JOHANNESBURG – IT experts have warned that more companies in South Africa could be hacked if they failed to prioritise secure erasure in preventing data losses.
The expects said companies needed to understand the impact of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) law on South African business and how it aligned with the Protection of Personal Information Act 2013 (PoPI).
PoPI Act expert Dr Peter Tobin warned that there were serious implications for South African companies. “Any organisation in this country that deals with the data of any European resident is impacted by the GDPR.”
The warnings come in the wake of Liberty life this week disclosing that it had refused to pay money demanded by hackers who attacked its systems and extracted data.
The insurer said it dispatched a team of IT experts to investigate the breach of its systems on Thursday.
It said the hackers seized data, alerted the group to potential vulnerabilities and demanded payment.
Last year it emerged that more than half of the population’s identity numbers were leaked in one of South Africa’s worst data breaches, which affected about 30 million South Africans.
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