The Importance of Cybersecurity & AI in Africa’s Contact Center Industry

The contact center industry in Africa has been serving the global industry with its customer care, support, and other services to retain clients. When an industry grows, the opportunities grow and so do the threats! This is necessary to be aware of major threats and take precautionary steps to safeguard the business. Likewise, businesses also experience advancements in technologies that can help businesses improve overall performance and returns. Moreover, the African contact center industry is one of the highly technology influenced industry verticals. 

There are different technologies and threats that are affecting how the African industry of call centers is evolving and growing. Two major technology advancements are becoming imperative for this industry, which are artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. The importance of cybersecurity and AI in Africa’s contact center industry is irreplaceable. Thus, it is necessary to understand their roles and how AI and Cybersecurity in the contact center industry of Africa can make a difference.

Importance of cybersecurity in Africa

The contact center industry in Africa or any country runs over technology solutions like a call center software solution. This solution supports omnichannel communication over VoIP/ SIP lines. Anything that transmits over internet lines has a threat of getting intercepted and voice, video, and other forms of data that are getting exchanged over internet lines are definitely not exceptions. All common threats related to the cybersecurity of any VoIP or internet based solutions are applicable to the contact center industry in Africa as well. 

Here is the stat result shared by Norton to prove the importance of cybersecurity in Africa, “3.86 million dollars is the global cost of recovering a typical data breach”. One more supported stat shared by Norton is, “A typical data breach takes 196 days on average to recover for an enterprise”. 

Consequences of a cybersecurity attack and data breaches in the call center industry

Data loss

If you do not understand the importance of cybersecurity in Africa in the contact center industry and do not take the precautionary steps, you are likely to lose a lot of things and one of them is data. Data is an asset for any business. In industries like the African contact center industry, data is not just an asset, but also a critical resource that cannot be shared or leaked. The cyber attackers steal your data and can use it for their malign intents such as running fraud calls, selling data to third parties, and more. Hackers can even temper data to affect your customer care services and integrity. 

Legal trouble

Preserving and protecting user data and sensitive information is a key responsibility of businesses. In many countries, it is abided by legislation and telecom regulations to keep customer data secure. In industries like contact centers, in which sensitive information such as customer bank or payment details are stored, it is even more crucial to keep this information protected. Thus, the law forbids businesses to protect customer interests by protecting their data. The African contact center industry needs to be cautious about legislation to ensure that clients receive the best services and their data is also protected if they want to do business in these countries.

Reputation damage 

It is extremely difficult to return to a positive brand reputation once you lose it. Businesses in the contact center industry in Africa have no way back to work on their brand reputation if they cannot survive cybersecurity attacks. For obvious reasons customers don’t trust brands like this and they are likely to move away from their competitors. This is not just a temporary effect. Even in the long run, call centers that faced reputation damage due to cyber attacks need to face consequences. 

Monetary loss

Recovering from cyber attacks for any business operating in the African contact center industry is a long, tedious, and expensive process. Businesses lose money in the process of recovering the system, data, infrastructure, etc. Businesses also need to face monetary loss by losing some data, business, and clients. If they get trapped in legal trouble, then there is a long process of getting into the judiciary and getting out with the penalty or other punishments. Thus, it is necessary to handle the monetary loss. 

All these major consequences caused by attackers make it quite obvious that the importance of cybersecurity in Africa is quite evident.

AI and Cybersecurity in the contact center industry of Africa

To prevent these types of attacks, it is necessary for businesses to take precautionary steps, which include using technology tools and advancements. This introduces one of the most vital technologies that is making its mark in all industries. Yes, we are talking about artificial intelligence (AI). The role of AI in the African contact center industry is huge. It can do wonders. From improving customer experience to agent performance, reducing expenses, and there is so much more artificial intelligence can do for improving returns and the reputation of the contact center industry in Africa.

Artificial intelligence can also work along with cybersecurity mechanisms to solidify the security offered by cybersecurity products to customers. 

Importance of cybersecurity and AI in Africa’s contact center industry

In multiple ways, cybersecurity software and tools can be enhanced to improve the security of the infrastructure of the African call center industry. This increases the importance of cybersecurity and AI in Africa’s contact center industry.

AI algorithms can be integrated into cybersecurity products. This automates various operations to solidify the security steps from cyber attacks and protect the contact center industry in Africa.

• Monitoring:

  AI tools will automate the monitoring of cyber attacks and other threats 24x7. It will not need manual resources, which will save money and manual effort. It will also make the whole process more efficient.

• Prevention:

  The importance of cybersecurity and AI is high because it not only monitors threats but also prevents them. It can immediately suspend suspicious users. 

• Recovery:

  In case the attackers succeed in breaking security mechanisms for any reason, then also AI and cybersecurity tools will immediately start the recovery process. Usually, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity tools keep taking regular backups, which can be used for recovering from any attack within a minimum time.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the role of AI and Cybersecurity in the contact center industry of Africa is quite essential and crucial. It can make a huge difference in protecting businesses from major cyber attacks. It can even help in taking immediate steps to prevent any risks to data, users, or customers of Africa’s call center industry. Moreover, it can take immediate steps to prevent attacks by suspending attackers. It can also recover the data if any sort of attack has already happened. All this helps in speeding up the process of prevention and recovery along with security. This makes it quite vital to accept the worth of AI and Cybersecurity in the contact center industry of Africa.

We provide a contact center solution for African countries and their contact center industry. We can implement the best practices of AI and Cybersecurity in the contact center industry of Africa. If you have already accepted the importance of cybersecurity and AI in Africa’s contact center industry, time for you to implement these technologies in favor of your business. To know more about our software and the implementation of AI and cybersecurity in it, Get In Touch With Us Now.