A combination of increasingly sophisticated propagation technologies and continued economic uncertainties resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic have seen the number of financial malware attacks reported in South Africa during the first half of 2021 increase by more than 10,400 over the comparative period last year, according to Kaspersky research.
“Of these attacks, 24% targeted corporate users. This makes financial malware attacks a significant cybersecurity risk facing the local market today across both the consumer and business sectors,” said Bethwel Opil, Enterprise Sales Manager at Kaspersky in Africa.
Local organisations have become susceptible to financial malware as more employees work outside the relative safety of the corporate network. The normalisation of a distributed workforce makes ensuring the protection of the personal endpoint devices of people, who need to access back-end systems to continue performing their job functions, that much more critical. In addition to securing these devices, cybersecurity training of employees remains a key component to defend against the growing scourge of financial malware that uses phishing techniques to target individual users.
Opil said: “This increase seen in financial malware attacks in South Africa reiterates the urgent need for cybersecurity awareness training programmes and substantiates our focus around this into the corporate landscape.
“What is also interesting to note and mention, is that Kenya and Nigeria, two other African countries that we monitor closely, show a different picture, having seen a decrease in financial malware attacks by 68% and 35% respectively.”