SMALL BUSINESS TRENDS
Standard Chartered | September 20, 2023
Standard Chartered Americas partners with Truist Bank to boost Truist's global business capabilities.
The partnership offers centralized processing and tracking services for trade finance, focusing on emerging markets.
Chris Burtch, Head of Financial Institution Sales, highlights opportunities in dynamic emerging economies and regions.
Standard Chartered Americas, a leading international banking group, has announced that it has entered into a trade finance partnership with Truist Bank, a leading financial services company. The partnership is aimed at elevating the global business capabilities of Truist's clientele.
Truist holds a prominent market share in numerous high-growth markets within the country. The company also provides an extensive array of products and services across various sectors, including retail and small business banking, commercial banking, corporate and investment banking, insurance, wealth management, and specialized lending.
This strategic alliance between Truist Bank and Standard Chartered is designed to streamline and enhance the business landscape for importers and exporters operating in the United States. Standard Chartered will leverage its unique network, local know-how, cutting-edge infrastructure, and technology to offer centralized processing, tracking, and analytics services. Truist's corporate and commercial clients will gain invaluable support from Standard Chartered in fulfilling their trade finance requirements, particularly in emerging markets across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
Chris Burtch, Head of Financial Institution Sales at Standard Chartered Americas, stated
We are proud to have a strong network across the world's most dynamic emerging economies and regions, which have the U.S. as its major trade partner. This presents immense opportunities for companies looking to expand their reach and tap into these new markets.
[Source - Business Wire]
He further expressed their excitement about partnering with Truist and facilitating its clients' cross-border trade finance needs across their footprint. With their expertise in navigating the complex landscape of cross-border trade, he conveyed confidence in their ability to support Truist clients, help them achieve their business objectives, and unlock new opportunities for growth.
Key highlights of this partnership include
Export and Import Letters of Credit: Truist will benefit from access to Standard Chartered's extensive reach and real-time transaction monitoring capabilities across the entire documentary trade value chain. In markets where Standard Chartered has a presence, Truist clients engaged in the buying or selling of goods and services will have the ability to confirm, advise, or discount letters of credit through the Bank.
Standby Letters of Credit (SBLC): Truist clients will now be equipped to execute performance and commercial contracts with counterparts in markets necessitating localized expertise alongside local SBLC delivery capabilities. Standard Chartered's innovative solution will empower Truist to process and issue SBLCs from start to finish, utilizing the Bank's network to expedite turnaround times and provide transparent cost visibility.
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TECHNOLOGY
PR Newswire | September 29, 2023
Norton, a leading consumer Cyber Safety brand of Gen™ (NASDAQ: GEN), today announced Norton Small Business, the all-in-one cybersecurity solution to help entrepreneurs and small business owners protect their financial futures. While nearly 90%1 of businesses globally are small businesses - 99.9% in the US2 - many lack the means to protect their digital environments. Norton Small Business makes triple-lock protection accessible for small businesses to safeguard their team's online activities, devices and customer data in an easy, all-in-one cybersecurity solution.
"Owning a very small business often means each member of the team wears different hats, and usually cybersecurity expert isn't one of them," said Massimo Rapparini, General Manager & Head of Small Business Safety at Gen. "Unfortunately, cybercriminals are aware of this and often target such businesses – more than half (57%) of small businesses experienced a security, data breach or both in 20223. For entrepreneurs and small businesses, falling for just one phishing email can have a devastating impact."
Scams Taking Down Small Businesses
Small businesses face a barrage of scams and phishing threats, just like consumers. In fact, they are targeted more than large companies. Companies with fewer than 100 employees face an average of 350% more social engineering attacks than larger enterprises4, and according to data from Gen, cyber threats that rely on manipulating people account for 85% of attacks on small businesses in the US. Of these threats, phishing – for example, emails trying to trick you into clicking a link or transferring money – is the most common way cybercriminals try to access small business systems, private data, financials and intellectual property.
Businesses with under 10 employees often lack IT support, putting companies at great risk if cybercriminal attacks are successful – and many are. In 2020 alone, there were more than 700,000 attacks against small businesses totaling $2.8 billion in damages5. Norton Small Business helps small businesses disaster-proof their critical data to minimize the risk of financial loss.
Entrepreneurs Pursue Financial Freedom
Entrepreneurs often start their own businesses in pursuit of financial freedom and invest significant time, energy and personal savings to build their business. In fact, 61% of Gen Z small business owners believe entrepreneurship will lead them to retirement earlier than if they had gone straight to the corporate world6. Yet, small businesses are being heavily targeted by cybercriminals, leaving them at much higher risk of collapsing compared to larger firms when hit by a cyberattack.
With heightened risk and so much at stake, it's surprising that about half of businesses with under 50 employees have no cybersecurity budget at all7. The effects of a cyberattack extend beyond financial consequences, and it's time cybersecurity is pushed to the forefront of small business priorities.
Setting Up Your One-Person IT Department
Norton is your go-to partner to make small business cybersecurity simple with an all-in-one solution that provides 24/7 cybersecurity protection and a variety of features, including:
Secure Browser, Password Manager and VPN (virtual private network) to help secure day-to-day online activities
Automated PC cleaning and optimization to keep healthier PCs for longer
Secure Cloud Backup for PCs to help reduce the risk of loss of business data
Software and driver updaters to help keep software up to date, so there are fewer vulnerabilities for cybercriminals to exploit
IT coverage and maintenance for up to 20 devices
A 100% Virus Protection Promise8
"We've built our small business products and services with the same approach in mind as we do with our consumer portfolio, so entrepreneurs don't need to worry about becoming cybersecurity experts," said Rapparini. "Norton is here to make cybersecurity accessible and easy so they can focus on building thriving businesses."
Norton recommends these top 10 tips to protect your small business:
Learn tospot signs of phishing andteach your employees
Only click links or download attachments from known sources
Avoid sharing personal information or private company data over email
Alwayskeep your operating system, applications and drivers up-to-date
Make sure yourWiFi network is protected with a strong password
Regularlyback up your data
Require employees to use aVPN when doing company work on a public WiFi network (think airports and coffee shops)
Alwaysuse multi-factor-authenticationfor an extra layer of protection
Don't neglect mobile devices – make sure they are password protected and use security software
Invest in a cybersecurity solution such as Norton Small Business
About Norton
Norton is a leading Cyber Safety brand of Gen™ (NASDAQ: GEN), a global company dedicated to powering Digital Freedom through its family of trusted consumer brands including Norton, Avast, LifeLock, Avira, AVG, ReputationDefender and CCleaner. Gen empowers people to live their digital lives safely, privately, and confidently today and for generations to come. Gen brings award-winning products and services in cybersecurity, online privacy and identity protection to more than 500 million users in more than 150 countries.
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MANAGEMENT
Business Wire | September 27, 2023
DigitalOcean Holdings, Inc., the cloud for startups and SMBs, today announced the launch of DigitalOcean Managed Kafka, a new, fully managed data streaming platform as a service offering for Apache Kafka. DigitalOcean Managed Kafka helps small and medium-sized businesses across industries, including video streaming, the Internet of Things (IoT), data analytics, gaming, and eCommerce, access and process data streams in real time while eliminating the complexity associated with the Kafka administration. Through this offering and other enhancements across DigitalOcean’s portfolio, startups and tech entrepreneurs can more easily grow their businesses in the cloud.
“While Kafka is the gold standard for data streaming, it frequently presents technical challenges for smaller businesses with budget and resource limitations. We are excited to introduce a solution that makes this technology more accessible and meets DigitalOcean’s standard for simplicity,” said Megan Wood, Chief Strategy & Product Officer at DigitalOcean. “By reducing the burden of implementing a new platform, companies can shift their focus away from the complexity of managing their data streaming services and get back to building apps that differentiate their business.”
As businesses receive higher amounts of data inputs, the ability to rapidly capture and process this data becomes crucial. Thousands of companies, including over 80% of Fortune 100 companies, rely on Kafka to optimize their data streams and provide leaders with insights that inform decision-making. With DigitalOcean Managed Kafka, startups and SMBs can benefit from the ability to scale up and down clusters with ease while setting up alerts for proactive maintenance. Additionally, DigitalOcean customers can expect end-to-end security via private networking and data encryption along with cost-effective, predictable pricing starting at $147 for a three-node cluster.
“DigitalOcean's Managed Kafka offering has been a game-changer for us at Datacake,” said Lukas Klein, Chief Technical Officer at Datacake. “By taking care of the operational aspects of running our Kafka cluster, we have been able to focus our attention on what really matters – building a great product. With this new service, we were able to migrate seamlessly to an event-based architecture while maintaining the highest levels of operational security.”
Alongside DigitalOcean Managed Kafka, DigitalOcean has been making investments in its product and infrastructure offerings to provide peace of mind, increased productivity, and more affordable solutions to SMBs and startups. Some of those recent updates include:
GPUs with the acquisition of Paperspace-The computing power needed for training AI models and deploying at scale
Premium CPU-Optimized Droplets-Higher outbound network speeds, higher performance, and faster disk writes than standard Droplets
Enhanced memory and storage for Basic Premium Droplets-More flexibility with a wider choice of virtual machines
Low-cost support plans for every size of business-Eight-hour response times for all issues, regardless of severity
Object Storage in the Bangalore data center-Increased performance with compute and storage in one location
In addition, over the coming quarters, DigitalOcean will unveil the following enhancements and capabilities to continue to make DigitalOcean the cloud of choice for SMBs and startups:
More flexible storage offerings -Effortlessly accommodate dynamic storage requirements with Scalable Storage for Managed Databases, a cost-effective solution that helps businesses expand their data footprints with confidence
Faster, frequent, and comprehensive Backups -Ability to create daily Droplet backups that are differential, significantly reducing the time required to create them
Better performance for a range of products -Extending the premium variant to the General Purpose line of Droplets, providing newer generation CPUs, faster NVME drives, and up to 10 Gbps of outbound data transfer speeds making them ideal for running e-commerce, consumer, and SaaS apps
About DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean simplifies cloud computing so builders and businesses can spend more time creating software that changes the world. With its mission-critical infrastructure and fully managed offerings, DigitalOcean helps developers at startups and small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) rapidly build, deploy and scale, whether creating a digital presence or building digital products. DigitalOcean combines the power of simplicity, security, community and customer support so customers can spend less time managing their infrastructure and more time building innovative applications that drive business growth.
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