Tag: dataprotection

At the start of 2024, a finance worker in Hong Kong at a multinational firm joined what appeared to be a routine video call with senior leadership. The call included people who looked and sounded like the company’s UK-based CFO and other executives. However, AI-generated deepfakes had created these individuals. As a result, the employee authorised several transfers to different bank accounts worth around $25 million.

For decades, businesses assumed that information in the public domain was harmless. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has ended that assumption. By aggregating thousands of public data points, AI can reconstruct strategy, pricing and expansion plans. Under the King V Report on Corporate Governance for South Africa, protecting confidential value in this environment has become a board-level governance responsibility.

Most people understand what it means to protect a human identity. The dangers of someone impersonating you online or stealing and cloning your card are immediately obvious. Today, organisations rely on thousands of non-human identities. These identities belong to software applications, cloud workloads, APIs, bots and now AI agents.

As more businesses move their operations to the cloud, securing these environments has become a strategic imperative. Fortinet’s 2025 report shows that 35% of IT security budgets are now dedicated to cloud protection. Meanwhile, Gartner notes that the cloud security market expanded by 24% last year alone.

Organisations have spent the last decade strengthening prevention capabilities. They deployed advanced firewalls, endpoint protections, identity controls and AI-powered threat detection. However, even as security stacks grow more sophisticated, a subtle and dangerous gap continues to widen beneath the surface.

The cybersecurity landscape is rapidly changing, with hackers increasingly utilising Artificial Intelligence (AI) to carry out sophisticated attacks on their targets. To defend against these AI-driven threats, organisations must adopt data protection solutions that harness AI, essentially “fighting fire with fire”. This is the foundation of using AI to protect data from cybercriminals.

South Africa is currently undergoing a rapid digital transformation. Mobile banking, smart infrastructure, cloud-based services and AI-powered platforms now shape how we live, work and govern. However, every new digital service introduces a new vulnerability, and cybercriminals are evolving just as fast. Thus, it is now more important than ever to explore what it takes to build cyber resilience.

Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance has often been viewed as a requirement only when circumstances force action. For example, organisations respond after a breach makes headlines or when a bank requests proof. This reactive approach exposes organisations to avoidable risk.

International Data Privacy Day on 28 January usually brings a wave of advice about passwords and privacy settings. Most of us tune it out. Instead, we fall back on a comfortable but dangerous cop-out. We say, “I am boring. I have nothing to hide”. This reflex often defines how people approach Data Privacy Day each year. This apathy creates our greatest vulnerability.

In South Africa, the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) is reshaping how organisations handle personal data, both locally and across borders. For businesses operating internationally, the challenge extends beyond compliance. They must also reconcile POPIA with global standards such as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).