 Hello and welcome to what and what my guest today I want to one is Andrew born his original manager for Zoho Corporation, Africa He heads the marketing and sales for Zoho Corporation in Africa helping businesses grow with the use of technology Now Zoho offers about 45 plus application and products to help businesses It's affordable and trusted with more than 50 million business users Worldwide now it recently did a survey with worldwide Works recently on a new study that looks at the pride of privacy and awareness among companies in Nigeria Kenya and South Africa now the survey takes a look at business benefits associated with adherence to privacy laws and how Organizations can accrue even greater benefits with an increased focus on privacy Good afternoon, Mr. Born Hi there. Thank you for having me. Yeah, thank you for joining us So, let's get straight to it. I want to find out for you. Why is the privacy law important to the success of an organization? Well any organization needs to obviously take its customers Privacy very seriously and the protection of their data And so that's why you'll see a lot of the become a lot of the companies that were surveyed Said you know 70% of them said that they weren't aware of privacy laws But 73% of them have already applied data privacy policies in their companies that aren't necessarily Required by law. So we've seen that you know companies they want to protect their customer That's first and foremost and then when the law does get put in place They then start only looking at it. No one's Judgments are being passed or people are getting into trouble So, yeah, I think it's it's just very important that they secure their their their data of the of their Other customers because it's the loyalty and the trust that you want to build with your customers. You don't want to Jeopardize that So why are businesses having low awareness of government data regulation but understand commitments to customers and their data? Well, I think it could be a case of maybe the the advertising of the regulations It could be the the fact that the regulations aren't strictly enforced in certain Sections of the the business sector But you'll see more and more as people read and as there's more awareness People will start complying more and more and more and I think it's also important that they're the regulator that the That the government does put in place needs to make sure that they take you know every person that has sent them a potential Privacy law breach that they do investigate it and that there are penalties So that they can probably police the law Okay So what about employees? How aware employees of the data laws of the organization that you that you work in? So for example, you know, I don't think I know like the data law for you know my for my organization So how aware employees? So it's important some of them aren't aware as you said like it's it's it's tricky But I think companies are gonna have to look at Making more easily digestible Data policies so they can have their long paper that the attorneys draw up with the legal jargon But also to have a more simpler version like notes to the data privacy Policy and then also to do some sort of training with your staff To make sure that they understand what the the privacy laws are so they can also explain it to customers as well as You know implemented in their day-to-day workings within the organization Okay, so while you talk about training for example, is it something has basic has you know You go on a website and then they ask you click on this. Do you accept or? You know ignore so maybe maybe you should start with explain something has basic as that photo So what does I mean I go to a website and you say they you know this pop-up comes up and says all the cookies are monitoring Does that affect my privacy in any way? Yeah, so I think it's it's important and we've had an example already where we've actually consulted with a company where one of the IT Department members decided that they would use a free application or free technology provider To manage the support queries from all their customers And so when they came to us and we spoke to them about our support desk, which is Zoro desk We had to explain to them that the free version that they were using of this other technology In the small print it said that it's allowed to share and use the data that I'll put into each ticket now This company was putting in custom information and customer email addresses into each ticket But they weren't aware that that data was allowed to be used by that other technology brand You know and so it was a bit of a big shock to him Being in the department, but it's also the company didn't really educate him About the fact that he needs to make sure that he looks at the finer print of the technology that he puts in For the business so it's things like that that you know companies need to be aware of they need to make staff aware of It's like for us we know that we don't have you know for Zoho We don't have third-party trackers on any of our websites and all of our staff know that you know, so it's It's just it's important that your staff know what you're doing around data privacy All right So what's the cost of keeping a third-party tracker for your business? Well, I mean we saw in the in the survey that there are about I think it's 18 percent of Businesses are uncomfortable with having these third-party trackers But of those 18 percent that are uncomfortable They said that they actually can't do without it because the third-party trackers add so much value to their lead generation But as as you asked the cost the cost could be that if there is a data breach by one of these third-party Providers and it it goes back to your company and your company is then you know Let's say the regulator Find your company to be negligent by using the third-party tracker. You can be in a lot of trouble So a lot of the laws say that you need to make your best effort to protect your customers Data and if you're using third-party trackers, then you are well aware that that that data is being shared So it's it's going to be interesting But if we see what Apple did with the release of iOS 14.5 They allowed users to opt in to be tracked or to decide not to be tracked and it was 87% Decided that they don't want to be tracked So you can see the trend is people don't want to be tracked They they want their privacy as they're surfing the internet And I think you'll see more and more data privacy laws become more and more strict and the regulators will enforce them in In a more strict manner going forward Okay, okay, um Andrew we have to take a quick break and then we'll be right back stay with us Thank you for staying with us I still have Andrew born with me and he's breaking down the privacy laws and why it's very important as an internet user Has a software user as a phone user an everyday user of the internet on understanding privacy law So Andrew um my next question to use why should businesses be aware of the privacy policies of the AI tools that they use? Well, it's important because these AI tools that they're using will be Handling their customer data So it's important to know what the AI tool is going to do with it and as we know machine learning These AI tools need to be fed, you know information and they get taught So it's important to know what that AI tool is doing with your your customers information What about um, you know every day you so I like the example you had given about um Apple earlier on so now I'm not even working for an organization. It's just like with my phone What are the things that everyday phone users need to know? What are the things that I need to know? Um, you know using my phone. What are the things I need to agree to or not? I don't know if you can help us with that Yeah, I think they just need to be aware that when you're using free technology It does help because yes, it's free and you don't have to pay for it But what you're actually doing is you're paying with your data So you just need to be mindful of what that application or technology is doing There are some stories that you can find on the internet world documented stories where People have used an application. It's free, but it's been releasing a lot of very private information About people and when that was found out You know a few months down the line people were so shocked and they were deleted the app and they didn't want to use it But you've got to be mindful that when you start using a technology or if you're using a technology Just to be mindful of You know Where are they going to store the data? Is it going to be safe? If you're going to be putting in your residential address or your phone number or things like that You just need to make sure that it's going to be protected So are you saying that paid apps are safer? Is it safer to use paid for apps? Well, definitely paid apps are safer, but you still have to look. I mean, there are still some paid apps that have trackers In their technology. So you have to be very careful We've we've seen places where companies will double dip, you know, they'll get revenue from a paying customer But they'll also then sell or share the the user data to third parties So it's just very important to just read the the privacy policies the security policies And you'll probably be able to also then Google it and Google to find out if there's any Issues related to privacy and using a specific technology. Okay. So recently Zoho Corporation, your company and worldwide works recently walked on a new study That looks at privacy awareness among companies in Nigeria in Kenya and South Africa So can you tell us more about the key findings of that survey? Yes. Well, the main key finding we spoke about earlier is that 70 percent of Nigerians that were in the study, they weren't aware of the the government laws So related to privacy But 73 percent of them have already put in place Privacy policies to make sure that they protect their customers The one key finding that differentiated kind of Nigeria was that seven percent more of Nigerian businesses Compared to the the rest of the sample They shared transactional data with strategic partners And the research company seemed to believe that that was because The transactional data sharing is not explicitly forbidden by the NDPR Which is the Nigerian data privacy or protection regulation So that was one kind of slight differentiating factor and but it was interesting to find that That three percent fewer of Nigerian businesses are sharing data And feedback to strategic partnerships overall So it actually looks like Nigerian businesses aren't relying too heavily on third party tracking technologies But they they are definitely also sharing a bit more transactional data with their strategic partners Okay, thank you. So just before I let you go, I want you to share a few tips for plus TV Africa So what do we need to do to you know protect ourselves better from Hackers and ensure that every You know staff content and the content that we create on the channel is well protected So first of all use technology that has the ability to be GDPR enabled, you know, that's the that's the european standard a lot of other african laws are based on GDPR Like zoto for instance, you can literally click a button and you can switch on the different features that are gdpr That make you gdpr. What's gdpr? I have to interrupt. What's gdpr? Can you break it down? For live my life. What does gdpr mean? It's the european data privacy law It protects the european citizens and it's it's not governed specifically to europe It's not within europe's borders. It's actually borderless So gdpr regulators can prosecute a company that's in another region As long as that company is is offering products and services to a european citizens Oh, okay So that's important for companies to notice even if you are in ijaria and your your business is offering products and services to european citizens You have to comply with gdpr. Okay. What else do we need to know? The other thing is that use technology that allows you to put in security policies So have two-factor authentication when your staff log in, you know Don't just allow them to log in with a simple password allow there to be either sms or to use a Authenticator application to make sure it is your staff member that's logging in and that just allows you to have one more level of security in case of any hacking attacks And things like that and then use technology that has very clear security policies and data privacy policies For zoho we own all layers of the stack so from our technology code all the way down to our data centers We own everything so we don't use A third party to be able to offer our service and that's why we can be Highly secure as far as data protection and security So it's important just to look at the technologies you're using make sure that they've got security Features in place and that they do comply with the gdpr or the local data privacy laws All right. Thank you very much for your time. Andrew born. We hope you to have you again sometime soon. Thank you Perfect. Thank you very much. Thank you. And that's all we can take on one-on-one today I hope you were enlightened just like I was about privacy laws in ijaria. See you sometime soon You