The Covid-19 pandemic turbocharged digitization in industries, such as transport, health care, energy and education, and now the technology company Cisco is now working to optimize hybrid work systems.
At the Cisco Live conference in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, the company recently said it is evolving from digital manual processes to focus on experience and automation, in order to free up time and increase productivity.
The year ahead presents many challenges including growing security risks, partly due to geopolitical turmoil, said Wendy Mars, chief executive of Cisco Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA).
“The economy is challenged in many countries and we have inflation at a 40-year high. We also have an energy crisis that we are trying to manage as citizens, and in our businesses, while feeling more pressure for sustainability,” said Mars.
Despite these challenges, including the supply chain, Mars says the company needs to focus on the growing digital skills gap. Cisco announced a 10-year target for the EMEA region to promote 10 million people in the digital and cybersecurity space, according to the Cisco Networking Academy.
Three million will be trained in Africa, Reem Asaad, vice president at Cisco EMEA told Mail & Guardians.
“Today’s youth will be tomorrow’s green engineers. We need engineers with new skill sets to build solar panels and wind turbines, sustainability offices and become new energy analysts,” said Asaad.
On the African continent, Cisco first launched a country digital acceleration program in South Africa, followed by Egypt.
“We started in South Africa because it has the greatest short-term promise for growth and opportunity. We opened an Edge center there that is not only for training and education, but mentoring and managerial consulting to help small businesses grow,” said global innovation officer Guy Diedrich.
“The challenge in South Africa is how to take an already young, vibrant, educated and ambitious population and pave the way for success.”
Cisco says that about 45% of the world remains unconnected and Africa will be a big part of that equation in trying to overcome it.
“We will lift 500 million people out of poverty and, at the same time, contribute $6.7 trillion to the global GDP,” said Diedrich. “It’s not just an ethical and moral thing to do, it’s also an economic thing to do in the digital age.”
Hybrid work
Hybrid work is still a difficult experiment and is different from how people have been working for the past few years, Cisco said.
Companies need to rethink their employee experience, workspaces and new security attacks that seem to be on the rise, said Javed Khan, general manager at Cisco Collaboration.
“It requires a holistic approach in networking, security, software and collaborative hardware – that’s the future of work,” said Khan, adding that the solution lies in reimagining the workspace at home or in the office; optimize collaboration in the ecosystem to enable new types of interaction and make sure the company is protected.
Cybersecurity is a big factor in hybrid work, said Asaad, citing the Cisco 2022 Consumer Security Survey that showed that almost 37% of users do not know what multi-factor authentication is, and worryingly, about half get security advice from family and friends.
“The level of concern about security is a concern, but we see more trends in cyber security in our region, which is very secure; there is a great need,” Asaad said.
Work with the government
Cisco has a team that works with the South African government to understand and improve their policies on cybersecurity, data sovereignty and data privacy.
“We work in more than 90 countries and can bring expertise and experience on how to help other governments to create policies to protect their countries,” Asaad said.
“South Africa has a lot of problems that reduce power, so we are trying to work with the government and entities, such as Eskom, to help build a reliable network with business continuity so that we do not have additional challenges in addition to power challenges.”
Cisco Networking Academy, opened at the South African State Information Technology Agency in 2010, has since trained over 1.5 million people, over a third of them women.
In the Middle East and Africa region, South Africa has the highest percentage of female participation, with 46% enrolled in IT, cybersecurity and internet courses, Asaad said.