07 Sep IT decision makers plan for data breaches

Over 90% of IT decision makers in South Africa, Kenya and Zimbabwe say they have increased their focus on cyber security, according to research from pan-African tech group Liquid Intelligent Technologies.

With cybercrime on the rise, 79% of respondents say that the advent of remote working was responsible for the increase in cyber security threats. In Kenya, data breaches – such as data extortion, data leakage and data disclosure made up almost 71% of all attacks. In South Africa and Zimbabwe the most prominent digital threats were reported as email attacks like phishing.

The research also revealed an increased consumption of Cloud-based services this year – as many as 96% using them in South Africa. This coincides with the rise in remote working and the need to move to new platforms to facilitate this. Managing user access to information; data loss and recovery; visibility and control of data; and compliance were named as the biggest challenges IT workers face.

Ignus de Villiers, Group Head of Cyber Security for Liquid Intelligent Technologies, commented: “The result of our research confirms that cybersecurity should be at the centre of every business conversation and emphasises the need to establish an appropriate cybersecurity framework that matches the business environment. Critically, the framework must look beyond technical security controls to include information security management covering governance, risk, compliance, people, processes and technology”.