The country’s cybersecurity threat landscape is becoming worryingly sophisticated, enabling criminals to pull off previously unthinkable feats.
As part of recent hacks and scams, criminal actors have taken advantage of AI technologies to convincingly imitate actual people. Picture: Pexels
JOHANNESBURG – The cybersecurity threat landscape of South Africa and the world is becoming increasingly sophisticated, with innovative criminal tactics cropping up more often than many can keep up.
To give an idea of scale, between January and June this year, Trend Micro prevented more than 86 million email threats, almost four million malicious URLs, and over 4,000 harmful mobile apps aimed at South African businesses and consumers.
In an effort to stay ahead of cybercrime, Trend Micro provided insights into some of the most sophisticated new criminal tactics at a roundtable discussion last week, highlighting how tools like artificial intelligence (AI) are enabling cybercriminals to accomplish some previously unthinkable feats.
The Trend Micro 2023 Midyear Cybersecurity Threat Report, which highlights data from the company’s telemetry covering the widest attack surface view across millions of commercial and consumer clients, brings these conclusions to reality.
The research also identified significant patterns in threat actor activity as well as criminal approaches and tactics, offering crucial advice for defences wanting to keep one step ahead of calculating cybercriminals.
“The local threat picture is getting more complex and confusing by the month. Our most recent research demonstrates that criminals are changing their targets and becoming more inventive in order to operate more effectively and frequently.
“It has never been more crucial to prioritise a collection of proactive and comprehensive security solutions,” according to Gareth Redelinghuys, Country Managing Director for Trend Micro’s African Cluster.
Numerous South African companies have used AI in some capacity to improve their operations, but they are not the only ones.
As part of recent hacks and scams, criminal actors have taken advantage of AI technologies to convincingly imitate actual people.
In fact, impostor schemes like virtual kidnapping are spreading like wildfire.
Malicious actors are able to generate a deep-fake voice of their victim’s child in the instance of virtual kidnapping, and use it as evidence that they are in possession of the child to persuade the parent into paying a huge ransom.
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