tech news
5 Cybersecurity Threats to the COVID-19 Vaccine
Image sourced from TimesLIVE Cybercrimes have increased since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic with hackers becoming heavily resourced, especially now with nations across the world in the implementation stages of rolling out vaccines. Hackers have found sophisticated ways to target the organisations that have valuable data such as vaccine development, trials, etc. Here are X cybersecurity threats to the COVID-19 vaccine: 1. Cyber Espionage to Steal Vaccine Data A viable vaccine is valuable intellectual property. Beyond the pharmaceutical formula itself, even data on testing and drug trials can be valuable to an organisation working to develop its own drug. With countries struggling to secure an effective vaccine, such data is a tempting target. In late 2020, North Korean...
Safaricom to Bid on Opportunity to Expand in Ethiopia
Image sourced from Techweez Safaricom is now one of six companies vying for the chance to claim one of two Ethiopian telecoms licences. This is one opportunity that the telco has been waiting on and one that might grant access to a licence in an economy with more than 100-million people. This comes after the Ethiopian Telecommunication Authority (ECA) issued a statement last year announcing that the country would be open to selling a 40% stake in the state-owned company. In response to this announcement, Safaricom and, its parent company, Vodacom both expressed their interest in buying a stake in Ethio Telecom. According to Bussiness Daily, the ECA has “whittled the list down from a consortium of 12 that had expressed interest in entering the country’s telecommunications market”. The conso...
Mastercard Partners with MTN to Enable MoMo Customers to Transact Globally
Mastercard has joined forces with MTN to enable millions of MTN MoMo customers in 16 African countries to shop and pay online with global merchants. Through a Mastercard virtual payment solution linked to MTN MoMo (Mobile Money) wallets, consumers can now unlock a host of opportunities and shop from their favourite international brands online while in their home countries or travelling abroad. The announcement comes at a time when eCommerce and online shopping are reaching record levels across Africa. According to the Economy 2021 outlook conducted by the Mastercard Economics Institute, 20-30% of the COVID-19-related surge in eCommerce will remain a permanent feature of overall retail spending. And shopping through mobile is largely how consumers access these opportunities. Across Sub-Saha...
King Price and Secura Launch Emergency Response App in South Africa
King Price and Secura have introduced an app-based emergency response service, code red, in South Africa. In an emergency situation, app users can hit the panic button and the nearest armed response or emergency service vehicle will be dispatched. Code red taps into a network of more than 280 armed response companies, which connects to thousands of responders across all 9 provinces. Other services available to respond to a code red activation include the SA Police Service, metro, municipal and traffic law enforcement, ambulances, and fire and rescue services. “If you feel threatened, or if there’s a medical emergency, you open our app and tap on code red,” begins client experience partner at King Price, Wynand van Vuuren. “The code red control room will dispatch the closest linked armed re...
King Price and Secura Launch Emergency Response App in South Africa
King Price and Secura have introduced an app-based emergency response service, code red, in South Africa. In an emergency situation, app users can hit the panic button and the nearest armed response or emergency service vehicle will be dispatched. Code red taps into a network of more than 280 armed response companies, which connects to thousands of responders across all 9 provinces. Other services available to respond to a code red activation include the SA Police Service, metro, municipal and traffic law enforcement, ambulances, and fire and rescue services. “If you feel threatened, or if there’s a medical emergency, you open our app and tap on code red,” begins client experience partner at King Price, Wynand van Vuuren. “The code red control room will dispatch the closest linked armed re...
How Technology can Give Employees Access to their Wages
When Finance Minister Tito Mboweni delivers the 2021 budget, he will do so fully cognizant that South Africans of all walks of life are being stretched – some beyond breaking point – as businesses take strain and some succumb to the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The unemployment figure is alarming and unsustainable, and unless Mboweni and his team manage to implement meaningful stimulus to the formal economy, it is at risk of rising further. Sadly, millions in formal employment are not faring much better. PwC’s Financial Wellness Survey found that 89% of employees in the country were worried about paying off their loans and bills as of August last year. It would be a brave pundit to presume that figure would be lower in February 2021, just weeks after the traditionall...
How Technology can Give Employees Access to their Wages
When Finance Minister Tito Mboweni delivers the 2021 budget, he will do so fully cognizant that South Africans of all walks of life are being stretched – some beyond breaking point – as businesses take strain and some succumb to the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The unemployment figure is alarming and unsustainable, and unless Mboweni and his team manage to implement meaningful stimulus to the formal economy, it is at risk of rising further. Sadly, millions in formal employment are not faring much better. PwC’s Financial Wellness Survey found that 89% of employees in the country were worried about paying off their loans and bills as of August last year. It would be a brave pundit to presume that figure would be lower in February 2021, just weeks after the traditionall...
Paratus and Telecom Namibia to Land Subsea Cable in Namibia
Telecom Namibia CEO, Stanley Shanapinda and Paratus Group CEO Barney Harmse Paratus and Telecom Namibia have agreed to land subsea cable, Equiano, in Namibia. This move is expected to provide Namibian networks with greater capacity, stimulate economic growth and support a competitive telecommunication sector. “This is a major milestone for Paratus,” says Paratus Group CEO, Barney Harmse. “We are honoured to be co-investing with Telecom Namibia on the Equiano subsea cable project because this matches our goals of delivering unlimited connectivity and building Africa’s quality network with all the Internet capacity it needs.” In 2019, Google first announced its subsea cable project would connect Africa with Europe, running along the west coast of Africa, between Portugal and South Africa. Th...
Paratus and Telecom Namibia to Land Subsea Cable in Namibia
Telecom Namibia CEO, Stanley Shanapinda and Paratus Group CEO Barney Harmse Paratus and Telecom Namibia have agreed to land subsea cable, Equiano, in Namibia. This move is expected to provide Namibian networks with greater capacity, stimulate economic growth and support a competitive telecommunication sector. “This is a major milestone for Paratus,” says Paratus Group CEO, Barney Harmse. “We are honoured to be co-investing with Telecom Namibia on the Equiano subsea cable project because this matches our goals of delivering unlimited connectivity and building Africa’s quality network with all the Internet capacity it needs.” In 2019, Google first announced its subsea cable project would connect Africa with Europe, running along the west coast of Africa, between Portugal and South Africa. Th...
Backup the Physical Servers on your Network with Free Altaro Software
Risna Steenkamp, General Manager: ESM Division at Networks Unlimited Africa Companies and organisations with virtualised server environments often have physical machines too, and these also need data protection. Altaro has reacted to this need with the introduction of Altaro Physical Server Backup, a server backup software solution – with the added bonus that it’s free. Altaro is a leader in backup solutions for MSPs, IT resellers and IT departments, with its solutions distributed throughout Africa by value-added distributor Networks Unlimited Africa. Risna Steenkamp, General Manager: ESM Division at Networks Unlimited Africa, explains: “Businesses with virtual environments that have one or more physical machines or legacy servers that have not been virtualised can use Altaro P...
How to Forge an Inclusive Economic Recovery in Africa
Sourced from Redbubble and iStock. The spread of COVID-19 in many African countries has been more contained than some had expected in 2020. Experts have predicted that the economic fallout of the pandemic for Africans, however, will be different and direr than for the rest of the world. The reason is that Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for more than half of the world’s populations living at or below the poverty line. A recent World Bank scenario estimates that COVID-19 could push up to 40 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa into extreme poverty, seriously eroding the progress that African countries have made to reduce deprivation during the past two decades. Africa’s economic recovery from the COVID-19 crisis depends on how effectively governments will be able to balance urgent actions to st...
Demystifying Device Management With Scalefusion: A Solution That Understands IT
Image sourced from Pixabay Considering the larger-than-life influx of mobile technology in human lives, it is no surprise that that mobile technology has found its rightful place in the enterprise environment, across diverse industries. And why not, the mobile devices bring the computational power of bulky machines into compact, handheld contraptions that are not only easy to carry around but are far more user-friendly than their predecessors or desktop counterparts. The desktops are also rapidly being replaced by more sophisticated and ‘mobile’ laptops and rightly so. Even for companies and organizations that are sticking to the conventional ‘desktop-keyboard-CPU’ setups, the employees are using personal mobile devices daily, within the office premises and for more work tasks than one- it...
