Picture: Interpol
Faizel Patel – 21/08/2020
Check Point Software Technologies says cyber-attacks have exploited the COVID-19 pandemic to target organisations and individuals across all sectors, including governments, industry and healthcare, among others.
Check Point was responding to the Experian data breach that exposed the personal data of 24 million South Africans and almost 800,000 businesses.
Check Point says the COVID-19 global pandemic caused unprecedented changes to all of our lives including cybercriminals looking to take advantage of the rapid and widespread changes for their own purposes.
Pankaj Bhula, Regional Director: Africa Check Point Software Technologies says COVID-19 related phishing and malware attacks increase dramatically from a few thousand per week in February, to over 200, 000 per week min late April.
“In May and June, as countries started to ease lockdowns, threat actors also stepped up their non-COVID related activities, with a 34% increase in all types of attack at the end of June compared to April. As a result of the rapid move to public clouds, one of this year’s key trends so far is an increase in attacks targeting sensitive cloud workloads and data. “
Bhula says organisations need to think about the different ways that people access information and the different assets to protect against.
“Think mobile threats, think about security in the cloud, think about IoT devices and have a comprehensive security approach protecting those. It also helps if you have incidence response plan to help in the mitigation and recovery in case you get compromised.”
Bhula says the while unvarnished truth is that cyber-attacks will continue to grow, and organisations will have to look at radically strengthening their cyber defences around critical infrastructure, the good news, however, is that implementing these controls and measures will go a long way to helping businesses keep safe.
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