In a move to enhance its geographic reach, eScan, has partnered with Secure Lab, a southern-African IT distributor.
According to Sunil Kripalani, senior VP for global sales and marketing at the anti-virus and content security solutions provider, a recent cyber crime report found that SA hosts the third-highest number of cyber crime victims in the world, behind Russia and China.
Moreover, he adds, with the popularity of the Internet, African countries are facing more serious network security challenges. He also points out that SA alone has seen roughly an 8% growth year-on-year in terms of PC users. In Malawi, PC users have grown a substantial 20% in a year, he says.
"On the other hand, with the constant rise in our growth graph globally, we have exclusive expansion plans in South Africa. It is a continuous process and we continue to add more distributors such as Secure Lab who will help us to enhance our market penetration in the region."
Nazir Kazi, assistant VP for Middle East and Africa at eScan, says: "With the increasing Internet dependency, IT users are becoming more security conscious when it comes to what they do on the Internet. Credit card fraud, identity theft as well as rising spam and phishing attacks make consumers more wary while shopping or banking online."
Kazi points out that Secure Lab is a service-focused distribution partner with a wide clientele within the government and private sectors across sub-Saharan Africa, including schools, municipalities, financial institutions and manufacturing sectors.
"With its unique approach to customer engagement, we are sure that eScan's association with them will help us improve our business and also help us fulfil our aim to provide a secured IT infrastructure to IT users in South Africa."
Sharing her thoughts on the partnership with eScan, Claire Milroy, marketing director at Secure Lab says: "Secure Lab prides itself on assisting resellers with growing their own businesses. Secure Lab will now be driving eScan business into sub-Saharan Africa to grow the existing customer and partner base - from resellers to sub-distributors, to distributors.
"Our partnership with eScan enables us to further assist our resellers by giving them greater product choice with their distributor of choice. There will also be a focus on educating our territory about the vast product range offered by eScan, which includes solutions for home and small office users, large enterprises and e-commerce. We are looking forward to this partnership and growing the brand within the sub-Saharan African market."
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