Cybercriminals have shifted their focus to vulnerable employees who now work from home and use personal Internet connections. Business leaders need to educate remote workers on cybersecurity and better computer safety practices or risk having their data compromised.

Malware remains the biggest threat to corporate networks, more costly than any other threat including ransomware and Trojans. A research study conducted by Deep Instinct reports on the hundreds of millions of attempted cyber-attacks that occurred every day throughout 2020 showing malware increased by 358% overall.

Emotet maintained its number one position in the Global Threat Index, highlighting the global impact of this malware. The highly destructive banking Trojan remains the top malware as it has already impacted six percent of organisations globally. This malicious spam campaign uses various delivery techniques to spread the malware, this includes phishing emails, embedded links, attachments and password protected Zip files.

As part of its global expansion strategy, cyber security firm J2 has appointed Roy Alves as its national sales manager.  He will be instrumental in building a cyber security skillset that will enable African businesses to identify and address their cyber capacity needs.  

Having recently worked for Mimecast, Alves has a wealth of experience in the IT security space. He spent more than 12 years educating and building a channel in South Africa and the rest of Africa to support this shift moving from an analogue CCTV to a digital IP surveillance world.

There is a significant decrease in the sheer number of ransomware attacks due to improved security, better backup strategies and faster data recovery measures. This has meant that the spray and pray approach is no longer effective for ransomware distribution. Although fewer ransoms are being paid, it doesn't mean less risk.

Previous approaches were exceptionally effective until business started improving their backup strategies. Attackers learned from this and pivoted their criminal enterprise with a change of strategy. Knowing that businesses are backing up, creating shadow copies and replicating to data recovery (DR) sites means that simply encrypting all the data is no longer a crisis, it is now just an irritation.