There has been a sharp spike in network attacks in South Africa this month as more people work from home during the pandemic.
Kaspersky statistics showed that between March 15 and 21 affected devices increased in number from the 20,000 to 30,000 average to peak at approximately 310,000.
The peak coincides with a time in South Africa when remote working increased in response to national emergency containment measures in an effort to flatten the curve of spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) in the country.
Maher Yamout, Senior Security Researcher for the Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) at Kaspersky, said: “The region is seeing an increase in attempts to break into organisations’ systems to establish control over them, sabotage their work or access sensitive information.
“Remote working provides cybercriminals a prime opportunity to target devices, especially those that don’t necessarily have adequate IT security measures in place.”
The types of attacks varied, yet a third of them used repetitive attempts at various password combinations. This technique is common and often works well with weak or repetitively used passwords.
Kaspersky, along with other market commentators, have recently shared advice linked to working from home strategies and the important security elements to consider.
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