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Economic uncertainty set to shape 2021 cybercrime agenda in Africa
aspersky experts expect
K growing economic turbulence , along with the impact of COVID-19 , to contribute to an increase in cybercrime across South Africa , Kenya and Nigeria this year .
“ Even though every country globally has had to deal with the pandemic in its own way , developing economies across Africa have been especially hard hit by national lockdowns and limited business activity . And thanks to the increased connectedness of people , the rise in unemployment will not only see a spike in traditional crime , but this will also extend to the digital environment – something we are already seeing ,” said Lehan van den Heever , Enterprise Cybersecurity Advisor for Kaspersky in Africa .
While the increase in these crimes will vary by country , African nations must prepare themselves for the inevitability of increases in malware that already topped 28 million by August last year , according to Kaspersky research .
Adding further pressure to this melting pot of cyberattacks is an expected rise , along with changes in strategy , in advanced persistent threats ( APTs ).
Additionally , van den Heever noted that the normalisation of remote working will further put existing organisational IT systems under pressure as companies now must contend with an influx in connections into the corporate back end .
“ This year is going to be a watershed for cybersecurity as organisations start realising the importance of having an integrated and threat intelligent approach to safeguard their systems and data against increasingly sophisticated threat agents ,” he said .
NAVWAR awards FireEye first place in network threat detection challenge
he Naval Information Warfare
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Systems Command ( NAVWAR ) enterprise has named FireEye Network Security with SmartVision as the US $ 500,000 first-place winner of the Artificial Intelligence Applications to Autonomous Cybersecurity ( AI ATAC ) Challenge .
The challenge found FireEye Network Security to deliver the best performance , based on the criteria and cost-benefit framework . The malware collection used also spanned categories likely to be seen in the real world to produce the most effective evaluation . This prize follows the March 2020 first place award FireEye received for its Endpoint Security offering in the initial NAVWAR Artificial Intelligence Applications to Autonomous Cybersecurity Challenge .
“ Every day , FireEye is on the forefront of cyberattacks , conducting investigations , gathering intelligence and tracking adversaries . SmartVision , our Machine Learning-based analytics and correlation engine , was developed by a world-class team of data scientists to give our clients visibility into suspicious lateral movement within their internal networks , while also detecting malware designed to steal data ,” said Ramesh Gupta , SVP and GM , Network Security at FireEye .
“ We are honoured to have our leading detection capabilities recognised for what they were designed to do – detect real-world adversarial activity . We are proud to continue to support the Navy and its cyber-preparedness initiatives .” www . intelligentciso . com
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