The Currency of Global Trust is Cybersecurity & Compliance.

Let me ask you something regarding cybersecurity. When a global business decides to hand over its most sensitive customer data to a BPO partner on another continent, what do you think is the very first thing they’re asking themselves?

It’s not “Are they affordable?” It’s not even “Are they experienced?” The first question is the one that determines whether a deal happens at all, it is “Can I trust them with my personal data?”. A valid one at that, too.

Trust is the currency of the global business world. And right now, in 2026, that trust is built or broken on the back of cybersecurity and compliance. As CTO at Procera, I’ve spent nearly two decades watching the technology evolve. I can tell you with absolute certainty that the rules of the game have changed. Data protection is no longer a “back-office technical problem”. It’s a boardroom conversation, or a client-facing differentiator and, in some cases, the deciding factor in whether your business survives a data breach or doesn’t. That’s pretty serious. 

So let me walk you through how we think about it, and what we’re actually doing about it.

The cybersecurity threat is real and it’s a lot closer to home than you think.

I don’t want to alarm you, but I do want you to understand the reality we’re operating in. Globally, cyber threats have escalated to a level that would have seemed almost impossible just five years ago. But the problem isn’t just a global problem, it’s becoming an even more local one too.

South Africa is in the crosshairs.

South African organisations faced an average of 1,884 cyberattacks per week in Q1 2025, a 69% year-on-year increase, according to Check Point Software’s Global Threat Intelligence Report. That’s not a typo. Nearly two thousand attacks per week, per organisation. And data breaches? The Information Regulator reported 1,607 breaches between April and September 2025 alone, a staggering 60% increase from the year before.

Think about that for a second. That’s not a fleeting trend. That’s a hard acceleration. With South Africa’s growing role as a regional digital hub, we’re going to become more of a target.

The question every technology leader in this country has to answer is simple, “Are you ready for this?”. At Procera, we’ve been building our answer to that question for years. We’ve had three decades of experience to get here – with a lot of learning during that time. We take your data seriously. 

What does compliance actually mean for a BPO?

Here’s where I think a lot of organisations get confused. Compliance is the absolute minimum standard you need to meet just to be in the room. But when you’re a BPO partner processing millions of customer records on behalf of global clients, the floor better be rock-solid.

POPIA Is not a checkbox. 

South Africa’s Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) is our local equivalent of the EU’s GDPR. And the regulatory environment around it has never been more serious. Amended regulations came into effect in April 2025, tightening the rules around direct marketing consent, breach notification, and cross-border data transfers. The maximum penalty for non-compliance? R10 million, criminal prosecution, or both.

So to hear me loud and clear, we comply because our clients’ customers are real people, and their data deserves real protection. That’s an ethical commitment, not a legal one. We’ve created our work culture around the principle that every piece of personal data we touch belongs to someone, and that someone matters.

POPIA requires “appropriate and reasonable” security measures. We’ve built well beyond that bar. Our data handling protocols, access controls, and breach response plans are reviewed, tested, and updated continuously – not annually, not at audit time, but rather as a part of how we operate every single day.

The ISO 27001 Standard is our commitment in writing.

If POPIA is the floor, then ISO/IEC 27001 is the internationally recognised ceiling of best practice in information security management. And I’m proud to say, Procera is ISO 27001 certified.

What does that actually mean in practice? It means we’ve built and maintained a formal Information Security Management System (ISMS). It means we’ve been independently audited against global best practice. It means that when a client in the United States, the United Kingdom, or anywhere else in the world asks “What proof do you have that you take data security seriously?”, we hand them a certification with global standing.

ISO 27001 is a framework that governs how we identify risks, assign responsibilities, manage access, respond to incidents, and continuously improve. It covers everything from our physical infrastructure to our people policies to our software architecture. It is, quite literally, security by design.

For our global partners, that certification removes a significant layer of due diligence risk. They know because an independent third party confirmed it, that Procera meets world-class standards for data protection.

How Procera bakes security into everything we do.

Security isn’t a department here. It’s just how we operate, with operational excellence. Our technology infrastructure has data protection baked in from the ground up with role-based access, tamper-proof audit trails, encryption at rest and in transit. Agents see only what they need to do their job. Nothing more.

But honestly? Technology is the easy part. What keeps me up at night is people. Not because our team isn’t good (they’re exceptional!),  but because 95% of breaches trace back to human error. A phishing email. A weak password. A moment of distraction. That’s the real risk, and it’s one we take seriously. Our 2% attrition rate proves that our teams are stable and well-drilled. We run phishing simulations, security briefings, and regular training as part of how we work.

“Security at Procera isn’t a department. It’s a posture. It’s baked into how we think about every system we build, every process we design, and every person we hire.”

– Tinus van Staden (Chief Technology Officer)

Trust is the currency of global business. You can’t claim it, you earn it, quietly, through every system you build, every protocol you follow, and every time you do the right thing when no one’s watching. Rest assured that we are both ISO 27001 certified and POPIA compliant – and genuinely committed to making sure every piece of data we touch is handled with the care it deserves.

Because behind every data record is a real person. And that person matters. That’s all for this edition, and I hope to write to you again soon. 

Tinus van Staden

CTO, Procera Group