Global tech group opens office in the city

Johannesburg - Global tech company Zoho has opened a new office in the city to accommodate its growing employee base in the country and cater for its customers.

The company said it had new customer growth of 75% in South Africa in 2021, and doubled its employee base since opening its first office in Cape Town.

In addition, Zoho and the Institute of African Royalty (IAR), a startup and SME incubator, have entered into a partnership to remove access barriers to enterprise technology for small and medium businesses, and help with their digital transformation.

SMEs that are a part of IAR will receive Zoho Wallet Credit worth R27 000 that can be used to avail any of Zoho’s products, including Zoho One, the operating system for business. Zoho will also provide expertise to help businesses leverage cloud technology.

security guards with firearms or subterfuge, posing as guards or contractors.

Guards are tied up and their panic buttons removed. From there, the perpetrators open the gate for trucks with interlink trailers with cloned or falsified plates. Forklift workers are forced to aid the perpetrators with loading their trucks, after which the criminals take the goods to a rented warehouse as a ‘cool-off’ area.

“As we can see from the findings, access control is the first and most critical line of defence. Several technology-driven access control measures can support guards and prevent entry to premises,” says Flax.

He proposes automated gate or boom opening with biometric technology (such as facial recognition), advanced camera technology (such as ATG cam, an IoT camera with onboard OCR for live database lookups, or radio frequency identification (RFID) access control, where UHF readers pick up a unique ID from an RFID antenna fitted to authorised vehicles.

He adds implementing visitor or contractor pre-registration, where individuals’ identities are verified online and then preloaded onto the systems.

Flax says such solutions be integrated into an existing physical security infrastructure, and encourages businesses to use data to bolster security.

“The most important way to safeguard against crime is to keep an eye on your data. It is good to receive realtime information and alerts on suspicious activity and look out for trends so you can anticipate threats,” he adds.

integration with popular payment gateways Yoco and PayGate, to allow its customers to accept online payments. These announcements were made on the sidelines of Zoho’s annual user conference, Zoholics South Africa.

Zoho Middle East and Africa regional director Ali Shabdar said its growth should be globally connected, but locally rooted, an approach it calls transnational localism.

Zoho launched Advanced Electronic Signature (AES) in its digital signature application, Zoho Sign by integrating it with TrustFactory, one of South Africa’s most reliable identity verification providers.

To support ease of business for local companies, Zoho has announced

“We have followed this approach with our growth and expansion in South Africa. We have increased our employee strength, introduced local pricing, grown our partner network, invested in upskilling initiatives and partnered with local business communities. In continuation of our commitment to the country, we have partnered with IAR to help local businesses access enterprise technology, introduced AES in Zoho Sign to help businesses leverage the power and ease of digital signatures, and integrated local payment gateways that will make it easier for customers to receive payments online,” Shabdar said.

Zoho Sign also offers Qualified Electronic Signature in the European Union, Aadhaar-based eSign for India, Sign with Singpass for

Partnership provides cyber security training

Johannesburg - Vodacom Business has partnered with CybSafe to offer its clients and businesses access to security awareness and training.

Vodacom Business clients can download the CybSafe app onto mobile devices and use it to achieve cyber security compliance, while improving their employees’ security behaviours.

According to Interpol’s 2021 African Cyberthreat Assessment Report, the South African economy lost about $573 million (nearly R10 billion) in 2016. The report notes that South Africa had 230 million threat detections, while Kenya had 72 million and Morocco 71 million. In South Africa, 219 million detections were related to email threats.

Managing executive for cloud, hosting and security at Vodacom Business, Kabelo Makwane says organisations of all sizes are facing enormous challenges, including the proliferation of cyber-attacks.

“This will enable us to offer ondemand access to security awareness and training to millions of users,” Makwane says.

CybSafe CEO and founder Oz Alashe says: “Our partnership with Vodacom Business will provide organisations with access to CybSafe. This will help them reduce the risk and improve people’s security behaviours. CybSafe works to change people’s behaviour, turning employees into an organisation’s greatest defence, while empowering them with the training and skills to detect and spot attacks before they cause harm.”

Singapore, Seiko time-stamping for Japan and more. South African businesses can also use Zoho Sign for international operations.

In 2021, Zoho grew by 52% in the Middle East and Africa region, the second highest growth region for the company. It grew its partner network by 55% and tripled its workforce in the region. It also established presence in seven countries, and set up new offices in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and South Africa.