Local information security provider NewOrder Industries has recently acquired shares in KaosKorp, a governance and compliance services company. This acquisition enhances NewOrder Industries’ already broad range of specialised services, which include security evaluations and assessments, penetrations tests, training, and governance and compliance audits and implementations.

“By incorporating KaosKorp under the NewOrder group of companies, we can now offer enhanced governance and compliance skill-sets to new and existing clients,” explains Marthinus Engelbrecht, CEO of NewOrder Industries.

The root cause of all IT security problems within any enterprise starts at governance. “This acquisition puts us in a stronger position to address IT security from the root cause upwards and provide clients with a platform from which
they can control and manage their IT security environment,” Engelbrecht says.

Since NewOrder Industries typically operates as an offensive security company and KaosKorp as a defensive security one, the combination presents a unique approach to dealing with organisational risk. This is achieved by
firstly identifying vulnerabilities and exploiting them to test validity.

Secondly, the root causes of the discovered vulnerabilities are analysed and finally, educated decisions are made as to mitigating them in the long and short run. The company also designs and implements Information Security Management Systems using this approach.

“Information security services have become nearly unaffordable within the local market, resulting in numerous vendors providing ‘automated’ security scans as a service. However, if you do not have IT security knowledge or are not
actively involved in the organisation’s IT security environment, then such an automated tool will be of no value. NewOrder Industries believes a specialist human element is required to provide effective security.

With the inclusion of KaosKorp, NewOrder Industries now provides a service that implements IT security frameworks to protect intellectual property and client information and, in essence, manages an organisation’s information
technology environment holistically.

“This boost to the NewOrder brand puts us in a league of our own with additional specialised skill-sets,” says Engelbrecht. “Our unique offering can address the governance requirements of any organisation, such as ensuring POPI compliance, regardless of the company size.”

According to KaosKorp CEO, Jan van der Merwe, it is rare that two organisations with such differences in operations are able to come together and fully compliment each other’s services, resources and clients.

“This has been so in our case, making the transition virtually seamless,” Van der Merwe says.

Van der Merwe explains that although the relationship between the companies has been a long time in the making, the decision process to officially combine forces was a short one. “Given NewOrder’s professionalism,
experience, and longstanding reputation in the industry, the decision to work together was an easy to one to make,” he says.

“NewOrder Industries’ vision has always been to be the leading information security provider in South Africa, and with this latest acquisition, we are one step close-r,” Engelbrecht concludes.