Africell, the US-owned mobile network operator with more than 12 million customers in four African countries, has adopted the industry-leading StormWall Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection solution to improve security across its networks.
The anti-DDoS technology provides protection across Africell’s IT infrastructure in Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gambia and Sierra-Leone, where the company provides Internet access via 3G, LTE and 5G and is rated as the number one company in terms of service quality by regulators.
StormWall’s BGP network security solution ensures automatic protection for networks by detecting DDoS attacks at an early stage and switching traffic to DDoS filters before the attack causes the service unavailability.
The solution helps to ensure stable operation of IT infrastructure and networks, protecting them from all known DDoS attacks at L3-L5 OSI levels. This protection method is intended for telecom operators and ISPs. data centers, and hosting companies as well as corporate clients with their own autonomous systems.
Younes Chaaban, Group CTO of Africell, said: “The security of our customers is a top priority for Africell, which is why we are working with StormWall to harness the most advanced protection systems available today. The company’s expertise is providing the perfect solution to protecting our networks from DDoS attacks. SormWall is helping Africell ensure we can continue to grow our business without the fear of falling victim to a cyber-attack.”
Ramil Khantimirov, CEO and co-founder of StormWall, added: The volume of traffic processed by Africell is huge, so protection from DDoS attacks is one of the key tasks of the company. It was very important for us to gain the trust of Africell and provide our solution ensuring a high level of protection of the company’s resources. Our professional solutions provide effective counter-measures against cybercriminals and we are happy to know that companies in Africa are aware of the need to use such methods of protection.”
Cybercriminals have repeatedly attacked companies in Africa. Vulnerability is associated with weak security structures, lack of qualified personnel and insufficient awareness. As in the rest of the world, telecoms and ISPs on the African continent are constantly exposed to the risk that a DDoS attack could completely block the company’s resources leaving millions of users without access to the Internet. As a result, a company may suffer significant losses and damage to its reputation Ramil Khantimirov, said.