Get ‘cyber-ready’ to deal with the risks

Cape Town – International and local organisations are faced with a real threat of their data being breached and must be “cyber-ready” to manage the risk. This is according to Preeta Bhagattjee, a director in technology and sourcing practice at Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr (CDH), speaking at the company’s Corporate Investigations seminar held in Cape Town yesterday.

The 2018 Allianz Risk Barometer report ranks cyber incidents, including cybercrime, IT failure and data breaches, as the number one risk to South African businesses with 38% of respondents citing it as their most important corporate peril, up 8% from last year.

Bhagattjee, speaking on dealing with data breaches, gave examples of organisations whose data had been breached, including Uber, Sony, Walmart, Fedex, JP Morgan, Equifax and, most recently, Facebook.

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She said in the Equifax data breach, which affected about 150million customers, unauthorised access took place from May to July last year, but the firm only went public about the breach in September.

Equifax lost about a quarter of share value since the disclosure, said…