Salt Essential IT partners with the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology in creating awareness of cybersecurity.
On Thursday, 21st of July 2022, at the Theo Ben Gurirab Building in Windhoek Namibia, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the two parties to collaboratively undertake a joint National Cybersecurity Strategy and Awareness Campaign to attain the goals and objectives of the National Cybersecurity Strategy and Awareness Creation Plan. This is done with the view to influence the adoption of safer online behaviour and instil a culture of cyber-hygiene in citizens with the aim to avert the incidence of cybercrime in the Republic of Namibia.
Mr Mbeuta Ua-Ndjarakana, Executive Director of the Ministry of ICT themed the milestone event in Maroon, a colour that represents depth, passion, and thoughtfulness. The colour Blue represents sensitivity, imagination, inspiration, and the colour Black which represents mystery, power, and sophistication. This initiative, he stated, is crucial because dealing with cybersecurity requires passion, sensitivity for dealing with the nation's sensitive information, and sophistication for dealing with a sophisticated adversary. The Executive Director concluded by commending Salt Essential IT - "a Namibian child” for partnering with the government “to catch this invisible bull by the horns".
Ms Sonja Coetzer, Managing Director of Salt Essential IT concluded by saying “The world needs more initiatives between government and the private sector to drive 4IR and 5IR opportunities to challenge, empower and impact the citizens of the world. Cybersecurity plays a major role in technology advances to create job security, economic development, and growth”. She thanked the Ministry for the opportunity to be part of this cybersecurity strategy and awareness campaign.
The Salties will be hosting cybersecurity awareness sessions for the public which will expose Namibians to the types of cybercrimes and how to protect themselves from them. The training sessions will also be made available on the Ministry’s public forums, there will be no cost or fee for attending these sessions. For more information, please contact Grace Katjivena at grace.katjivena@salt.na or 0614339900.
#DoItTheSaltWay #5IR #TechRev #OnsGeeOm #ThisIsHowWeRoll #Saltoftheearthpeople
By Grace Katjivena
We’re no strangers to reactions of puzzlement, or even bemusement, at our brand and marketing antics. It’s been like that from the beginning. When we changed our name from Logical Networks to Salt in 2008, we created a conversation starter that lasts to this day. Much has been said and written about naming our information tech company after a chemical compound most commonly known for its essentiality in food, its value as ancient currency, and its critical importance in neurological and other biological functions. Selah.
More recently, our marketing campaigns featured us, the humans of Salt Essential IT, the Salties, as the models and actors. Over the past 18 months we’ve been cast as superheroes, fairies, magicians, and mad scientists. And now, farmers.
Let’s start at the very beginning. It’s a very good place to start, just ask Julie.
Our reason and messaging behind the uncommon marketing approach is twofold: First (do), IT-services advertising is rather dull. Same-old perfectly beautiful people in same-old perfectly beautiful office spaces, smiling with sets of perfect teeth, apparently perfectly happy with how well the laptop in front of them is connecting them to all the systems they require. Meh.
Secondly (re), and rather more importantly, we have been shifting our business focus over the years to human-centricity. We firmly believe that the tools of our trade, technology, has one purpose: serving humans. Making the work humans do more productive, more efficient, safer, and smarter. Many of these tools and tech are a dime a dozen, and can be procured anywhere, from anyone. What we want to do is be the humans with the experience and knowledge of all things business-tech-related, and deep understanding of the needs of your business and your humans. We’re the humans you trust to enable your humans to build, grow and operate your business as effective, sustainable, and profitable as possible. We’re very much into building relationships of more than mutual benefit, but rather as partnerships of trust.
Sometimes you need a superhero to keep your data safe. Sometimes a mad scientist to conjure up brand new solutions, and sometimes fairies to bring a little magic and joy to collaboration.
Which brings me to the farming theme.
Values
One of Salt’s most fervent beliefs is that happy, balanced, and healthy humans are any organisation’s most business-critical asset. We’re moving on from ‘work-life-balance’ (easily warped into a Jekyll and Hyde existence) to ‘work-life-harmony’, where work isn’t just a necessary evil to live. Happy, balanced, and healthy humans are inspired, committed and productive team members. Essential humans.
The result of an internal survey amongst the Saltie-tribe this year had the following values ticked in almost every submission: Growth, respect, trustworthiness, honesty, balance, and authenticity.
We had the answer to the question of what the theme of our next campaign would be.
The revolution that planted the seed for all other revolutions
‘Industrial revolutions’ is quite the trendy topic. As we enter the 5th (Artificial Intelligence, Virtual and Augmented Reality, etc), I bet you learned in school that the first revolution that forever changed humanity happened in 1784. In Europe, nogal.
School was wrong.
12,000 years earlier, in Mesopotamia, humans figured out how to domesticate grains, and shortly thereafter the tools and tech to continuously enhance our skills followed. And with it, our lives. Not bound by an existence of spending every waking hour hunting and gathering to feed themselves enabled humans to pursue other things. Every industry, every modern job owes its existence to the development of agriculture.
Small family groups became villages, villages became tribes, and tribes became societies and civilisations.
Nothing has changed. Every revolution since is a continuance of that first one. Humble, authentic, human.
And if you leave city-slicker and socio-political biases at the door, what other profession in the world is as humble, authentic, and human as farming? From the women tending vegetable crops in Rundu, to commercial sheep farmers in Keetmanshoop, to the goatherd outside Gobabis. Essential humans.
We tip our hats in appreciation to every single one.
Join our tribe
With this campaign, we’re inviting businesses that share our values to join our tribe. Bring your seeds, know-how and zesty humans. Let’s build a civilisation that thrives in whatever the future can throw at us. A future of bumper crops and happy, healthy humans.
#DoItTheSaltWay #5IR #TechRev #OnsGeeOm #ThisIsHowWeRoll #Saltoftheearthpeople
By Vanessa Maresch
~~~
PS. City Slickers: After our video and photo shoot for this campaign, all the Salties at the studio that day suffered a few days of hayfever. From, yes, you guessed it, the hay bales we used as props. Everyone except Frans and Grace, who happen to know a thing or two about farming. 🙂
See the Salties working the earth on billboards across Windhoek
I am jokingly called the Queen of Adobe at Salt. A title earned after years of experience and with the help of the Salt Army.
Just when I thought Adobe Sign was impressive, I fell head over heels for Acrobat Pro. As a salesperson documentation took up a major part of my working day. I am saving so much time using this fantastic tool. I simply can’t choose which feature made my life the easiest, however creating PDF’s was not one of them.
With Acrobat Pro you find great features such as: combine files, organize pages, edit and export PDF’s (which allows one to export documents from that PDF to PowerPoint, Excel, and / or Word) . The cherry on the cake for me was the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) which gives one the ability to copy and paste a hundred pages into a Word document, and it takes less than 5 minutes to do. Tenders and RFQ’s are done in half the time! Give it a try with our free 45 day trial. If you first want to see Acrobat Pro in action, have a look at our BrainFrame Thursday.
By Beaulah Keis
One would think that with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Protection of Personal Information (POPI) acts in place that your data is now safe, but a study found that it is far from the truth.
I read an article online from BBC in which they state that the average European data is shared up to 376 times a day. This is alarming considering that GDPR is in place for the European consumer. The study shows that the average US based users’ data is shared 747 times per day.
The data is shared by the brokers which sell the advertising space to advertisers as the site loads in real time. The advertising brands are not involved in the share it is the real time brokers.
The data being collected and shared are the device type, location, previous sites visited and the subject matter. This takes place in a matter of seconds and the space is sold to the advertiser, making it a multi-million-dollar industry.
The industry might argue that the data collected and shared is not personal identifying, the complainers of Privacy online argue that the volume and type of data is still private.
Some of the data collected include Location of the device, Previous sites visited, Subject matter searched, type of device used.
This data is used every day by the real time bidding companies to sell the advertising slot on the site, this happens without consent and in seconds regardless of how private or sensitive, they record where you go and what you visit. The Digital Rights campaigners, like the Irish Council of Civil Liberties state that this is the biggest breach of privacy ever recorded.
The data gathered is not available public but freely available to industry. The initial data was gathered from Google Feed and excluded the other major players namely Meta and Amazon.
The data gathered showed that and average US-Based web users’ habits are shared in advert sales processes a 107 trillion times per year and the average Europeans data is shared 71 billion times a year.
The researchers concluded that should the data breach be explained that should the data be seen in the same light as pollution we would be surrounded by an almost impenetrable haze that gets thicker the more, we browse of use the internet.
The ICCL has launched a lawsuit in which it is suing the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) for the privacy data breach. They state that even if the data shared does not contain the users name the data shared is considered private. They state the users has not consented to the gathering of the data nor its sharing.
There is a debate ongoing that states the volume of data gathered about people to target the adds, is what makes most of the services free to use on the internet. But the ICCL states that the people do not know the amount of data gathered about them nor with whom it is shared. The ICCL stated that the bid systems can tell if they have seen the persons profile before to allow the advertisers to decide if they will bid for the spot or not.
They concluded that the data shared contains the users location, device, previous sites visited, subject matter searched, users’ sexuality, religion, if the device belongs to a person with debt, income level and many more. The data is available in code that the industry refers to as audience Taxonomy. The tables can be found here: https://iabtechlab.com/standards/audience-taxonomy/ and it shows that information gathered is much more detailed and possibly not something the users would want to share.
Companies Like apple has taken the privacy initiative and started cracking down on Ad-tracking enforcing an op-int option for all apps on apple devises and many of apples users has not taken the opt-in option.
The same case has been raised and is being investigated by multiple European countries, in which some of the investigations has been going for more than three years.
The ICCL is striving for the law to sweep the industry so that you can still bid on the request but without any private data changing hands.
In a nutshell browsing in private mode, does not quite ensure that your data is not gathered and shared on the internet for commercial gain.
By Frans Herle
"Some people don't like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster."
Elon Musk
To be the difference we want, we must make the changes that are needed. We must claim a seat at the table where we get the opportunity to talk, not about technology but what you can do with technology. We need a to claim a seat at the table so that we can research, develop, and deliver education, health, and wealth through technology.
Really intelligent technology is already in existence. Every day, around the world, truly life-changing technology is being researched and developed by young and futuristic visionaries in lab coats with degrees from reputable institutions. Yet, we are not bringing these changes (and the opportunities they represent) to market, and when we, on occasion, do bring it to the market, we are told the market is not ready… When no one ever offered it to the market? It reminds me of a quote by Henry Ford: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
Celebrating each and every employee’s unique wins and valuable contributions are at the heart of Our business is open to sit around the table and talk to your business about the possibilities available and opportunities on our doorsteps to break through into the 5th industrial revolution. Since the beginning of time, at each corner, at each turning point, someone embraced change and delivered breakthrough technology solutions that led to the change in the world we live in today. From medicine, education, and travel amongst many examples, to having the world in the palm of our hands.
If not now, then when? When will we take hands and become the difference we want to live?
DoItTheSaltWay #5IR #TechRev #OnsGeeOm #ThisIsHowWeRoll #TechnologyRevolutionist
By Sonja Coetzer
Heartfelt appreciation goes a long way - praise, acknowledgment, and reward. Robert McNamara, former American Secretary of Defense said: "Brains, like hearts, go where they are appreciated."
Rewards and Recognitions is a system where people are acknowledged for their performance and/or contribution in intrinsic or extrinsic ways. A leader understands the importance of letting the team, and the individual members of a team, know that they are truly appreciated. The earth is rewarded with rain and the tribe with grain.
A recent discussion with a life coach challenged the notion of companies that awards Employee of the Month and Employee of the Year, as it could leave other hardworking employees to feel undervalued should they not be nominated and/or considered for such recognition and the accompanying reward. I beg to differ. While every employee is valued and acknowledged as a contributor towards the company's success, certain actions stand out as exceptional, and that deserves a shout-out.
Celebrating each and every employee’s unique wins and valuable contributions are at the heart of showing gratitude and appreciation. All Salties participate in our regular shoutouts, praises, recognition, and rewards. The tribe celebrates the individual and the individual celebrates the tribe. We hold each other in high regard, and we celebrate every moment and action and employee deserving, no matter big or small.
#EverySaltieCounts #RewardsAndRecognition #CelebrateTheWins #DoItTheSaltWay #5IR #TechRev #OnsGeeOm #ThisIsHowWeRoll #TechnologyRevolutionist
By Sonja Coetzer
Salt believes in employing the right talent. Talent equals brains, guts, and above all, heart. We choose hearty, salty talent that is complimented by tenacity, an eager willingness to learn, and a commitment to the company, themselves, and the rest of the team for the job at hand. Heart transcends gender, race, age, colour, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, religion, creed, or social or economic status.
Salt embraces and embodies our values: Challenge. Empower. Impact.
Every Saltie in their carefully selected role is viewed and treated as a valued contributor to the growth and the success of the company, with plenty and equal opportunity and access to training and coaching. This aims to ensure that they are enabled to achieve their career development goals.
Research has regularly demonstrated that when employees feel empowered at work, it is associated with stronger job performance, job satisfaction, and commitment to the organisation.
Laura Moss from EveryoneSocial, states that employee empowerment entails the following five elements in the workplace:
I am a firm believer that growth comes through empowerment of yourself and others. Belief in yourself and belief in those around you, build confidence and trust, promote self-development and growth, personally and professionally.
So you can become the you you were born to be!
#DoItTheSaltWay #5IR #TechRev #OnsGeeOm #ThisIsHowWeRoll #TechnologyRevolutionist
By Sonja Coetzer
As a humanist, I concern myself with human welfare, values, and dignity. As a business leader, my concerns are exactly the same.
A leader's responsibility is to hone effectiveness while inspiring others. To develop employees while leading a team. To guide change while managing stakeholders. To set goals and effectively delegate to best reach them.
I am a people over numbers leader, I believe in a working environment that is safe emotionally, mentally, and physically. I believe in working hard and playing harder, for my team and for me. Richard Branson says: "Take care of your employees and they’ll take care of your business".
All of this is easier said than done. Of course, how else?
Wake up every morning, put on your armour, and walk out the front door with intent. The intent of a leader. It can be exhausting, it can be downright scary sometimes, however, true leaders have great warriors in their tribe. Warriors who will have your back every moment of every day. Warriors that believe in the vision, the mission to protect the farmers, the hunters, the gatherers - the soul of the tribe.
A courageous leader understands fear, embraces it, and turns it into an opportunity to learn, explore, and ultimately thrive. When tribe members can apply their natural skills and passions to what they do every day in every way, when they are empowered to contribute towards success, the tribe itself thrives. This is a simple evolutionary fact.
Salt's tribe stands together, learns together, grows together, and above all, we thrive together.
#ProudSaltie #DoItTheSaltWay #5IR #TechRev #OnsGeeOm #ThisIsHowWeRoll #TechnologyRevolutionist
By Sonja Coetzer
I remember the very first time I was introduced to computer technology: a Commodore 64 home computer at a school friend’s house. I fell in love with it, head over heels. I knew that one day, I will work in this field. I knew that technology was going to be an amazing part of what mankind can be…
…I also remember the days when you needed to be in the vicinity of a landline phone to be reached remotely. I remember the days when your work hours were just that – the time you spend at your office or place of work. I remember the days you had to plan your meals, your petrol, your everything, to ensure you had what you needed for the weekend, else you would be waiting until Monday, 09:00-ish.
Then, of course with humans doing what humans do, we became increasingly unhappy with this well-balanced lifestyle. We wanted things more easily available, at the drop of a hat, all the time, anytime, and technology enabled it.
Of course, it backfired. It would be unfair to blame computers for the backlash, technology simply answered our incessant calls for instant gratification with everything. Now the lines of work, life, home, family, and me-time are so blurred, we are as deurmekaar as a chameleon on a Smartie box. And we’re constantly bone-tired.
Our lives have changed and will continue to change. For better or for worse, it is up to each of us to make a conscious choice, every day, of how we will use, consume, and rely on technology.
When was the last time you did not check emails over the weekend or responded to the last instant message just before closing your eyes? Can you remember the last time that you told your partner, child, friend, or colleague to just wait a minute while you finish reading, watching, typing, or responding to something on your device of choice?
Life is about discipline and boundaries. We need the discipline to set the boundaries of how technology will form part of our daily lives, at work, at home, in our cars, basically anywhere. Boundaries of when it is acceptable (and healthy) to respond to a work call, email, or "ping". This discipline and these boundaries will prevent burnouts, exhaustion, and emancipation of real life.
Those of you that know me will know, I love technology. I love what technology can do to bring about an improvement to the quality of life, education, health, and wealth. Technology can help humankind and it certainly has already. But it still has an on-off switch. Use it frequently.
I believe in working hard and playing hard. I believe in quality of life. I believe in boundaries, and I set them for office and for home.
I love technology, but I love balance more and so should you.
By Sonja Coetzer
12 months ago:
“Salt is the only company that has ever won three Diamond Arrows in the ICT field, two years consecutively,” said PMR.africa founder Johan Hattingh in February 2021.
“That’s nice. Hold my beer,” replied Salt Essential IT managing director, Sonja Coetzer.
Yup.
Like Usain Bolt at the Olympics in 2008, 2012, and 2016, Windhoek-based ICT company and cloud services sorcerers, Salt Essential IT, has smashed their own record again. The company clinched three PMR.africa Diamond Awards for the third year in a row, thereby cementing their spot in a very small and select group of companies on the African continent.
It’s the first time in the business journal’s history that an ICT company has won first overall place in three categories for three consecutive years.
The award categories where Salt has clinched the first spot and the coveted Diamond Arrow Awards are Cloud Service Providers, Data Centres, and IT Consulting Companies. The 2021 awards bring Salt’s PMR Awards tally to 17 awards in 9 years.
Johan Hattingh reiterated that this achievement is a testament to why Salt is so highly regarded in this industry. “Every year the competition is fiercer, but every year Salt raises their game and shows up on top. It is an acknowledgment of the continuous effort and hard work of the staff and management of Salt Essential IT.”
Sonja Coetzer simply puts the success down to the dedication of the Salties, who she refers to as “a world-class family of digital transformers devoted to human-centred technology solutions and extraordinary customer service”.
“We celebrated our 24th birthday earlier this month, and since the beginning, the Salt brand promise has always been business enablement. We supply, deploy, and support only the best technologies and solutions available and provide consulting on how the humans inside every customer should optimally use these technologies, aligned to business strategy, to support business goals and objectives. We do this, and nothing else. It’s a kind of magic.”
Commercial Expansion Empowerment Specialist of Salt, Vanessa Maresch, says “First and foremost we thank our business partners and loyal customers for their continued support. Public acknowledgement is an honour, but the true joy of accomplishment is when our people successfully enable your people to thrive. We put people at the forefront of the modern workplace, yours and ours.”
Apart from the PMR.Africa awards, Salt also sports three Microsoft® Partner of the Year – Namibia awards for 2018, 2019, and 2020.
Salt Marketing: released 16 March 2022
