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TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION

NEC XON Experience Centre to test 5H and

Open Ran use cases

EC XON has created an Experience Centre at its Midrand
head office in South Africa where customers can test use
Ncases and business models for emerging technologies,
such as 5G Open RAN.
The Experience Centre also includes demonstrations and
testing facilities for integrated or standalone solutions such as
sustainable energy, digital self-service know your customer (KYC)
and communications infrastructure.
“We know that the pace of new technology developments
is extremely fast and advances can be significant,” says Johann slicing enables multiple operators to share infrastructure. Private
Coetzee, Executive VP of NEC XON. “That can make it difficult 5G helps mobile operators to position services into new markets
for customers to predict the business case and supporting that include mining, enterprise, or high-density commercial
architecture, particularly where there is no commercial organisations via regional or campus setups. Customers can test
precedent, which is why we developed the Experience Centre. all of these.
It is a demonstration and sandbox environment that enables NEX EXON has spent two years developing the 5G Open RAN
customers to create, test and develop the use cases they want to capabilities of the Experience Centre. There is no other facility
explore before they provide significant investment.” like this in Africa and it took significant investment in skills and
A prime example is the 5G Open RAN platform NEC XON resources to establish Africa’s first 5G Open RAN platform where
offers in the new Experience Centre. customers can test future use cases.
“There are many use cases for 5G Open RAN,” says Wally The Experience Centre additionally demonstrates the
Beelders, Executive of Communications Solutions at NEC XON. capabilities of NEC XON’s digital self-service KYC solution that
“From industrial automation to smart cities, the top 15 also incorporates digital kiosks, identity verification, connectivity,
include the Open RAN multi-vendor environment for mobile security, maintenance and support. A key attribute is that they
operators, network slicing and private 5G.” harness the power of biometric verification, which means they
5G Open RAN can deliver high throughput solutions for metro help businesses to meet regulatory requirements, an extremely
environments as well as low-cost rural deployments. Network powerful extension of customer experience processes.

Backdoor computer malware in South Africa

skyrocketed by 140%

A backdoor is one of the most dangerous types of malwares. Backdoors provide cybercriminals with
remote administration of a victim’s machine.

outh Africa saw the most significant increase in backdoor detections from Q1 to collecting emails to complete control
Q2 – by 140% to 11,872 cases, with the share of affected users increasing by 10%. over the victim’s infrastructure. First
SIt was followed by Nigeria – backdoor detection saw a significant increase of 83% leveraged in March 2021, this backdoor
to 2,624 cases, with the share of affected users increasing by 24%. In Kenya the number hit government institutions and NGOs in
of detections increased in Q2 to 10,300 (53% increase from Q1), and the share of users Africa, South Asia, Europe and the Middle
affected by backdoors increased by 11%. East. Many of the targeted organisations
Unlike legitimate remote administration utilities, backdoors install, launch and run remain at risk.
invisibly, without the consent or knowledge of the user. Once installed, backdoors can be “Backdoors enable a series of long
instructed to send, receive, execute and delete files, harvest confidential data from the unnoticed cyberespionage campaigns,
computer, log activity and more. which result in significant financial or
Recently Kaspersky discovered a hard-to-detect backdoor dubbed SessionManager reputational losses and may disrupt
that targeted governments and NGOs around the globe. This backdoor was set up as a the victim organisation’s operations.
malicious module within the Internet Information Services (IIS), a popular web server
edited by Microsoft. SessionManager enables a wide range of malicious activities from ... continued on next page

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