South Africa is a fertile hunting ground for cyber criminals, as the majority in the country say they have fallen victim to the scourge.
So said Daniella Kafouris, manager for Deloitte Legal - technology and privacy practice, addressing the ITWeb IDentity Indaba in Johannesburg this week.
Kafouris made the remarks in reference to a study published this month by security software vendor, Norton.
According to Norton, said Kafouris, 92% of the respondents in Russia revealed that they have been victims of cyber crime; in China, 84% have been affected; and 80% have been targeted in SA.
In her presentation titled “The need for cyber resilience in your organisation”, Kafouris also noted that electronic theft has risen in the past year.
Corporate espionage has also risen, Kafouris pointed out. “In a 2011 study, 86% of the data breaches were discovered not by the victimised organisation itself, but by law enforcement agencies or third-party fraud detection programmes.”
Revealing the scale of cyber crime globally, Kafouris cited Norton as saying there are about 556 million victims of cyber crime every year. “This is more than the entire population of the European Union. And this means there are 1.5 million victims per day and 18 victims per second,” she noted.
“The global price tag for cyber crime is $110 billion - this is the amount that Americans spend annually on fast food.”
Of this amount, she explained, 85% of direct financial costs are a result of fraud, repairs, theft and loss.
“The average cost per victim is $197 - this is enough to buy a week's worth of nutritious food for a family of four in the US.”
According to Kafouris, many online adults do not know or recognise how viruses or malicious software operate, as the Norton report is based on self-reported experiences of more than 13 000 adults across 24 countries.
“Some 40% do not know that a virus or malware can act in a discreet fashion, making it hard to recognise if a computer has been compromised. On the other hand, 49% agree that unless their computer crashes or goes slow, it's hard to know if their computer is infected with a virus or malware.”
However, Kafouris pointed out that, although a lot of organisations are falling victim to cyber crime, they do not disclose their misfortune. “A lot of these things are just swept under the carpet. Because today, as it stands, you don't have to actually say anything.”
She also believes that organisations need to be cyber resilient because almost all of them handle some sort of personal information - 90% of the data that is processed is personal information.
“We all have trade secrets; we all have some data that we need to keep confidential. So there's a need to protect the data in some way. It all goes down to the question of 'why rob a bank?' Because that's where the money is? Well, data is where the money is, so there is a need to protect it.”
Share
