gen­er­al."The so­lu­tion from Pa­lo Al­to Net­works is de­signed to ad­dress those types of con­cerns that or­gan­i­sa­tions are hav­ing," Joseph said.

"It is not just that they are think­ing about it, these are is­sues that they are hav­ing right now, the re­al chal­lenges and prob­lems. They de­sign their prod­uct know­ing the changes in how peo­ple use the in­ter­net, not on­ly us reg­u­lar users but al­so the ma­li­cious users, the hack­ers who would seek to do harm to the net­work in­fra­struc­ture." Joseph said busi­ness­es should not on­ly look at the cost fac­tor, but the val­ue the sys­tem brings, when com­ing to them to in­stall these so­lu­tions.

"Ex­pen­sive is not the word, we need to talk val­ue."Val­ue is what Pa­lo Al­to brings. How cost­ly some­thing is de­pends on what it is do­ing and what it al­lows you to do. These ap­pli­ances al­low you to do a lot to pro­tect your net­work and to pro­tect you from breach­es that will be cost­ly."There is ob­vi­ous­ly a cost ben­e­fit that will be ad­dressed. The cost of the ap­pli­ances are com­pa­ra­ble to what you would find in any oth­er sim­i­lar so­lu­tions."

Joseph al­so said the part­ner­ship brings "un­par­al­leled safe­ty" for busi­ness­es and com­pa­nies in T&T."We look for­ward to the un­par­al­leled safe­ty and the ease of use of their next gen­er­a­tion of fire­wall so­lu­tions to en­ter­prise right here in T&T. Lo­cal com­pa­nies need to take ad­van­tage of this."