An eye-watering US$5.4-billion, or R100-billion at current exchange rates. That’s what the recent CrowdStrike outage is estimated to have cost US Fortune 500 companies.

While the amount of money involved seems a long way from reality for many South African small and medium enterprises (SMEs), the fact is that IT issues affect them, too, and can be just as costly.

In a world where outages, phishing, data leaks, compliance, cloud services, algorithms, data analytics and artificial intelligence have become the order of the day, the stakes have become higher. IT can now mean the difference between a business shooting the lights out – or switching them off.

The challenge is that many SMEs simply cannot afford the IT skills they need.

“For an SME, having all their IT-related products and skills in-house can be unaffordable,” says Pratima Pillay, head of software services at Altron Digital Business.

Cost constraints also mean that SMEs are more likely to choose less effective technology options that do not address their security vulnerabilities.

However, as Pillay points out, these cheaper technology options usually have long-term financial repercussions for organisations as well as compromising customers and their reputation, particularly if they fail to protect the business from cyberattacks and ransomware attacks.

This is why Altron has introduced a suite of services aimed at providing SMEs with a comprehensive solution that provides all the IT expertise they require in a cost-effective package – a “CIO in a Box”, if you will.

This suite of services will take care of all a business’s digital needs, leaving management to focus on what matters most: sustainable growth and customer satisfaction.

Altron’s ‘CIO in a Box’ suite of services includes:

Simplis-IT: A remote management and monitoring tool set that offers remote service desk functionality, deploys patches, monitors antivirus software, and is used for customer satisfaction and monitoring.
Privileged access management (PAM) service: This is based on the cybersecurity best practice principle of least privilege, where users only receive the minimum levels of access required to perform their job to reduce the organisation’s attack surface and mitigate the risk from malicious attacks.
Microsoft Copilot: An AI-powered tool that supports Microsoft 365 users with automation features; and Device as a Service (DaaS), essentially a kit of all a business’s IT hardware and software needs under a rent to own model, ensuring up-to-date IT infrastructure is more affordable for smaller businesses.

“SMEs are an important driver of growth and job creation in the South African economy. Providing efficient and cost-effective solutions that allow SMEs to adopt digital technologies is vital to enable scale in these businesses,” says Pillay.

The solution has been successfully applied in a leading beauty salon chain and a local tech-enabled primary healthcare provider, with both businesses reporting significant cost savings.

Mind the SME security gap

SMEs are particularly vulnerable to cyberattacks. It’s estimated that around half of all SMEs experienced a cybersecurity incident in 2023 and 25% experienced more than one.

Altron has the capability and expertise to perform a comprehensive security assessment on each customer to identify areas of weakness, including an assessment of any third-party products to ensure they are fit for purpose.

“When it comes to security, you are only as strong as your weakest link, which is why our security consultants create a road map for each customer, pinpointing areas of vulnerability in hardware, software and even processes, resulting in the most appropriate recommendations in order to close the gaps,” says Pillay.

In addition to decreasing the risk and cost of a security breach, Altron’s CIO in a Box solution provides for improved process efficiency, provides visibility and an audit history of data and workflows, makes it easier to meet compliance requirements, can shorten turnaround times on information requests and legal processes, and allows organisations to retire legacy third-party software. It’s also easy to adopt, use and administer.

Nobody can predict when the next Crowdstrike-scale outage might be, or how much it might cost. But the nature of digital business means that phishing, data leaks, compliance, cloud services, algorithms, data analytics and artificial intelligence will be daily challenges now and into the future. Even if many smaller businesses can’t afford the skills of a CIO, the fact is that they simply can’t afford to do without this level of expertise either.

Fortunately, there is a solution. To find out more about Altron Digital Business and whether it could be a good fit for your business and your budget, visit digitalbusiness.altron.com/secure-productivity.