Tag: cybercrime

Whether the Protection of Personal Information (POPI) Act is law or not, data protection compliance has become good business practice, largely because of the reputational and financial risk. Recently, the Information Regulator approached South Africa’s President to issue a commencement date of 1 April 2020 for the remaining provisions of the POPI Act.

Mimecast’s latest Email Security Risk Assessment (ESRA) report has found a 269% increase in Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks. Furthermore, the FBI recently indicated that worldwide losses from such attacks amounted to approximately $26 billion over the last three years.

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.

Tesla recently demonstrated its new electric pickup vehicle, dubbed 'Cybertruck', which has polarised public opinion. Some have stated it looks like a vehicle from a child's sketch come to life, while others consider it to be a vision of the future.

South African enterprise is no stranger to the phenomenon of cybercrime. In light of numerous high-profile data breaches, it is evident that digital espionage is on the rise. In fact, the South African Banking Risk Information Centre (Sabric) estimates that South Africans lose R2.2bn to internet fraud and phishing attacks annually.

Victor Muguto | Long-term Insurance Leader | PwC Africa | mail me | Technology, cyber and change management risks have been pinpointed as the three...

When it comes to AI, virtual assistants and chatbots are an immediate association for many. However, despite the growing importance of intelligent, programmed systems in relation to customer-facing interactions and hyper-personalised marketing, AI has other important uses for companies too – in fighting fraud.

With security as the watchword at every turn and in practically every transaction in modern-day life, the unsettling reality remains that fraud, identity theft, and cybercrime are rapidly on the increase globally.

Africa has a higher percentage of companies affected by fraud, theft, money laundering or other financial crimes than the global average, according to one of the most comprehensive surveys of international business to date. Thomson Reuters commissioned the survey of more than 2,300 senior business leaders in large companies to shine a light on how pervasive such crimes have become across the world.