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Data Security

MORE than two thirds, or 72 percent, of South Africa respondents were concerned their organisation’s existing data protection solutions would not be able to meet all future business challenges, the Dell Technologies 2021 Global Data Protection Index survey found.

According to the study of 1 000 global IT decision makers, these concerns were well-founded, with 20 percent of South African respondents reporting data loss in the last year and 44 percent, experiencing unplanned system downtime.

The study found that organisations were managing more than 10 times the amount of data than they did five years ago.

In South Africa, almost half, 46 percent of the respondents, lacked confidence that all their business-critical data could be recovered in the event of a cyber attack or data loss. This was better than the global average of 67 percent.

Some 12 percent believed emerging technologies such as cloud-native applications, Kubernetes containers, artificial intelligence and machine learning posed a risk to data protection, and the lack of data protection solutions for newer technologies was a top-three challenge for organisations.

CAREERBOX, in partnership with CCI

South Africa, has inked a deal with Metro by T-Mobile that will result in 900 direct call-centre jobs and hundreds of supporting jobs for young people from underprivileged backgrounds. Metro provides prepaid wireless services in the US.

“The partnership with Metro puts South Africa on the map with the biggest players in the world and has the potential to open doors for the wider industry and result in tens of thousands of jobs,“it said this week.

CCI South Africa managing director Peter Andrew said the deal had the potential to change the BPO landscape.

“We will be growing from 140 agents to 900, excluding the other supporting jobs, in the coming months. “This will take the total to almost 1 500 jobs. That’s the initial opportunity because, depending on our success and performance, this could scale up to many thousands more jobs.”

CareerBox managing director Lizelle Strydom said: “Impact investing sets out to make a real, meaningful impact in the lives of people. Our partnership with CCI has proven that corporates and organisations such as ours can achieve big things if they share a common goal – which, in our case is to improve the lives of underprivileged communities by creating jobs and giving young people a step-up to start long, fruitful careers.”