With the increasing complexity of cyber attacks against businesses of all sizes in South Africa it has become critical for these organisations to get up to speed on protecting themselves against threats that could put them out of business if they are neglected.
Traditionally, smaller businesses considered themselves more immune to cyberattacks as they thought it wasn’t worth spending the time and effort to target them. However, with larger organisations implementing more cyber security protection, the cyber criminals are broadening their spectrum of who to target and obtaining more results that when added together start becoming more financially viable for them. Modern technology and increasing experience in the field of cyberattacks also allows the criminals to target more organisations with less effort and time. Another aspect that is encouraging this behaviour is the fact that staff at smaller organisations are typically more vulnerable to getting compromised as their organisations don’t necessarily have the resources to educate and manage them to protect them against attacks. It is for these reasons that insurance companies are encouraging organisations of all sizes, especially smaller ones, to take the necessary precautions to protect themselves against cyberattacks in order to avoid the financial consequences of getting themselves compromised. In a recent Times Live article, there was mention of the insurer King Price warning that “It has never been more critical for businesses of all sizes to move rapidly to secure their key IT systems and company and customer information”. In the same article it was mentioned that the 2019 IBM study put the average total cost of a data breach in SA at R43.3m. Read the article here.