from DION HENRICK in Cape Town
CAPE TOWN, (CAJ News) – SOUTH African firms are experiencing a surge of ransomware and data breaches as the local festive season begins.
These are findings revealed by McAfee Enterprise and FireEye in the research titled, “Cybercrime in a Pandemic World: The Impact of COVID-19.”
It highlights gaps in organisations’ approaches to cyber security in the face of increasing cyber threats.
“With McAfee research highlighting that data breaches, phishing scams, and malware attacks are the greatest threats to South African businesses, we have already seen an uptick in ransomware and data breaches as the local festive season begins,” said Carlo Bolzonello, country manager for McAfee Enterprise in South Africa.
“While many of the businesses surveyed quantified their losses in the survey, we suspect that their responses included only the operational losses of being hobbled by cyber-crime, and do not account for the additional costs of threat identification, tracing, and implementing remedial action.”
Bolzonello said these processes were made even more complex when organisations had multiple layers of security products and platforms within their environments, each with differing strengths and weaknesses, and each requiring a different skill set to navigate.
According to McAfee and FireEye, 66 percent of South African organisations have experienced technology downtime after a cyber security incident, with 85 percent of those confirming that these incidents happened during their busiest operational periods.
This is against the backdrop of nearly half of South African companies anticipating an increased demand for their online products and services over the 2021 festive season.
One third of affected businesses confirmed that they had lost at least R800 000 (49 874) during operational downtime caused by cybercrime, with 80 percent of organisations adding that they struggled to maintain a fully staffed security operations centre during peak holiday periods.
– CAJ News