Cyber theft – the fastest growing crime around the globe

Cyberattacks have been increasing exponentially in the past few years, and 2017 has been no exception.

In a 2017 report, Gartner predicts that cybercrime might become the greatest threat to every person, place, and thing in the world within the next five years.

Gartner further reports that there has been a significant increase in new ransomware families, with spam as the top infection vector.

A local survey conducted by Mimecast in partnership with MyBroadband reveals that South Africans have recently been highly affected by malware or ransomware attacks.

The research reveals that 48% of respondents have experienced problems due to Malware or Ransomware even though 82% claim to have protection against Malware and Ransomware.

Of these, 74% said they have a disaster recovery plan in place in case of Malware or Ransomware infections.

Today, hackers target entire organizations, encrypting multiple devices before making the demand for payment.

Attacks like these reach deeply into internal digital business operations, with the express purpose of causing widespread damage.

Servers may be taken down completely, data may be wiped and digital intellectual property may be released on the Internet by attackers and operations can be shut-down for days and weeks.

The collateral damage, such as information leaks, reputational damage and so on, can continue for much longer.

Gartner also predicts that 60% of enterprise information security budgets will be allocated to rapid detection and response approaches by 2020.

Even though organizations realize that more cyberattacks are to be expected in the future, and that they will grow in scale and sophistication over time, they still rarely recognise an IT breach until it is too late.

Only a few years ago, corporate cyber-security might have been limited to installing the latest software patch—an activity on a par with facilities management.

However, given the increasing number and magnitude of cyber-crimes, as well as new types of threats, cyber-security now requires a coordinated effort between companies, government agencies and advanced academics with innovative insights into the future of technology.

In a networked world, no one can afford to go it alone.

Another problem is that people tend to think that ‘it won’t happen to me’, well even with preventative security measures in place you might still be at risk.

Yet, according to the South African Banking Risk Information Centre (SABRIC), South Africa has the third highest number of cybercrime victims worldwide and lose in excess of R2.2bn to internet fraud and phishing attacks annually.

Businesses must be prepared as an intrusion is inevitable for many organizations and preventative security measures will eventually fail.

The question isn’t whether security incidents will occur, but rather how quickly they can be identified and resolved.

Mimecast’s security, archiving and continuity cloud services allow business to protect email and deliver comprehensive email risk management in one fully-integrated subscription service.

Mimecast reduces the risk, complexity and cost traditionally associated with protecting email.

While give employees fast and secure access to sensitive business information, and ensure email keeps running in the event of a primary service outage.

For more information about Mimecast’s email security systems, visit the Mimecast website.