Tag: cyber attack

October marks International Cybersecurity Awareness Month which raises awareness around safety in cyber space as well as the need to upskill and treat cybercrime as a priority. Cyber attacks and disruptive events are on the rise, affecting 82% of organisations surveyed in the Technologies Global Data Protection Index 2020 Snapshot. These organisations included both public and private organisations.

Another day, another data breach. South African businesses are becoming more susceptible to cyberattacks and seem to be easy targets for criminals. Data breaches are now a common phenomenon with Nedbank, Momentum, Lombard Insurance, Experian and Stefanutti Stocks making headline news.

In the modern world, data is regarded as the lifeblood of an organisation. Consequently, cyber threats have taught us that a reactive response to a data breach, regardless of the magnitude of the event, is no longer adequate. All data is important, therefore a more modern and innovative approach needs to be adopted to keeping it safe yet available.

At the core of our work and social lives, connectivity and online functions like email, e-commerce, apps, and instant messaging, seem to dominate everything we do in the modern world. Made even more apparent by the lockdown and its restrictions, few businesses can trade effectively without connectivity, and a reliable data network has become a must-have for all businesses, regardless of size or sector.

In terms of risk versus reward, cybercrime is a highly lucrative industry. Research from Atlas VPN suggests that cyberattacks generate more than $1.5 trillion in revenue each year, and this figure is growing.

Renewed emphasis on digitalisation as a key strategy for sustainability is placing pressure on CIOs to ensure corporate systems are resilient. One certainty that has emerged from the COVID-19 crisis is that organisations embarking on digitalisation were better prepared to respond to the crisis.

Prior to the pandemic we were seeing the usual scams impersonating banks, telcos, and shipping companies but now a portion of them have switched to using the pandemic, the World Health Organisation, the American Centers for Disease Control and various international and local charitable organisations as bait.

Let us not doubt the fact that cybercriminals are looking to exploit the spread of Coronavirus to conduct cyberattacks and drive hacking campaigns.

Cybercrime attacks are accelerating in frequency and increasing in sophistication every year for one simple reason – they are highly lucrative when successful, so the payoff is worth the effort. In 2019 we saw a number of high-profile attacks in South Africa, which made headlines for the sheer disruptiveness they created.

The recent ransomware attack suffered by the City of Johannesburg sounds a clarion call for boards to revisit their technology governance strategies and take a more holistic view of technology and the risk it poses.