Safehire.ai, the digital risk screening company, has partnered with the Independent Schools Association of Southern Africa (ISASA) and TPN Credit Bureau to bring Digital Risk Screening to South African schools.
The ISASA partnership will give its 800+ member schools access to Digital Risk Screening (DRS) to enhance their safer-recruitment and safeguarding processes. TPN has an established role in screening for South African schools and Safehire.ai will enable it to offer a much wider spectrum of background checking.
Independent schools make decisions that give people access to pupils, sensitive information and positions of trust. Most South African schools currently rely on two types of checking when recruiting:
- Formal checks such as police clearance, NRSO, and references, which only show whether someone has a conviction.
- Informal Google or social media searches are narrow, which are subjective and easy for a candidate to show you what they want you to see.
Neither method provides the visibility needed in today’s AI-enabled world to make an informed hiring or promotion decision.
Safehire.ai’s Digital Risk Screening (DRS) addresses both limitations. It adds a POPIA-compliant search across lawfully accessible open-source information on the surface, deep and dark web, within a defined and proportionate scope. Safehire.ai’s methodology draws on military intelligence analytical processes, combining large language model capability trained around those methods with human verification by ex-military intelligence-trained analysts. DRS searches open-source data on the surface, deep and dark web, then applies AI-enriched context to the raw data before finally integrating human analyst verification to provide schools with an easy-to-understand report in as little as 24 hours.
Simon Holden, CEO of Safehire.ai, said: “It is fantastic to see ISASA leading the charge in adopting new methods that enhance established safer-recruitment processes. By making Digital Risk Screening available to its member schools, ISASA is helping the sector strengthen safeguarding and make better-informed decisions.”
