 Welcome back to InterveniShift. Here's the regular on why in the morning at Y254 Channel is where you can find us across all our social media platform at Michelle Ashira is where you can reach out to me in this particular session. It's a conversation about information tech in business. So you decide that the future, the future of internet is the future of everything and if your business doesn't have an online present then you might want to think about that when it comes to potential clients and increase in profitability and that's why we're having this conversation because as long as your business is on the airways the internet you need to secure it and data information is quite important not only to the business owner but also to the client. So in studio we are joined by the founder of CyberTech Labs known as Hicks Bryan. Thank you very much for creating time Bryan. Thank you so much for having me. Okay so starting us off here I would like to find out what CyberTech Lab is all about and the services that the company actually does offer. Okay CyberTech, CyberTech Labs is a heavily embedded IT firm. Our core values and our core activities are business intelligence, data analytics, artificial intelligence and we also do computer vision and machine learning. All right we'll dive into that in details in the course of this conversation. So what sort of problem are you solving in the digital space? Well we are just making it easy for you with machine learning, with business intelligence, with data analytics, we're just making it easy for businesses. Like I said, let's say with business intelligence what we do is just help other businesses to identify problems in their businesses, identify products that are not doing well, seasons that are not favorable for their businesses and when they say for data analytics what you do is just handle large amounts of data and help other people to visualize them in a way that you and any other person can understand. Quite keeping things quite easy that is. Very easy. All right so how long have you been into business? In the beginning we used to be a briefcase company. On the move. Exactly but now that was then when I was still a student and alongside other friends of mine who were still students but we decided to incorporate this in 2018 and things got pretty interesting. We also got to work with a Chinese organization that we still work under till-to-date. That explains a lot considering we guys checked you out on the website cybertech and apparently I was introduced to another language just like hold up what's going on then there's a translation that comes after what they ask. Yes. Okay so when it comes to your business so do you work alone or do you have a team? You mentioned earlier on you work, the move, the briefcase. Earlier on I was alone with someone else and unfortunately she she got a very lucrative position with BBC. She's based in London so today we are about six guys and we have two other remote. One is in India and the other one is in Hong Kong. Okay. People moving on with their life systems. Yeah. Okay so who is eligible to the need of your services? Any business. Any business, banks, finance institutions, schools, hospitals, hotel industries, any business. How did you break into the market and how did you actually acquire your first client? First client actually to a word of mouth. Yeah because I remember it was a morning just like today and someone calls me and tells me I've been referred to you by someone else and I was able to do this and I was not quite even sure if I was able to do that. It was creating a system, a smart system for an apartment in that when she walks in the lights come on and when she walks out, the lights go off. I mean it was just like embedding Alexa to his house. And when you look into this business apart from the technology, tech aspect of it, we also have, I feel it's more of a social enterprise where I've connected the clients and have a couple of meetings and just to come in an agreement of what they want. How do you maintain a good social relation when it comes to clientele and you and your team that is? Okay first of all I don't believe the thing that client is always right. Why don't you believe that? Because we can't be right each and every time. We all can't be right. So I believe in asking and I believe in making queries. So the other thing is that I try to keep my clients as close as possible. Actually I call my clients my best of friends. So creating that kind of relationship really has really helped us a lot because we are one people that we are able to work each and any time he wants us. We don't have working time and blah blah blah no we work any time he wants us to come. So that has really helped us a lot because we have become very very reliable. Okay so when it comes to if I'm a business owner and I have worked to probably app developers or even website developers. I have my own apps and website that that I run for my products and services. So how how does Cybertek if I come to you help me secure my information that information from hackers that is? Okay we use the same technology that is in bitcoin it's called blockchain. How we've embedded blockchain onto our websites onto applications is that you are the only person that is able to log in and out at any given time. Okay how blockchain works is blockchain creates a series of blocks in that personally if I log in it will have to notify each and every block unlike the the traditional logging system it was encrypted in a way that the blocks are only one or two so if you crack the first block then you're in but with blockchain it has created a series of blocks it can go up to a million blocks. Yeah so it's not very easy to crack a blockchain encryption. And still on that matter when it comes to a company or even a business still if I of course if I want to retain privacy not only for my business for my clients also then that means penetration test is important so does the company conduct penetration tests and maybe you can also tell us for our viewers what penetration test is. Okay penetration testing is basically ethical hacking. Okay the name hacking actually is not very beautiful in tech. So the ethical hacking part is just just like the name suggests it's ethical so before I hack into your system I have to notify you and you have to give consent for that in written form so penetration testing is basically looking for loop holes looking for backdoors that that are probably left behind by the developer because they're always backdoors and backdoors are their mistakes that any other person can make. I can make them any person can make them so penetration testing basically just helps us to identify any pioneer routes let me call them pioneer routes any loop holes that could be on the website. Yes for someone who's watching this conversation and they would like to be part of their network security what sort of background does one require to get into this sort of a business? Well I really want to say you need to have knowledge on computer science because it's deep computer science but in starting business I don't even need a master degree in business. All right so all you need is a great passion. Must have a passion for it because it's very very boring apparently. Why would you say it's boring? Why get into something which is boring? I think that that's the question I had like what would you say it's boring and why are you still in it if it's boring? Well you someone else doesn't want to do the boring part so I'll do the boring part and the boring part actually has a lot of money in it. All right so how do you market the company what is your marketing strategy? We have we've really really worked on LinkedIn because all our clients are professional clients so we depend on LinkedIn a lot and Twitter we are not on Facebook. Why? Apparently we're not on Facebook. Why are you not on Facebook? We've not gained so much traffic on Facebook and like LinkedIn because like the system that you're making right now it came from LinkedIn yeah so we have not really interacted with Facebook we look at Facebook as a chat application this day it's just a social media application and like Twitter and like and like LinkedIn so that's what and the greatest marketing tool for us has been the parent website because it gains a lot of traffic and for it it's embedded in the way we've embedded it with Google Maps in that it can translate to any language depending on the place that you are in. Okay so where do you where do companies go when it comes to network security? Well I want to say okay no I can't say that they really go wrong but one of the deadly mistakes that I have made personally and I've seen other companies also make is some invest in a lot you want to invest in powerful computers you want to invest in so much you want to compare your company with Google it can't work that is one of the deadliest mistakes yeah okay so let's look at the digital identity our management how do you how do you help actually enterprises and the customer protect the digital identity security okay first we have a heavily encrypted cloud system we are able to protect your data but any given time because we have a standalone server here but we have the parent server in China so most of our details most of our data is protected on cloud and the beauty of cloud is that you can access the information from anywhere including including mass yeah so that has helped us a lot in trying to work with clients remotely in trying to store information embedding applications and so forth yeah okay what makes cybertech a lab different when it comes to offering ICT solutions well the difference is I think I can say okay people say it's a joke but I take it very seriously is that they found has never been employed I've never been employed behind when I don't even I don't even know how a payroll looks like yeah and I don't believe that for you to start a business you have to be an employee so that has really that that is actually greatest difference for us and uh and how does that two of us yes the service provision that you give to your clients the service provision is that for us we understand what you're doing uh we have actually I can see we have some of the best I know we have the best team the team of a team of five people uh they are actually the best I've ever met you've never met your team I'm seeing that the best that I've ever met I can't compare them to any other people yeah actually that even better than me trust me all right because you mentioned that you've never met the founder of the mother the mother of that I've never met cybertech so how did you connect with with him virtual reality virtual meetings I've never met that person but he has believed in me and he has believed in us we have been able to deliver and we've been able to to deliver for a long period of time now and the greatest part the greatest the greatest fact is that it has really helped us in business and in fostering relationships yes I'm talking so what are some of the achievements I've mentioned that you actually delivered quite a lot uh the company started in 2018 yeah okay so what are some of the achievements that you have gathered in that specific period of time oh uh we are the great one of our achievements is uh we have a smart ERP system that can be used by banking system by financial institutions uh it greatly works with fraud it's a fraud system okay how it helps is it's able to identify fraud it's able to identify if a check is being to bounce anytime soon it's able to identify uh credit worthiness how okay um it was developed we've trained the system through machine learning we trained the system for a period of three months to understand each and every individual differently so how it does this is um if I sign up today as Brian and let's say I'm trying to get a loan of 50,000 BOP and uh I will to ask me some of the most basic information what's your name what do you do where do you live uh how much do you get and uh with that little information it can't be able to identify if you'll be able to pay back the amount or you'll never be able to pay back the amount and in most cases um it will always it will always give you an alternative you can say okay I'll not give you 50,000 but I'll give you 25,000 because I know that you'll be able to pay that in five within the next six months yeah so that is one that has really really made noise out here all right yeah someone who's watching this conversation and you know we have some section of us who are working from home and we're not that knowledgeable when it comes to matters of pertaining security when it comes to data what are some of the tips you can give us people are back at home and how can you know that our system have been manipulated was okay how can you know that our system have been manipulated for someone who has basic knowledge of us and how can we uh the steps maybe you can give us tips on how to prevent uh probably our data being manipulated matters pertaining hacking uh okay uh people in okay in Africa here people say hackers are like wizards um the only thing that hack is that hack is going to do is probably is going to lock you out of the system it is just going to destroy the information or the data that is in your system so um I can say it's just like let's say when you arrange this room and someone else comes in uh if you know the room well then you'll be able to identify something that is not right that is that is the same same way uh let's say your computer is hacked today uh you'll be able to identify because one some of the graphical interface the icons some will be missing uh some will look funny uh let's say in if you're trying to play music it want to play music it will play something else that's how you can identify that something is not right and one of the easiest way that uh corporate people can uh stop some of these things we're going through we can do something like voice hardening it's just adding a layer of security on top of your operating system on top of your on top of your servers on top of your security because even why if a camera is going to be hacked these days yeah okay understand so what are a couple of the challenges that you're faced in the business uh as of right now less traffic we have very very less traffic uh initially when the year started we were looking we were trying to get footing in kigali because kigali is first growing into singapore and we were really hoping that uh we can get to do something in rwanda but when covid happened uh not everything has been good yeah because now uh so many organizations have been forced to close uh actually it's just the grace of god that we're still open but so many so many of our clients are now working from home yeah so what would be your advice to those uh who are watching us and want to get into similar sort sort of a business oh go for it yeah you can do any you under the sun you can achieve anything yeah that you yeah and you can't save him you can't save enough i mean how much did you start with i think it was like i think i think it was 30 000 okay yeah so you can't save enough and you can only achieve anything on you don't have to be degree holder you don't have to be you don't have to be the best but you can achieve anything that you want to if you're passionate passionate about it and if you put your mind to it you can achieve anything okay absolutely amazing like that like the fact how confident you are and it's true if you put your mind into it you can actually achieve anything that you want i would like to understand or rather give a clear view on your vision like even it comes to cyber tech let's say five years down the road where we sing ourselves five years oh it's being to rwanda trust me and uh if i i am looking at cyber tech i it's a large office uh we have a uh our basement parking i'm seeing a chief of HR uh sitting on a coca-cola desk all right like how you visualize it the whole thing yeah it's something that i've been seeing it uh oh i'm seeing my chief of HR with the coca-cola desk i'm seeing someone else walking in with torn jeans and uh balance and and and and the new balance uh dressed like Steve job free from free free to personal uh personalize your culture like it's a free space it's a free space every every tech institution as well as being a free space okay yeah we have new projects coming up from the company yeah we have a new project that is coming but i for now we want to keep it low-key because we don't want to put it out there still but something good something good is coming up yeah all right so that is hicks brian uh speaking to us about info tech so maybe you can give us your social media handles you guys have seen it on facebook and instagram i don't understand why but you know best you know where your business is thriving at so we could give us those social media handles and let people can reach out to you um on linkedin cyber tech labs nirobi um on twitter still the same cyber tech labs nirobi um any other often numbers are very much available uh our email address oh for our email address we have a chat but that does the magic so i if i put my email address if i put our email address there if you text us immediately to immediately come back so it is it is it is our email is real time we have a chat but for that yeah all right thank you very much hicks brian for creating time to be with us uh that was an amazing conversation i know much about one or two things when one or two three things when it comes to info tech uh information about technology in business and how uh you know in future if i'm gonna start up a business you know i know the person to talk to when it comes to securing my network yeah you should you should actually start a business i will and you will be you help me out in that sector so no yeah of course okay it only is available all right so we'll talk about the pricing and everything later okay guys at y254 channel is where you can find us across all our social media platform at michelle ashira is where you can reach out to me so it's our time frame we all we it's time up yeah okay so make sure you create time next tuesday so this is how you bid you goodbye it's uh remember follow us across all social media platform that is at y254 channel at michelle ashira is where you can reach out to me and also remember next tuesday create time for my seven till ten a and that's how we do right here on why in the morning