{"id":838647,"date":"2025-10-01T10:48:24","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T08:48:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=838647"},"modified":"2025-10-01T10:48:29","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T08:48:29","slug":"building-a-winning-culture-for-cybersecurity-in-south-africas-smes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/industry-news\/838647\/building-a-winning-culture-for-cybersecurity-in-south-africas-smes\/","title":{"rendered":"Building a winning culture for cybersecurity in South Africa\u2019s SMEs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>By Graeme Millar, MD of SevenC Managed IT Services<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>South Africa\u2019s SMEs face a daily paradox: they must innovate to compete but comply to survive.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The tension between creativity and compliance is not going away.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yet, time and again, we see that the SMEs who navigate this tension most effectively are not those with the biggest IT budgets, but those who build winning cultures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/sevenc.co.za\/contact-us\/?utm_source=BusinessTech&amp;utm_medium=Article&amp;utm_term=October+2025\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Click here to learn more about building a winning culture with SevenC.<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Why culture matters more than controls<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Technology is essential but it is not decisive.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Firewalls, endpoint protection, and cloud security platforms all play their part.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yet the IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report reminds us that 95% of breaches involve human error.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Controls only go so far if people override them, ignore them, or fail to understand them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Winning cultures change the equation. They embed security into the way people think and behave.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Instead of staff seeing compliance as a burden, they see it as part of their shared responsibility to keep the business alive.&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Instead of hiding mistakes, they surface them early.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Instead of waiting for IT to solve everything, every employee becomes a sentry.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Join us at our upcoming event, Managing human risk in a digital-first SME economy, on 3 October 2025.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We\u2019ll unpack practical steps for South African businesses to secure both their people and their technology.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/sevenc.co.za\/events-with-sevenc\/?utm_source=BusinessTech&amp;utm_medium=Article&amp;utm_term=October+2025\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Click here to register for the event.<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The DNA of winning cultures<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In SMEs that thrive, culture is treated as an asset and is built deliberately, nurtured consistently, and reinforced from the top.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These cultures are marked by five interconnected behaviours:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Curiosity<\/strong> &#8211; Employees question, learn, and stay alert. They ask if the new tool is secure, if a strange email is genuine, if a password is strong enough.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Resilience<\/strong> &#8211; Leaders find pragmatic solutions that work within SME budgets, from MFA rollouts to vendor audits.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Shared responsibility<\/strong> &#8211; Security belongs to everyone, not just IT. Every person, in every role, is accountable.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Authenticity<\/strong> &#8211; Mistakes and near misses are acknowledged and turned into learning opportunities.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Action<\/strong> &#8211; Policies are not left to gather dust. They are tested, rehearsed, and lived.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>These are behaviours that create trust internally and confidence externally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Lessons from the field<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Consider two businesses.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The first, a Durban SME that dismissed training as \u2018unnecessary\u2019, collapsed into days of downtime when a phishing email tricked a junior admin.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The second, a Johannesburg SME with the same budget, ran quarterly awareness sessions and phishing simulations. When a targeted attack arrived, an employee flagged it, and disaster was averted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The difference?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not the firewall. Not the antivirus.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Tools that reinforce culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Culture must be supported with the right tools. We work with our customers to embed security awareness into their daily operations.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the most effective solutions is usecure: a platform that delivers bite-sized training, runs phishing simulations, and tracks behaviour change over time.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It doesn\u2019t replace culture; it reinforces it, making the invisible visible and the abstract tangible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Trust as a growth strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In the SME space, trust is the ultimate growth lever.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Customers, investors, and partners will always choose businesses they believe can safeguard sensitive data and operate responsibly.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Compliance alone does not build that trust. Culture does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>SA\u2019s economic engine of small-to-medium businesses, who build winning cultures, where curiosity, resilience, responsibility, candour, and action are lived values, will not only reduce cyber risk.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They will win contracts, retain clients, and grow sustainably.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019ve seen time and again that cybersecurity is no longer just an IT strategy. It is a culture strategy.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And culture, more than any firewall, is what keeps SMEs in business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/sevenc.co.za\/contact-us\/?utm_source=BusinessTech&amp;utm_medium=Article&amp;utm_term=October+2025\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Get in touch with us now to learn more about building a winning culture for security in your business.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The tension between creativity and compliance is not going away \u2013 and navigating this tension requires that you build a winning culture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":838651,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10459],"tags":[4070,21123],"class_list":["post-838647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry-news","tag-cybersecurity","tag-sevenc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=838647"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":838768,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838647\/revisions\/838768"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/838651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=838647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=838647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=838647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}