{"id":3637,"date":"2012-01-23T08:05:12","date_gmt":"2012-01-23T08:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=3637"},"modified":"2012-05-26T13:14:05","modified_gmt":"2012-05-26T11:14:05","slug":"good-guys-winning-the-crucial-battle-on-cybercrime-microsoft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/internet\/3637\/good-guys-winning-the-crucial-battle-on-cybercrime-microsoft\/","title":{"rendered":"“Good guys winning the crucial battle on cybercrime” \u2013 Microsoft"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the wake of increasing and complex cyber-criminal activity, security is a leading priority for CIOs in businesses and governments – this according to Dr Khomotso Kganyago<\/a>, chief security advisor for Microsoft SA<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It follows the R42 million cyber heist on the Post Bank, a member of the Post Office Group on New Year\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n

In an interview with BusinessTech, Kganyago said that the battle with cyber-criminals is an ongoing one as the IT penetration and dependencies increase, \u201cbut if anything, the good guys are starting to win the crucial battles\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said that, as someone who has worked in IT security in the public sector space until recently, government takes security very seriously.<\/p>\n

\u201cSecurity is probably the top priority for most CIOs in businesses and governments across the world right now, and we\u2019re seeing a huge amount of investment and activity in this space as they look to secure their data and critical information.\u201d<\/p>\n

The security expert stresses that cyber-attacks have moved from \u2018cool\u2019 to \u2018cash\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve seen the nature of online threats shift from software-driven to social. Opportunistic threats have been supplemented by attacks that are more persistent and, in many cases, far more worrisome.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat marks these attacks is that rather than \u201csmash and grab, they lay low and steal slow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kganyago notes that although some of these attacks are sophisticated, many are not; rather, the attack vectors are often traditional and unsophisticated.<\/p>\n

He cautions that \u2018the insider\u2019 is one of the most disturbing threats whose potential damage is always very high.<\/p>\n

\u201cFact is, most common computer threats can be mitigated through good security best practices \u2013 our most recent Security Intelligence Report showed that 90% of infections that were attributed to vulnerability exploitation had a security update available from the software vendor for more than a year.<\/p>\n

Kganyago points to a collaborative effort as a potential solution to preventing further criminal activity. \u201cWe have also seen in some countries that the rising Cybersecurity threats are pushing big banks to share information with one another.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lesson to learn and implement in our country quickly – and these should be supplemented by a continued collaboration between industry, governments and individuals to create a safer, more trusted computing experience for everyone,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the wake of increasing and complex cyber-criminal activity, security is a leading priority for CIOs in businesses and governments, according to Dr Khomotso Kganyago, chief security advisor for Microsoft SA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":3937,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9882],"tags":[887,583,26,169,889],"class_list":["post-3637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-cyber-crime","tag-hacking","tag-headline","tag-microsoft","tag-post-bank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3637"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3655,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3637\/revisions\/3655"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}