Pic: Interpol

Faizel Patel – 09/07/2020
(Twitter: @FaizelPatel143)

Reports of a recent cybercrime attack of a critical healthcare organisation earlier this month has raised concerns that South African businesses are not exempt, with the country seeing a 33% increase in the volume of cyber-attacks since March.

The global cybercrime pandemic triggered by COVID-19 may be here to stay making it critical for businesses to ensure they are protected.

Cybersecurity has become a major concern for organisations of all sizes as protecting devices, networks, client data and even apps.

Kabelo Makwane, Managing Executive for Cloud, Hosting and Security at Vodacom Business says with the lockdown regulations relaxed, now is not the time to let your guard down.

He says they have partnered with Cloudflare to provide businesses with faster, more secure, and reliable website services.

“With some businesses going back to their offices but many others still operating via remote working, cyber criminals are gearing up to further attack businesses as they adopt a hybrid model between their corporate network and remote set up.”

Fast becoming a common type of cyberattack is a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack which target websites and online services with the goal of overwhelming them with more traffic than the server or network can accommodate.

Makwane says this ultimately renders the website or service inoperable, leading to revenue loss, operational expenses and more importantly damage to a company’s brand.

According to the World Economic Forum Global Risks Report 2020, cyberattacks are ranked as the second risk of greatest concern for business globally over the next 10 years.