A survey on cyber security threats, being conducted in partnership with Vodacom Business, has gone live on ITWeb.

The survey aims to examine the cyber security threats that South African businesses are most concerned about – and how they’re mitigating them.

Although not a new problem, cyber crime has risen alarmingly quickly to the top of the charts when it comes to business concerns. The boom of Internet of Things (IOT) technology and chaos that surrounded the sudden shift to work-from-home models in 2020, kick-started the age of cyber crime. In that period, incidents rose by 600%, affecting every industry and showing no signs of slowing down. One report predicts the cost of cyber crime will continue to rise to $10.5 trillion dollars by 2025, up nearly 117% from $3 trillion in 2015. Today, organisations need to be more than just technologically enabled, they need to be future secure.

Kabelo Makwane, managing executive for the cloud, hosting, and security at Vodacom Business, says, “As businesses have adopted more digital technologies, the attack landscape has grown significantly, introducing several new vulnerabilities that organisations were unprepared for. In addition to the growing attack landscape, AI and machine learning technologies have improved malicious programs' efficacy and development speed.”

He says he’s hoping to achieve several things with the survey: “We’d like to gain insight into the extent to which employees are aware of cyber security threats, the measures that they routinely take to defend against them, and overall awareness of cyber security protocols.”

“Many still consider the onus of cybersecurity to land on the lap of the CTO or head of security. While it is the responsibility of this individual and their team to oversee the organisation's safety, the landscape is such that it is the responsibility of every single employee to keep the organisation safe,” said Makwane. “Investing in cybersecurity means more than investing in the latest technology. Without buy-in from your entire staff, your organisation will never be truly secure.”

He concludes, “Cyber security is not being taken seriously enough, and it’ll be interesting to see whether this survey uncovers where the weaknesses lie in SA organisations.”

The Cyber Security Threats Survey

In this survey, we will examine, among other things:

Who is responsible for cyber security in the organisation?
Are you aware of your organisation's cybersecurity protocols?
Do you feel you have ever made an error at work that could have potentially impacted the security of the business?

We hope you’ll be able set aside a few minutes of your time to participate in the survey, and stand a chance to win a Takealot voucher to the value of R3 000. The detailed results of the survey, and the prize winner, will be published on ITWeb.

To play your role in compiling this cyber security threats report, click on this link.

Threats never sleep: Cyber security threats survey goes live