The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research’s Billy Petzer says one of the reasons for the increase in cyberattacks since the pandemic is that many people moved away from more secure offices and networks to working from home where there was less security.
Some good rules to follow include never giving your personal information to anyone who calls you on the phone or who sends you an email requesting your data; not accessing personal or financial data with public Wi-Fi; choosing apps wisely and not trusting links and attachments if you are not sure of the source.
While government and business had not invested as much as they should in cybersecurity, he said it was getting better. In the past, companies tended to spend less on security and would then have to spend more to fix the problem after a breach. “I think the awareness is growing. The government is placing a lot of emphasis on it – we can see that through a lot of the legislation that is coming out like the Protection of Personal Information Act and the Cybercrimes Act.
Outlining the CSIR’s work in the field, he explained that his section fell under the Defence and Security Cluster and they focused on cyber security across the entire spectrum which included training and awareness, skills developments, as well as the development of policies and what to do in specific situation, for instance if someone’s personal information is leaked.