The growing availability of bandwidth might lead to SA becoming a breeding ground for cyber criminals targeting other countries.
So says Stephan le Roux, district manager for RSA, the security division of EMC Southern Africa. Le Roux is of the view that while there are positive developments with the sudden explosion of Internet access, where schools are getting WiFi and municipalities envisioning world-class cities where private homes, healthcare institutions and companies can enjoy easy Internet access, this could also see the country and the continent at large being a platform for exporting cyber crime.
"Until now, African companies and individuals have been the ones that have been targeted by already sophisticated local crime rings," he says. "A lot of companies and government institutions' Web sites have been defaced like the South Africa Police Services site, where almost 16 000 whistle-blowers had their personal details published online after a cyber attack."
He adds that there has been a rise in advanced persistent threats where Internet-enabled espionage is accomplished using a variety of intelligence gathering techniques to access sensitive information.
"Local cyber crime rings could very well implement similar methods to target countries on the continent and overseas," says Le Roux.
This roll out of bandwidth could see local cyber crime rings getting even more sophisticated and starting to collaborate with global networks that are well-funded and are able to target their victims from anywhere in the world, he adds.
He refers to an international crime ring, strategically placed in more than 20 countries, that stole $45 million from banks around the globe as an example of the speed, collaboration, global reach and sophistication of today's highly organised cyber criminals.
"When these syndicates start operating at that level, it becomes very easy for them to hack into any key national infrastructure, explains Roux. "Any country's power plants or its water filtration system could easily be compromised."
Le Roux states that countries like the US and Britain have gone on to increase their budgets on cyber defences as a result.
"From governments' perspective, collaborations between cyber crime defence units should take place between countries. The stumbling block here could be a desire by individual nations to preserve their cultural, legal and political landscapes. But, as we all know, cyber crime does not stop at borders," says Le Roux.
The majority of cyber threats, he adds, demand swift collaborative international action, as adversaries and cyber criminals will not wait until multiple national authorities finally agree to act.
"For the business sector, the challenge is that they want to do more business, acquire more customers and this should push them to make security a board room topic instead of a grudge purchase."
Le Roux believes the key thing is for companies to build a multi-layered strategy where they incorporate different security products from different vendors to protect their networks.
"In a nutshell, the more we depend on the Internet - the more we depend on its security. The Internet world has arrived and we need to take advantage of it, but we also need to be cautious", concludes Le Roux.
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