Security report: South Africa – Regional threat spotlight

South Africa is known for many things: It’s culture, history, landscape, platinum production and gold mining among a few. But what not many people know is that despite ranking just 24th in population worldwide, South Africa has the third-highest number of cyber crime victims in the world, three years in a row. This is believed to be a direct result of the increase in individuals using banking apps, which are often targeted by attackers. The mobile fraud via banking applications has doubled in a year, contributing to the R2.2 billion in losses in South Africa.

A report by Accenture revealed that South Africans suffer an average of 577 attempted malware attacks per hour, an increase of 22% from the previous year. Respectively, the research shows that the mentions of South Africa on the darknet have increased markedly from being hardly featured up to 2014, to being among the most discussed countries from 2016 on (which supports the fact that SA is the third-most targeted country in the last three years).

Although South Africa is moving in the right direction of becoming more cyber secure, and it is in a better place than it was just a year ago, it still has a long way to go. According to Cybercrime.org.za, at least 60% of South African organisations fall victim to cyber security incidents.