Cybercrime Africa
Opinion: Are Online Scams Undermining Trust in SA Government Services?
Protecting citizens when they interact with digital government services is fast becoming a top priority for governments around the world. The astonishing growth of the global cybercrime industry and the perceived ease at which threat actors imitate trusted brands and government departments online is challenging governments to implement new measures to protect citizens. As one of the continent’s most developed and heavily industrialised economies, South Africa is an attractive target to the global cybercrime industry. Interpol’s African Cyberthreat Assessment Report 2021 found that South Africa led the way in all categories of cyberattacks, from digital extortion and online scams to business email compromise attacks. The 2021 Interpol report found that weak networks and poor security make c...
The Metaverse Reality Check that Your Business Needs
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How AI & Machine Learning Can Provide Defense Against Cybercrime
Nowadays, threat actors are leaning on new tools and techniques to improve the efficiency of their attacks. Only artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning move quickly enough to defend organisations in this evolving cyber threat landscape. “In the past three months, we’ve been seeing more speed and speed can kill,” says Derek Manky, Chief Security Strategist & VP Global Threat Intelligence at FortiGuard Labs. Threats have been getting into a system, hitting the targets, exfiltrating data, demanding ransom, and getting out of a system, much quicker than normal. This includes attackers capitalizing on new vulnerabilities, zero-days and n-days. They also appear to have become more aggressive, with double extortion, triple extortion and targeted attacks. “Their approaches are more ...
Phising Scams Surge 234% in Africa, Especially in Tech Powerhouses
Image sourced from NorthJersey.com New data from Russia-based cybersecurity firm Kaspersky reveals that the prevalence of phishing and social engineering scams has increased significantly in Africa in Q2 2022 in comparison with the previous quarter. The company’s security solutions detected 10,722,886 phishing attacks in Africa in Q2, showing a 234% increase from the previous quarter. Tech powerhouses across Africa have seen the highest amount of growth in scams. Kenyan users have been influenced the most by this type of threat: there were 5,098,534 phishing attacks detected in 3 months – a growth of 438% when compared to the previous quarter. It was followed by South Africa (4,578,216 detections and a growth of 144%) and Nigeria (1,046,136 detections and a growth of 174%). In particular, ...
Talking Public Sector Cybersecurity with Nclose – ITNA Digital Innovation Podcast EP 6
This week’s podcast is sponsored by the Public Sector Cybersecurity Summit held on the 2nd and 3rd of August 2022. This virtual event will have all the information you and your public organisation will need to prepare yourself for the next coming cyber-attack. Don’t be caught unawares – the attack is coming, and African enterprises will be prized targets – prepare yourself now before it’s too late. Register for #PubliSec2022 and learn from a host of cybersecurity experts on how to protect your organisation from the worst threat actors out there. In this episode of IT News Africa‘s Digital Innovation Podcast, Luis Monzon chats with Stephen Osler, co-founder and business development director of South African cybersecurity firm Nclose. Stephen and Luis talk about cybersecurity in the public s...
The 4 Biggest Cyberthreats Affecting SA’s Government Institutions
South African government departments, organisations across industry sectors regardless of size, and even private individuals online all face the constant risk of being victims of a cyberattack, according to Russia-based international cybersecurity firm Kaspersky. While this is not a unique challenge to the African country, it is certainly a growing one that requires the “reprioritisation” of cybersecurity countermeasures, it says. “If we have a look at the local market, the types of cyberattacks we are seeing impacting businesses, and across different industries, reinforces the need to be vigilant and educate employees on what constitutes cybersecurity best practice, especially as cybercriminals tactics and methods evolve,” says James Gumede, SADC Territory Account Manager at Kaspersky. Fr...
Rubrik Security Cloud Secures Data Across Enterprise, Cloud, & SaaS
Image: Geralt, Pixabay. Rubrik, the zero trust data security company, has announced Rubrik Security Cloud to secure customers’ data, wherever it lives, across enterprise, cloud, and SaaS. Despite investments in infrastructure security tools, cybercriminals are still getting through to the data. ‘It’s time for a new approach,’ says Rubrik, clarifying that ‘The next frontier in cybersecurity pairs the investments in infrastructure security with data security giving companies security from the point of data.’ Russell Daly, Vendor Alliance Manager: Rubrik at Exclusive Networks Africa, which distributes Rubrik throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, adds: “Data is the most important aspect of your computing systems and the ultimate reason for their existence. With the rise of ransomware, the need ...
1 in 3 Untrained Employees Will Click on a Phishing Link – New Report
Image sourced from Kaspersky. KnowBe4, one of the world’s largest cyber-security awareness training companies and simulated phishing platform provider, has released the new 2022 Phishing by Industry Benchmarking Report to measure an organisation’s Phish-prone Percentage (PPP), which indicates how many of their employees are likely to fall for phishing or a social engineering scam. With ransomware payments averaging $580,000 in 2021 and business email compromise (BEC) losses topping $1.8 billion in 2020, a cyber attack can wreak havoc on an organisation. Yet, according to the baseline testing conducted for the report, without security training, across all industries globally, 32.4% of employees are likely to click on a suspicious link or comply with a fraudulent request. In some large categ...
Update Your Security Strategy Based on Key Information Learned About Threat Actors, Advises Netskope
The reality of the cyber threats posed today is that many threat actors are not rogue operators acting on their own but are, instead, working as part of sophisticated and organised groups, collaborating with other groups within a wider ecosystem of specialists. These groups build significant financial resources over time, derived from the proceeds of commercially-driven attacks, or gathered as payment from states sponsoring or directly commissioning their activities. This is according to Yaroslav Rosomakho, Field CTO of Netskope, a global cybersecurity leader which is redefining cloud, data, and network security to help organisations apply Zero Trust principles to protect data. He explains: “Threat actors use these resources to improve their subsequent attacks, paying for infrastructure or...
Are Phishing Attacks Targeting Crypto on the Rise?
Image sourced from Shutterstock. Experts at Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky have taken a close look at the phishing pages aimed at potential crypto investors as well as the malicious files that are distributed under the names of the 20 most popular cryptocurrency wallets. Since the beginning of 2022, Kaspersky products detected and prevented almost 200,000 attempts to steal users’ digital currencies and credentials to their wallets via phishing, according to the company. The number of such attempts almost reached 50,000 in April, which is half of the indicators for the first quarter of 2022. Crypto wallets are the primary target for scamming and malicious activity. With the boom in digital currencies observed over the past five years, Kaspersky has seen various new cybercriminal ta...
The Great Phishing Fail
Anna Collard, SVP Content Strategy & Evangelist at KnowBe4 Africa. In 2021, phishing attacks increased by 7.3% according to the ESET Threat Report, and the Cisco 2021 Cybersecurity threat trends report revealed that around 86% of organisations had at least one person click a phishing link. This echoes the findings of recent KnowBe4 Security Awareness Research that found people keep clicking – on fake emails from HR, the business and IT. As Anna Collard, SVP Content Strategy & Evangelist at KnowBe4 Africa, points out, the majority of top email categories that people fall for are those that fit in to everyday life – invoices, purchase orders, shared files, and COVID-19 related topics. “As our quarterly report on the top-clicked phishing tests shows, the emails that catch people are t...
How the Russia-Ukraine War Could Affect Cybercrime
Image sourced from Packetlabs. Russia’s war on Ukraine and its increasingly isolated internet environment could drive Russian cybercriminals to think outside the box and launch new forms of cyber attacks. This is according to Nclose’s Co-Founder & Technical Director, Martin Potgieter, who says speculation and concern is mounting around the world, over what Russia’s cyber crime syndicates’ next moves will be. “Currently, the cybercrime focus appears to be predominantly between Russia and Ukraine cybercrime groups and governments. While this is strictly speaking cyber warfare, it could quickly spread elsewhere. “What we are seeing is that a few of these cybercrime groups are either taking sides or imploding amongst themselves due to their Eastern European links with one another,” says Po...
