Small businesses at risk of password thieves

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Password

by DION HENRICK 
CAPE TOWN, (CAJ News) – SMALL businesses in South Africa are in danger amid a 69 percent increase in password stealing ware (PSW) detections in 2022.

This is a major increase from last year when 12 344 cases were detected.

This year’s figure – between January and April- is 20 922.

Trojan-PSW is a malware that steals passwords, along with other account information, which then allows attackers to gain access to the corporate network and steal sensitive information.

Another popular attack tool used on small businesses is internet attacks, specifically, web pages with redirects to exploits, sites containing exploits and other malicious programs and botnet among others.

While the number of these attacks decreased in the first four month of 2022 in South Africa by 13 percent (419 506 infections in 2022 compared to 483 846 infections in 2021), the amount of internet attacks remains high.

Denis Parinov, security researcher at Kaspersky, said with the shift to remote working and the introduction of numerous advanced technologies in the daily operations of even small companies, security measures needed to evolve to support these sophisticated setups.

“Cyber-criminals are already way ahead of the curve, so much so that virtually every organisation will experience a breach attempt at some point,” he said.

Parinov said for small companies, it was not a matter of whether a cyber security incident would happen but when.

“Having trained staff and an educated IT-specialist is no longer a luxury but a must-have part of your business development.”

Kaspersky has noted that when a small business owner is faced with the responsibilities of production economics, financial reports and marketing all at the same time, cyber security can often appear complicated and, at times, unnecessary.

However, this disregard for IT security is being exploited by cybercriminals.

– CAJ News

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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