Global cyber criminals have turned their attention to Africa, with Kaspersky research revealing a surge in threat notifications across the continent.
Kaspersky security researchers will share their insights and research into the evolving cyber threat landscape in Africa during a webinar on 29 September.
Amin Hasbini, head of Research Center, Global Research & Analysis Team, Middle East, Turkey and Africa at Kaspersky, says a developing trend is that Africa is increasingly of interest to sophisticated global threat actors such as Lazarus, which is linked to the theft of $81 million from Bangladesh Bank.
“We have seen them in Africa multiple times, in countries including South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria. They are interested in a variety of institutions, from financial and crypto to e-commerce, ISPs and even education, transportation and gaming organisations. They have an interest in a wide number of industries, and they are very persistent,” he says.
Hasbini says the increased focus on African organisations as targets is reflected in the surge in threat notifications from the region in the past year: “In South Africa alone, there were 27 million threat notifications in the first half of 2020, which rose dramatically to over 37 million in the second half of the year amid the chaos of companies moving to remote work, and then dropped slightly to 31.5 million in first half of 2021.
“We are keeping a close eye on these threat notifications,” he says. “Countries such as South Africa have a powerful role in relation to their neighbouring countries, so they become interesting as a target. And because some of these countries have not been targeted as much by cyber criminals in the past, organisations there may have made insufficient investments in cyber security.”
Webinar on 29 September at 10:00 (GMT +2)
Kaspersky will elaborate on its research into the evolving cyber threat landscape in Africa during a webinar to be hosted in partnership with ITWeb on 29 September.
The event will feature a guest speaker from SABRIC and will outline the trends, realities and the impact of COVID-19 on cyber threats, the top targeted industries, the threats and threat actors targeting enterprises in the region, and predictions for the cyber threat landscape for 2022.
For more information and to register for this briefing, go to https://www.itweb.co.za/webinar/kaspersky-the-evolving-cyberthreat-landscape-in-africa/
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