Tag: cyber extortion

Consumers are familiar with phishing emails, fraudulent SMS messages and social media scams. However, the scale and complexity of cyberattacks on critical sectors far exceed these relatively simple threats. Entire industries and governmental bodies face increasingly sophisticated attacks. These attacks can cripple essential services, cause significant economic damage and compromise sensitive data on a massive scale.

Business interruption (BI) and cyber incidents are the primary concerns for the manufacturing sector within the automotive industry in 2024. The report, based on insights from over 3,000 risk management professionals and business leaders, highlights the growing importance of addressing these risks to ensure business continuity and safeguard against potential disruptions.

Data integrity, security, and availability are vital aspects to consider whether it pertains to personal information, business records, or research data. However, many individuals and organisations often neglect the importance of data maintenance, which can lead to data ‘load shedding’, a term used to describe the loss, corruption, or unavailability of data due to poor data management practices.

Ransomware attacks have dominated the headlines over the last two years and will continue to control the cybersecurity agenda going into 2023. While ransomware gangs continue to be successful in extorting money from businesses, those that do pay demands are financing the ransomware industry and further crime.

Traditional cyber threat intelligence (CTI) provides information on threat actors targeting IT or OT but often only addresses edge device security during the deployment of highly specialised systems. We CTI take OT security a step further with critical vulnerability intelligence and monitors major edge devices, their vendors and their version numbers to make clients aware of threats to IT, OT and cloud environments.

By proclamation in the Gazette, President Cyril Ramaphosa has fixed 1 December 2021 as the date on which certain sections of the Cybercrimes Act, 19 of 2020 (Cybercrimes Act/the Act) come into operation.  This means that the Act is now enforceable.

Under Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), service providers will have to obtain a SOC 2 report to demonstrate to their clients that they are enforcing proper security and data privacy practices. Over 80% of private, SMME and large companies plan to revise their operations in the next few years.

With our lives essentially transferred to the digital world since last year, keeping our digital space safe and secure has become more important than ever. Recognition of the importance of online privacy led to the growth of privacy-focused products, yet many people remain confused about what dangers the exposure of personal data may lead to.

COVID-19, the virus which is shaking the world — is rapidly increasing the number of employees who work remotely. This mass exodus of employees from the 'more secure' office environment into the unsecured home terrain is a breeding ground for cyber security risk.