Data security is huge challenge in new economy –CWG boss

By Olabisi Olaleye

FOUNDER and Chief Executive Officer of CWG Plc, a systems integration company in sub-Saharan Africa, Mr. Austin Kwesi Okere, disclosed recently that data security remains a huge challenge in a new economy owing to invasion of customers’ information by governments for various reasons.

“How do new digital businesses, which typically generate tonnes of customer data handle this dilemma, given their promise to customers to respect the privacy of their information? A research by the Financial Times shows that the UK government, which is seeking to extend its surveillance powers has paid telecoms companies, including BT, Vodafone, EE and Virgin Media more than £37 million for data on customers and their activities since 2008. The recent celebrated case between the FBI and Apple in the US regarding access to a shooter’s iPhone is a further illustration of this point.”

In this interview, he also explained how technology is ‘disrupting’ industries and creating invention productivity.

He speaks on this and many more.

Excerpts:

Global economy

The global economy seems to be moving from getting supply from companies, to a crowd sourcing model in a peer to peer way. Regulation of this ‘new normal’ is quite a chal­lenge because regulation is backward looking while innovation is forward looking. So there is always a gap which creates considerable ten­sion. It takes quite some time for regulation to catch up with technology, so there is a period of time where the disrupter seems to be op­erating in “no man’s land” as far as the law is concerned.

Technology as it disrupts industries

Organisations are not resting, they keep on reinventing because other brands are com­ing behind with price competitive advantage. Those are the changes that have happened. In CWG, what we are seeing is almost three waves of change because when we started, we were just an infrastructure company, selling and supporting Dell. Today, that business mod­el doesn’t work anymore because the value you can add is very small; people can now buy Dell from anywhere and from online shops such as Amazon.

Luckily, we saw that and acted in anticipa­tion. We went into managed services; this means providing a skill set to manage other people’s data centre and their operations. We went from managed services to what we call cloud services, which is really taking off seri­ously because of two things – the pervasive­ness of mobile phones and the ubiquity of broadband – because with broadband on mo­bile phone, people can use the phone to do a lot, like e-commerce and even banking. So the mobile phone has made banking more inclu­sive by increasing the banking population from about 30 per cent to 60 per cent. Many people who were not able to do banking are now able to do so because of the mobile revolution. Our first cloud product, launched with MTN is called MTN XaaS for microfinance banks. The major difference between banks and the microfinance banks is the market they address. The microfinance banks address the grassroots customers and they don’t have a big budget for operation, but they still need technology to serve the people. We provided the technol­ogy for them in the form of cloud software as a service. What they do is to use the software to service their customers, but they will pay based on the number of accounts they serve or what­ever we agree with them. The most important thing is that they are not using a big amount of money to buy software or run a big IT depart­ment. Therefore the price of their product is much reduced and more affordable since they pay on a subscription basis.

Data security is a concern

Another major challenge in the new econ­omy is data security. The bigger problem is about governments getting interested wher­ever there is large amount of data, and seeking to gain access to it, perhaps for tax purposes, security or otherwise. How do the new digital businesses, which typically generate tonnes of customers’ data handle this dilemma, given their promise to customers to respect the pri­vacy of their information? A research by the Financial Times shows that the UK govern­ment, which is seeking to extend its surveil­lance powers has paid telecoms companies, including BT, Vodafone, EE and Virgin Media, more than £37 million for data on customers and their activities since 2008. The recent cel­ebrated case between the FBI and Apple in the US regarding access to a shooter’s iPhone is a further illustration of this point.

New business model

This new business model is simply meet­ing a pent up demand of consumers. Today’s customers demand to have their products and services delivered to them wherever and whenever, and do not necessarily want to cut a cheque or reach for their wallets to pay. They usually bank online and are less likely to have paid a visit to their banks in the past one month. Disrupters such as Apple seem to have heard them very clearly and are working round the clock to provide a seamless payment solution. ApplePay currently serves users of IOS devices who have registered their credit or debit cards. It is used to pay for goods at shops that have near field communication (NFC) readers. Apple is now developing a peer to peer option, which puts it directly in competi­tion with more established players such as Pay­Pal. It is not only Apple that is circling around PayPal’s launch. Samsung has a similar product and Google used to have Google wallet.

Cloud Computing

It seems that cloud computing has finally come of age, as these disrupters typically de­liver their platforms over the cloud. Oracle has started offering cloud services including data­bases. Microsoft’s only growing business is its cloud services. Amazon’s only profitable busi­ness is its cloud services, which now includes online database as a service. It enables the business to seamlessly scale globally, without having to make any investments in brick and mortar.

The new knowledge worker

I believe the fervent clamour for increased minimum pay is misplaced, especially if the workforce is unemployable. A more sustain­able discussion will be the training of a market­able workforce empowered with the right skills of learning how to adapt to the fast changing global economic landscape, than the tradition­al rote learning in our schools that churns out graduates that are untrainable with new skills.

It is very clear that we are at the throes of the fourth industrial revolution. A simple analogy for the fourth industrial revolution is a train, whose drivers are the entrepreneur disrupters. The passengers are the global customers with pent up demand for value and convenience. The public and traditional private sector can stand in front and be crushed, stay on the plat­form and be left behind, or come along for the ride in progressive partnership. Companies who fail to adapt to the new imperatives of this global revolution should prepare to write their obituaries.

Education is the bedrock for design think­ing helping us think in an organised way about creativity and consistently improve through continuous iteration. Properly articulating a problem, however, is half the solution. New and innovative ways of doing things can come from the most unexpected sources, not least the current generation of millennials. They are the sort that dare to believe that they can make the elephant dance.

The core medium for education in the workplace is story telling. This is the time test­ed way by which the culture of the company is passed onto future generations. While the ‘elders’ in the company are trusted custodians of ‘how it is done’ and mentor the young rook­ies, there must also be a reverse mentorship programme, where millennials are engaged and have a voice at the highest levels in the hi­erarchy. While the elders may know where we are coming from, it is definitely the millennials that can point the way to where we should be headed.