Heino Gevers, senior director of technical support at Mimecast.
While research shows that SA is the most attacked country in Africa when it comes to ransomware and infostealer attacks, the country’s business leaders remain ambivalent about human risk management (HRM) to address their greatest vulnerability – people.
ESET’s bi-annual Threat Report 2025 shows that over 40% of ransomware attacks and just under 35% of infostealer incidents on the continent occurred in SA. The research adds that phishing attacks make up 52% of all cyber threats in the country.
According to ESET, nearly 70% of cyber incidents stem from preventable human mistakes, making an untrained workforce the weakest link in any organisation.
This year alone, one of the country’s largest broadcasters, SABC, fell victim to a business e-mail compromise attack, with hackers infiltrating staff accounts and launching attacks loaded with convincing links and attachments. Phishing e-mails also brought the South African Weather Service to a standstill, crippling aviation and marine operations and taking communications and website systems offline.
Cyber security companies concur that the situation is exacerbated by…
