The 10 best startups from Lagos have been selected to pitch in front of an investment panel and compete to be crowned the most promising seed-stage startup of Seedstars Lagos 2016. The winning startup will join the global Seedstars Family and take part in the regional and global Seedstars Summits that include our tried and tested bootcamp and investor forum. It’s a catalytic platform for high growth emerging market startups.

The companies are:

Finalists

Davtonlearn

Lagos

GRIT Systems

Lagos

Kangpe

Lagos

Legal Form Limited

Lagos

PNJ Energy International

Lagos

Sharphire Global Limited

Lagos

Social Lender

Lagos

Tuteria Company

Lagos

Alibaba and insurer AXA join to calm global customers – AXA plans to market warranty and payment protection on Alibaba’s international site, while Ant Financial (Alibaba’s financial arm) will start offering AXA travel insurance for Chinese tourists. This model was unveiled in Africa few months ago when AXA partnered with Jumia.

For Alibaba, the deal is a way to reassure its small but growing number of international customers who regularly read stories in the international press about fake products and brand copies flooding Alibaba’s biggest market at home, Taobao.com.

On its global site AliExpress, the hope is that AXA’s products for extended warranties and repairs may coax more customers into trying the platform.

MoneyGram’s digital business inches forward – MoneyGram, the second largest global remittance provider, revised its revenue goals downward for the year but is hoping a revamped digital strategy will accelerate growth. Digital revenue while up 17% YoY, still only comprises 13% of MoneyGram’s total revenue.

The key takeaways:

Digital’s share of the global remittance industry is still fairly small at 6% — but growth is extremely fast at digital-first startups and legacy companies. Fourteen year-old Xoom makes more revenue from electronic channels than 75 year-old MoneyGram, the second-largest remittance company in the world. Startups are undercutting incumbents’ fees in certain corridors; however, legacy firms have matched prices in many major corridors.

IBM to launch one of the largest blockchain implementations – IBM will try to free up some of the $100 million in capital tied up at any given time in transaction disputes in the IBM Global Financing unit.

The business unit deals with 4,000 suppliers, financing customers and partners who conduct about 3 million transactions per year, worth $44 billion. About 25,000 disputes arise annually over issues such as the wrong number of computer parts in an order or deliveries that go awry, writes WSJ.

Addressing the exponential growth in web-based malware, phishing and social engineering attacks, Check Point Software Technologies recently announced SandBlast Agent for Browsers with Zero Phishing technology. As the newest member of its industry-leading SandBlast family of solutions, SandBlast Agent for Browsers is designed to protect users from these evolving threats by seamlessly incorporating key components of the security model into the browser. It provides real-time protection, all while reducing the resources required to prevent today’s most advanced attacks.

To optimise business results and innovation, users now expect unconstrained internet access and immediate delivery of downloaded content and email.  At the same time, enterprises must contend with the changing threat landscape, as they strive to prevent the theft of sensitive customer information and their own intellectual property, while maintaining the efficiency of their critical business systems.

Files downloaded from the web represent a leading entry point for malware today, and data shows this threat is growing. Web-based malware and social engineering attacks targeting organisations are increasing in volume and sophistication, with cyber attackers using the latest evasion techniques and persuasive scams to infect their victims. A preview of an upcoming SANS survey, Exploits at the Endpoint: SANS 2016 Threat Landscape Study, reveals:

• 41% of the respondents experienced their most impactful security events through attacks that used drive-by downloads of malicious programs.
• 80 percent of organisations have been impacted by phishing attacks over the past 12 months, with 68 percent witnessing an increase in this type of attack.

Coupled with the fact that 63 percent of data breaches involved some form of credential theft through either weak, default or stolen passwords, according to Verizon’s 2016 Data Breach Investigations Report, it becomes clear preventing the full-range of web-based attacks from reaching end users is critical to maintaining business security.