Although it’s not easy to predict the year ahead, one thing is certain: cybercrime will become more prevalent and will, if it’s not already, become a risk agenda for company boards.
Anna Collard, senior vice president of content strategy and evangelist at KnowBe4 Africa, recently attended the World Economic Forum’s annual security meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, where she met with some of the world’s leading authorities in the tech space.
As a global influencer and expert in this field, she brings a wealth of knowledge and insight into what we should all be more aware of. Vigilance, she says in this Impact Series episode, is the name of the game.
Collard explains how important it is to collaborate to prevent security incidents, especially given that organisations are all facing similar adversaries. After all, no business is an island.
Collard reiterates in the show what she has said in previous episodes: the importance of identifying existing and new people in and around your business who demonstrate a promising attitude towards cybersecurity, an attitude that will in turn form valuable skills and help build a digital culture around your organisation’s security needs.
Cybercriminals are limbering up for another year of extortion and ransomware as they seek new ways to hack the world. We don’t need a crystal ball, says Collard. Rather, we need collaboration, vigilance and a focused workforce.
Don’t miss the discussion!

The constraints on the global and local supply of critical components, compounded by numerous logistics issues, has made 2022 a challenging one for the ICT industry.
Although industry players have made every effort to deliver, when there are no parts there really are no parts!
TechCentral’s Impact Series jumped into conversation with Riaan Graham, sales director of sub-Saharan Africa at Ruckus Networks, and Eugene Botes, product manager at Pinnacle Datanet, for a frank discussion about where the industry’s going headed into 2023.
The good news, Graham and Botes say, is that we are likely to leapfrog certain technologies as an unintended consequence of the supply constraints and that 2023 will be a better year for us all. Not sunshine and roses, but better. Production has realigned with demand; the backlogs in supply chains have eased; and balance is being restored.
An example of an unintended consequence is that companies that had been planning the shift to Wi-Fi 6 may be lucky they had to sit it out. Wi-Fi 6 and 6E (also known as the wireless standard 802.11ax) promised big improvements in wireless Internet speeds. But Wi-Fi 7 is already around the corner, says Graham, promising even more: greater efficiencies in network delivery and wireless transmission, and a greater ability to augment AI and robotic digitisation initiatives. Find out more about Ruckus Networks’ solutions here.
Complemented by numerous peripheral services and efficiencies, such as cloud-managed services and the ability to support the increasing risk of network users wanting to bring their own devices (BYOD) onto enterprise networks safely, Ruckus will specify, develop and deliver Wi-Fi 7 solutions.
Botes emphasises the importance of planning now and applying a well-scoped logic to what ultimately is a unique set of product offerings that Ruckus can provide. Learn more about Pinnacle Datanet and the solutions offered by both Rucks and Datanet in this episode of Impact Series.
* Impact Series episodes are paid for by the party or parties concerned

The context of how businesses engage with customers is vital: it reassures clients that they have been heard.
Clara Wicht, Telviva senior product and marketing manager, and Rob Lith, chief commercial officer, join James Erasmus to discuss current developments in the customer service industry in this Impact Series episode.
Long gone are the days of PBXes and Post-it notes. Customers engagement is becoming more unified, and agents are now more empowered to respond with a single view of the customer’s profile and historical engagements in a meaningful and useful way.
Telviva Engage is a locally developed and scalable platform that integrates into existing CRM and other business systems, on premises or in the cloud (or a combination both).
Wicht explains: “It’s an all-in-one platform that aggregates multiple engagement channels into a single view, all while empowering quicker and more informed responses to customer engagements.”
Lith suggests putting the platform to the test by visiting the Telviva Engage and seeing how the company can synchronise multi-channel engagement, including Web, social media, WhatsApp, and fixed and mobile voice and chat.
“We believe that contact centres, customer service centres and customer-facing teams should be empowered to have a single, user-friendly view of all the channels on a browser that they can access anywhere, on any device, for a more authentic, immediate customer experience,” Lith says.
* Impact Series episodes are paid for by the party concerned

Unless you have 100% visibility and are continuously scanning your cloud environment, you are vulnerable. According to recent research by Orca Security, 78% of identified attack paths use known vulnerabilities (CVEs) as an initial access attack vector.
This is significant because most entry points that are exploited can relatively easily be prevented since these CVEs are already known and the vast majority already have remediations available.
Praven Pillay, MD of Maxtec and Sagy Kratu, director of enablement and an evangelist at Orca Security, joined James Erasmus for a brief but fascinating conversation about the harsh realities of public cloud security.
Maxtec is the exclusive distributor for Orca Security in Southern Africa and has offered to guide anyone watching or listening to this episode of TechCentral’s Impact Series through a free-risk assessment and a free 30-day trial of the Orca platform.
With local support from Maxtec, the Orca platform connects to your environment in minutes and provides 100% visibility of all your assets. It detects and prioritises cloud risks across every layer of your cloud estate, including vulnerabilities, malware, misconfigurations, lateral movement risk, weak and leaked passwords, and overly permissive identities.
The adoption of public cloud is accelerating. The security postures, which are your responsibility, have been radically innovated, automated and no longer depend on agents. Consider your cloud investment and ask if you are properly protected.
* Impact Series episodes are sponsored by the party or parties concerned

Retail Capital identified Sage Intacct as a cost-effective solution for its business, which has been experiencing exponential growth.
Chief financial officer Tyler Posthumus studied Retail Capital’s requirements to scale, and quite specifically stipulated the need for a robust ERP solution with API (application programming interface) capabilities for automation. There also needed to be minimal disruption to the business.
Through an existing and well-defined partnership with AWCape, Retail Capital switched from Sage 300cloud to Sage Intacct. The immediate and long-term benefits are discussed in this podcast and so, too, is the importance of trusted human interaction.
Listening to this episode will give you great comfort in planning your own modernisation as well as insight into why systems can create efficiencies that far outweigh any perceived inconvenience associated with change.
For an overview of Retail Capital’s story, and to hear to the company’s experience, watch or listen to this podcast as Posthumus, along with Jeff Ryan, MD for AWCape (the implementation partner), and Gerhard Hartman, vice president: medium business, Sage Africa and Middle East, talk about the project.
Visit www.awcape.co.za for more information.