By Noko Mashilo
Several enterprises and individuals have fallen victim to cybercrime. The most dominant cybercrimes are phishing and online payment fraud, which are still prevalent today. This has caused some enterprises to close. Vutivi News spoke with cybersecurity expert Jacob Lunda of J-IIT World. He describes cybersecurity as the practice of defending systems such as computers, servers, mobile devices, or any electronic systems like networking infrastructure and any devices that connect to the internet.
He said it protected anything that connected to the internet and could easily be accessed by unauthorised users. “Recently, we have smart houses that are connected to the network. Owners are able to control electronic appliances like fridges, microwaves, TVs, doors and cameras with the confidential data that runs through them.
“Perhaps that is why cybersecurity has many disciplines that you may practice such as network security, information security and application security. However, the overall role is to ensure the integrity, confidentiality and availability of information of individuals or everyone from unauthorised individuals,” said Lunda. Lunda further said the importance of cybersecurity was to protect sensitive data from unauthorised users or breaches since the world dealt with this kind of information all the time.
“Cybersecurity specialists must ensure integrity and confidentiality so that business owners can trust that their information is safe and secure. “In most cases, one has to prevent financial loss due to criminal activities. For example, if your computer is affected by ransomware that encrypts your information with a password that only attackers can unlock for you. They will call and claim to unlock your computer while they charge you money,” said Lunda.
Lunda warned that 99.9% of the time, even if they unlocked your computer, they would not recover your information. “Most enterprises cannot afford cloud storage, which is why their data is not backed up on the cloud. Some will save their data on external hard drives that end up lost or stolen. Some rely on their computer; imagine if you click the wrong button on the internet. It will encrypt your computer and you will not have access to your information on your computer,” said Lunda.
He mentioned a lack of resources like money, awareness, and outdated systems as the main contributing factors to cybercrime. “Cybersecurity is not simple; it requires money. Therefore, affordability makes small businesses vulnerable. Due to a lack of awareness, most businesses are not aware of cyber threats since they are not trained on how to detect cyber threats,” said Lunda.
He said outdated systems needed to be updated because hackers spent sleepless nights learning how to compromise the system. “On the other hand, developers also do not sleep; they make sure systems are developed and updated because if hackers see a loophole, they will use the opportunity to exploit it. Updated systems have extra features that buy more time,” said Lunda.
Mmathapelo Nkosi of Mphela Funeral Parlour said she had been receiving emails from different government departments requesting quotations. “Some of these quotes are not in line with what I do. Phishing is real; we must wake up and not respond to these kinds of emails,” said Nkosi. Lunda appealed to business owners to use genuine software because most of the cracked software was malware.
