Tag: cybercrime

The national lockdown forced a large contingency of the South African workforce to work from home and as it is somewhat of a new notion, it had its fair share of challenges. Yet recent studies have shown the shift to remote working has led to improved productivity for 29% of organisations.

This year has seen many more businesses moving online, adopting ecommerce models in an effort to continue to reach their customers as COVID-19 wreaked havoc. While this has opened up markets to hundreds of thousands of new customers, it also has the potential to create vulnerabilities that cybercriminals can exploit.

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.

Our latest findings on State of Cyber Resilience shows that cyberattacks on insurers have more than doubled (from 240 to 519 attacks, on average), illustrating the current cyber climate for insurers: It’s volatile. This number is more than twice as much as the cross-industry cyber resilience leaders in the survey and over three times more than their banking peers.

In a dynamic, connected environment where sensitive customer data is highly attractive to hackers and forms the lifeblood of the business, facing a cyber-attack is no longer a case of 'if', but 'when'. Of greater concern is how to minimise the impact on their business and on customer trust.

Many companies have long engaged in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programmes involving sustainability, ethics and social impact that aim to give back to society. South African business is no different and, now more than ever, CSR is a must have for businesses wanting to protect their brand during the COVID-19 pandemic. Perhaps, the real brand risk currently is for business not to act.

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. 

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.

When there is a crisis, there are those that will try and take advantage. Unfortunately, cybercriminals aren't guided by the same moral compass as the rest of humanity. In fact, they are using the current COVID-19 pandemic to try and break through defences by using scare tactics and a variety of malicious campaigns including email spam, BEC, malware, ransomware, malicious domains, and sending seemingly helpful emails to spread infected files.

As the country goes into a three-week lock-down to combat the national COVID-19 outbreak, businesses and employees across South Africa are putting the necessary measures in place to operate remotely.