Altron Karabina, a leading digital transformation partner across Africa and the Middle East, has partnered with SYNAQ, business IT specialists, to provide advanced email security – coupled with powerful email branding – to small and midsize businesses (SMBs) in South Africa. With research indicating that email continues to be the top attack vector for cybercriminals worldwide, SMBs are increasingly falling victim to identity theft and financial fraud as employees continue to click on malicious links and attachments sent via email. By offering highly cost-effective packaged licensing options for Office 365 and SYNAQ, Altron Karabina is ensuring that SMBs can operate in the Cloud with peace of mind – and remain focused on business growth and innovation.
“With cybersecurity now a top priority for every forward-looking business, we recognised that many SMBs require a more cost-effective email security solution that also speaks to their agility and scalability in the Cloud environment,” said Nicole Oliveira, Head: Software Services at Altron Karabina. “For Office 356 users who don’t have an E5 subscription that includes advanced security features, for instance, then the SYNAQ SecureMail offering provides an intuitive and highly robust solution that ultimately nurtures a culture of cybersecurity awareness within your business. We believe this is a fundamental aspect of ensuring businesses and teams are future-fit.”
Indeed, such a culture of awareness and education around cyber risks is becoming critical to business survival as more SMBs embrace remote working and have geographically dispersed teams. Without the physical presence of IT support teams and managers, employees are arguably more vulnerable to phishing attacks and increasingly sophisticated social engineering techniques that glean personal information from social media and elsewhere.
“There has definitely been an uptick in social engineering attacks as well as whaling, whereby executive leaders are targeted and persuaded to perform a secondary action, such as initiating a wire transfer of funds,” explained Pravir Rai, Head of Sales at SYNAQ, “Historically, SMBs have underestimated cyber risks and have been reluctant to spend money on protection. Now, many are understanding that to compete with their bigger rivals, both locally and abroad, they have to take care of cybersecurity first – and we have designed a solution that is delivered as a service in the Cloud, requiring no upfront investment, while also saving on bandwidth costs by eliminating wasteful and potentially harmful traffic. As a proudly South African software provider, we can also provide immediate and personalised local support – while ensuring that every touchpoint is designed to address unique local challenges.”
Amplifying your brand offering
As businesses across sectors adapt to an increasingly virtual ecosystem in which physical meetings and live marketing events are being replaced by digital interactions, there is a growing opportunity for savvy SMBs to harness email as a powerful branding and marketing tool. This requires the ability not only to customise email logos, signatures, and look and feel, but also to access real-time data pertaining to how receivers interact with every email sent from the business.
“This is arguably one of the most powerful and immediately accessible tools to drive brand awareness for SMBs in an increasingly ‘noisy’ and fragmented online environment,” said Justin De Reuck, Channel Manager at SYNAQ. “By customising your emails and creating powerful brand campaigns with a call to action on each mail, you not only gain the ability to look far more professional and cohesive as a business, but you are also inviting readers to interact more directly with your products and services in an engaging, non-intrusive and easy way.”
Importantly, the SYNAQ email branding solution is designed to provide SMBs with instant, highly detailed, granular information on every campaign. For instance, real-time data can indicate who has clicked on an email banner; which part of the banner they have interacted with; how much time they have spent on your site; etc. This provides an invaluable lead generation tool that allows you to interact with a potential client or customer almost instantaneously – thereby driving lead conversions and bringing you that much closer to your customer base. In an increasingly competitive and cutthroat business environment, this direct and powerful interaction with your customers and stakeholders can consistently put your business top of mind.
“We are delighted to be able to provide our SMB customers with such an important and powerful tool,” added Oliveira. “The many benefits of digital transformation can only be realised if cyber security is a leading priority, and we believe that SYNAQ offers a market-leading solution that also amplifies brand awareness and truly levels the playing field for local SMBs.”
