Sydney based AI marketing startup Metigy has expanded its reach to the USA and Singapore, as COVID-19 continues to drive SMEs to digital marketing globally.

Cybots, the artificial intelligence driven cybersecurity company, has announced its entrance into the Australia and New Zealand market, with a focus on assisting SMEs in the fight against cyber crime.

“SME’s are the backbone of New Zealand business, and are facing unprecedented hardship and challenges due to COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdowns and restrictions."

"Offices and laptops can be replaced, but a company's proprietary data cannot."

Industries need to ensure their infrastructure is regularly monitored and maintained to avoid being compromised by malicious actors.

New research shows remote working is leading to increased cybersecurity risks for SMEs. 

Designed for small and midsize businesses, the firewalls deliver increased security and faster performance when compared to previous mid-range Firebox appliances, and have the processing power to handle encrypted and HTTPS traffic.

“Our research has found that remote working is exposing SMEs to additional risk of compromise and some businesses are being forced to leave infrastructure unmonitored."

The tools combine cash flow forecasting and advanced predictions, and are a ‘culmination of rigorous testing and development with the broader Xero community’.

Most SMEs are taking basic precautions to protect themselves online.

More than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, SMEs remain under enormous pressure and are increasingly looking to technology for ways to control costs and manage cash flow.

Past business pressures are returning to small and medium sized enterprises as the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic begin to subside.

As SMEs adapt to what has been a strange and challenging year, they continue to explore new technology solutions that provide new ways of working, new patterns of demand and help to combat ongoing risk of disruption.

The experience of COVID-19, the ease of doing business, and the risk of falling behind others in their industry has driven an increased uptake of digital tools by New Zealand SMEs.

"There are owners who still have in-house exchange servers because they are suspicious of the cloud or have concerns about their data sovereignty or don't want to contemplate the capital expenditure. But the warning is clear. Get rid of them."

vcita is a software platform for small business management that has a strong value proposition around helping micropreneurs to get paid for their services.

For SMEs, knowing and understanding customers through data-led insights is essential to retaining customers and nurturing relationships."

SmartEncrypt has been developed to complement businesses existing security and business continuity strategies and provide smaller to medium enterprises the levels of digital protection typically reserved for big business.

Support for employees working remotely is the top technology strategy to accomplishing operational and growth goals in 2021.

"Improving small business access to finance is absolutely critical to getting our economy back on track in 2021."

According to a new report from Cynet, these SMEs are resorting to outsourcing some aspects of their threat mitigation in order to safeguard IT assets, as a result of the heightened risk of serious breaches.

For SMEs, access to cloud and edge computing to reduce infrastructure costs and empower printing at home is now more critical than ever.

"The adoption of digital tools is no longer a nice to have, but a critical business decision for SMEs."

The microsite has been launched across most of Mastercard's Asia Pacific websites with information and resources on how to digitalise and run businesses more efficiently.