SMALL businesses in South Africa are still in danger, as they faced a 69 percent increase in Password Stealing Ware detections in 2022, according to cybersecurity company Kaspersky.
The firm said when a small business owner was faced with the responsibilities of production economics, financial reports and marketing all at the same time, cybersecurity can often appear complicated and, at times, unnecessary. However, this disregard for IT security is being exploited by cybercriminals.
Kaspersky researchers assessed the dynamics of attacks on small and medium-sized businesses between January and April this year and the same period last year, to identify which threats posed an increased danger to entrepreneurs.
This year, the number of Trojan-PSW (Password Stealing Ware) detections in South Africa increased by 69 percent compared to the same period last year with - 20 922 detections this year compared to 12 344 last year.
Trojan-PSW is a malware that steals passwords, along with other account information, which then allows attackers to gain access to the corporate network and steal sensitive information.
Another popular attack tool used on small businesses is Internet attacks, specifically, web pages with redirects to exploits, sites containing exploits and other malicious programs, botnet C&C centres and others. While the number of these attacks decreased in the first four month of 2022 in South Africa by 13 percent (419 506 infections in 2022 compared to 483 846 infections in 2021), the firm said the amount of Internet attacks remained high.
With the shift towards remote working, many companies had introduced the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), a technology that enabled computers on the same corporate network to be linked and accessed remotely, even when the employees are at home.
While the overall number of attacks on RDP has decreased in South Africa, globally this threat is still a challenge. For example, in the first trimester of last year, there were about 47.5 million attacks in the US, whereas for the same period this year the number had risen to 51 million.
Kapersky said having a special security solution enabled attack visualisation and provided IT administrators with a convenient tool for incident analysis.
It said the faster they could analyse where and how a leak occurred, the better they would be able to solve any negative consequences.
The firm said that even small businesses with limited IT resources needed to protect all their working devices, including computers and cellphones, from cyberthreats.
Kaspersky security researcher Denis Parinov said with the shift to remote working and the introduction of numerous advanced technologies in the daily operations of even small companies, security measures needed to evolve to support these sophisticated setups.
“Cybercriminals are already way ahead of the curve, so much so that virtually every organisation will experience a breach attempt at some point. For small companies today, it's not a matter of whether a cybersecurity incident will happen but when. Having trained staff and an educated IT-specialist is no longer a luxury but a must-have part of your business development,” Parinov said.
To protect your business, Kaspersky recommended that companies provide their staff with basic cybersecurity hygiene training as many targeted attacks started with phishing or other social engineering techniques.
It also advised that using a protection solution for endpoints and mail servers with anti-phishing capabilities to decrease the chance of infection through phishing emails, taking key data protection measures as always safeguarding corporate data and devices, including by using password protection, encrypting work devices and ensuring data is backed up. It said keeping work devices physically safe–did not leave them unattended in public, always lock them and use strong passwords and encryption software.
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