SA suffers as cybercrime rises globally

The cost of hacking is wreaking havoc on business productivity – and South Africa isn’t immune to this scourge.

- Mariam Isa

Cybercrime is increasing at an alarming rate across the world and has become one of the biggest threats faced by companies, governments and individuals as the spread of digital technology and connectivity makes every form of human activity vulnerable to attack.

Global research company Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that the damages from cybercrime may cost the world $6tr a year by 2021, up from $3tr in 2015. Its estimates include everything from the damage, theft, and destruction of data, to stolen money, lost productivity, the cost of recovery from an attack and reputational harm.

A more grounded figure from US global computer security company McAfee puts global losses in 2017 at $600bn, which nonetheless amounts to more than the income of almost all but a few countries. In the context of the worldwide internet economy, which amounted to $4.2tr in 2016, cybercrime could be viewed as a 14% tax on growth, it says.

Part of the difficulty in calculating the impact of cybercrime is that much of it goes unreported and even undetected. In the absence of laws forcing disclosure, companies are reluctant to publicise cybersecurity breaches.

“The reality is that no one has a good handle on it because a lot of cybercrime happens below the waterline,” says Brian Pinnock, director of sales engineering for the Middle East and Africa at Mimecast, an international company which focuses on email security. “Until people start disclosing their status, you don’t know how bad the epidemic is.”

Nonetheless, the figures which are available are alarming. McAfee says that nearly two-thirds of the people who use online services, or more than 2bn people, have had their personal data stolen or compromised.