With the new year, we're excited to spotlight more of our partners who work towards making security more effective and efficient. 

Today we give the stage to SmartComply, whose app helps rapidly expanding businesses reduce time and money spent on compliance. 

Tell us more about yourself and SmartComply. 

My name is Dolapo Akinbisola, Country Head, Sales and Partnership at Smart Comply Technologies Solution Limited. We built an App Called SmartComplyApp.

What’s the biggest security problem you’re aiming to solve? And how? 

Certain industries, like payments, are heavily regulated by compliance. This means that companies just starting out would have to meet a lot of standards they don't understand and don't have the budget to reach. Companies have to deal with manual documentation, evidence collection, and a tedious versioning process in order to get ready for an audit. Also, they have to hire people and set aside a lot of money to audit different standards and keep them in good shape for the next year's audit window.

SmartComplyApp automates this process of documentation, gathering evidence, and auditing so that it is easy and quick. SmartComply also makes sure that multiple standards are always met, which gets rid of the need for human resources for each standard. With SmartComply, companies can be sure that their audit process will go twice as fast and that their compliance overhead costs will go down by 70%.

Tell us about the value you bring to your customers. How do they describe you? 

SmartComplyApp is an automated cybersecurity compliance platform with an artificially intelligent Qualified Security Assessor that helps start-ups and fast-growing businesses make compliance processes affordable and easy.

How do SmartComply and Cobalt click together? What do you think the security community will find most valuable about our partnership? 

Because it is difficult to get affordable and high-quality security assessments in Africa, this partnership combines the strengths of both companies, Cobalt's high-quality security assessments and SmartComply's low-cost platform, to offer intelligent businesses a qualitative security evaluation.

What's on the horizon for you — any previews you can give into what lies ahead for SmartComply, or where you think the industry as a whole is going? 

It is quite expected that the industry of cybersecurity compliance will continue to develop and incorporate new technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and chatbots, in order to increase both its efficiency and its efficacy.

The use of these technologies enables firms that are attempting to comply with cybersecurity rules to automate some operations and receive real-time support and direction. For instance, chatbots powered by AI may provide assistance with risk assessments, compliance reporting, and incident response by doing data analysis and offering advice based on the most effective procedures. However, it will be essential for businesses to make certain that the use of these technologies does not jeopardise the confidentiality of private information or the security of sensitive data.

At SmartComply, our goal is to be at the forefront of the movement toward automating and utilising artificial intelligence to enable compliance with cybersecurity regulations.