Tag: cybercrime

The latest riots and looting in South Africa have been utterly devastating for local businesses. When the dust eventually settles, the reality is that many businesses are going to have a tough time bouncing back from the destruction. Those that are able to pick up the pieces will be the ones that have business interruption insurance in place.

In recent years, to meet customer and market expectations, supply chains have been reconfigured for agility, transparency and speed. Consumers want new and better products faster than ever. Consumers demand unprecedented real-time visibility into supply chains, whether to validate a product’s authenticity or sustainability credentials, or simply understand exactly when it will be delivered.

Business Email Compromise (BEC) and cyber attacks are on the increase worldwide. Conveyancing firms, their clients, and other organisations effecting many large non-recurring type transactions are particularly vulnerable to BEC fraud.

Work from Home (WFH) is here to stay, and it has changed the way we access business data. The monolithic server structure has firmly given way to cloud-based storage systems that enable anytime, anywhere access, along with greater flexibility and agility – as well as new challenges.

The cyberthreat landscape is constantly evolving, as cybercriminals continue to find vulnerabilities to exploit. Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) are a growing concern that businesses need to guard against. While these highly targeted attacks are as common as more broadly-targeted events, they are devastating when successful, exposing sensitive data that could ruin business reputation, not to mention causing compliance breaches.

Failure to implement effective compliance and accountability systems is costing the public sector dearly and making supply chains fertile ground for corruption. If the South African government is serious about stopping the rot, strict measures need to be introduced in state departments and safeguards against cyberattacks significantly improved. 

Cybersecurity for small business has come to the fore as more Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) shifted towards digitalisation to survive in the unstable by COVID-19 circumstances. Yet, shockingly, according to research from IBM and the Ponemon Institute released in 2020, a whopping two out of five companies in the United States and the United Kingdom with 50 or fewer employees do not have any type of cybersecurity defence plan in place.

According to our new report, ‘How businesses can minimise the cost of a data breach’, enterprises in the Middle East, Turkey and Africa (META) that decide to voluntarily inform their stakeholders and the public about a breach, on average, are likely to lose 38% less than their peers that saw the incident leaked to the media. The same tendency has also been found to be the case in SMBs.

There is a significant decrease in the sheer number of ransomware attacks due to improved security, better backup strategies and faster data recovery measures. This has meant that the spray and pray approach is no longer effective for ransomware distribution. Although fewer ransoms are being paid, it doesn't mean less risk.

Medium-sized companies in South Africa are in a precarious position in terms of cybersecurity. While they find themselves firmly in the crosshairs of cybercriminals, they also have limited options to successfully defend themselves against cyberattacks, as the challenges faced by this market segment are multifaceted.