Tag: DigitalRisk

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.

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.

We are standing at the edge of a new cybersecurity frontier. This frontier is shaped by quantum computing, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the ever-expanding Internet of Things (IoT). It is exciting, but it is also daunting. Quantum and AI are redefining how organisations think about cyber defence.

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.

Every organisation today operates in a complex, interconnected digital environment that extends far beyond its traditional perimeter. Cloud workloads, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications, remote devices and third-party integrations create countless entry points for attackers. While most businesses focus on securing the “front door”, the real risk often lies in forgotten side doors, service hatches and unguarded windows that make up the modern attack surface

So, what do most comprehensive cyber insurance policies usually cover? First, they cover the costs of investigating and responding to a breach. Forensic teams do not work for free. You will need them to determine what happened, how severe the breach is and whether the attacker left evidence behind. Understanding these response costs is essential when assessing cyber insurance limits.

South African businesses are investing heavily in cybersecurity. They patch systems, encrypt data and monitor endpoints. Yet many still overlook one of the most dangerous weaknesses in their digital operations: business logic vulnerabilities, which continue to expose critical blind spots. These threats are not typical coding errors or configuration flaws that security tools detect.