SA is in the cross hairs of international cyber crime syndicates, who have been stepping up their attacks on local organisations over the past six months.
So says Nclose, an international cyber security defence, offence and protection provider based in SA.
“We, and our colleagues in the cyber security sector, are seeing a surge in cyber crime activity – in particular ransomware attacks,” says Martin Potgieter, technical director of Nclose. “There has definitely been an increase in syndicates that make use of humans to launch and coordinate their attacks, they are not just relying on automated ransomware attacks.”
Local companies typically do not pay the ransoms, but can find their systems shut down by attacks, adds Stephen Osler, co-founder and business development director at Nclose. “The costs of downtime, remediation and brand damage due to such an attack can be significant.”
According to Osler, in many instances, companies only take cyber security seriously following a breach and, for the most part, the tech department does the best it can to mitigate risk with a limited budget.
Boards are asking IT: Why weren’t we ready? Are we allocating appropriate resources to cyber security? Do we actually know what our risks are? Are we 100% secure?
“The truth is that no organisation is impenetrable, and most are not allocating appropriate resources to cyber security,” explains Osler. “However, it is possible to dramatically improve your security posture, gain visibility into your risk profile, and achieve a cost to risk mitigation balance appropriate for each organisation.”
He says business, and the oard, need to understand their risk and how much they are willing to spend to mitigate that risk.
To help prepare IT and cyber security professionals to field the top questions posed by the board, Nclose is hosting a webinar on 28 April from 10:00-11:00, where the company’s experts will outline the changing trends in cyber attacks, and examine approaches to managing the business’ expectations, securing budget, and mitigating risk.
For more information and to register, click here.
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