Cyber-attacks can take years to recover from, but most businesses aren’t doing enough to protect themselves, says Dimension DataMany South African organisations have already suffered from cyber-related compromises, especially with the chaos caused by Covid-19. This has a crippling effect on businesses, particularly at a time when the economy is contracting and business confidence is low. Unfortunately, these attacks will likely increase in severity and intensity.
These risks have risen across all industries. As the global lockdown shifts the world of work and more people do their jobs remotely, businesses face new structural and operational threats. Most networks aren’t designed to support mass decentralisation – they’re built for workforces who sit in offices, protected by a network perimeter that no longer exists. And businesses often aren’t set up for monitoring and patching remote systems.
Covid-19 at the very least unmasked the fact that many IT policies lacked due diligence and could only manage a short-term, temporary disruption of operations. Our lockdowns have been longer and more onerous than we thought, and our risks are only increasing in an environment where businesses rely more than ever on web applications to continue trading in a time of physical distancing.