{"id":747668,"date":"2024-02-25T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-25T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=747668"},"modified":"2024-02-23T14:10:00","modified_gmt":"2024-02-23T12:10:00","slug":"cost-of-data-breaches-for-companies-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/technology\/747668\/cost-of-data-breaches-for-companies-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Cost of data breaches for companies in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The average cost of a data breach for a South African organisation sits at a hefty R49.45 million. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is according to the 2023 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ibm.com\/downloads\/cas\/E3G5JMBP\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.ibm.com\/downloads\/cas\/E3G5JMBP\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Cost of a Data Breach Report<\/a>, which is research conducted by the Ponemon Institute and analysed and published by IBM Security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A data breach is defined as an event in which records containing personally identifiable information; financial or medical account details; or other secret, confidential or proprietary data are potentially put at risk. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The 2023 report, which studied hundreds organisations impacted by data breaches, showed that they are increasing in frequency and cost burden across the globe. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These costs fluctuates across countries, but skyrockets in the United States, with the average data breach coting a US company&nbsp;$9.48 million. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>South Africa has seen an 8% increase from 2022, and a 73% increase from 2015, costing an average of R2750 to recover each file.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Additionally, many companies do not know that they had a breach until it is too late. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The report found that one-third of companies discovered the data breach through their own security teams, with 67% of breaches being reported by a benign third party or by the attackers themselves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to the report, in South Africa, the financial industry, including banking, insurance and investment companies, was hardest hit by data breaches in 2023, followed by industrial and services sectors&nbsp;respectively. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Globally, the healthcare sector is most at risk. The healthcare industry has seen a considerable rise in data breach costs since 2020, and for the 13th year in a row, the healthcare industry reported as the most expensive data breaches globally, at an average cost of $10.93 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The IBM Report indicated that the that most cyber threats resulted from stolen or compromised credentials and phishing scams, while attacks through compromised business e-mails were a close second.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The report gives four recommendations to help reduce the cost of a data breach:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Build security into every stage of software development and deployment\u2014and test regularly<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Modernize data protection across hybrid cloud<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Use security AI and automation to increase speed and accuracy<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Strengthen resiliency by knowing your attack surface and practicing incident response.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Era Gunning, an executive at ENS Africa furthered on this, saying that the IBM Report shows the potential benefit of AI in cybersecurity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The extensive use of&nbsp;automation&nbsp;saved organisations nearly $1.8 million in data breach costs,&#8221; said Gunning. &#8220;On average, it accelerated data breach identification and containment by over 100 days, while almost all organisations use or want to use artificial intelligence for cybersecurity operations, only 28% of them use it extensively,&#8221; she added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In terms of cyber security, Gunning says that the capabilities AI pose include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Enhancesd precision of malware detection systems by detecting data patterns indicating questionable activities;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Monitors user activity across multiple platforms;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Identifies and flags suspicious activity;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Detects new strains of existing malware, preventing malicious actions including ransomware attacks;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Minimises the impact of cybersecurity threats;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Assists in identifying suspicious content, such as phishing links and malicious URLs;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Alerts security teams for timely preventive measures.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Additionally, ICT company Seacom says that &#8220;in an era where cyber attacks are continually evolving, it is critical to invest in strong cyber security measures&#8221;, and recommends that companies do regular security assessments, do employee education and awareness, as well as building a multi-tiered security strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/technology\/695039\/the-biggest-cyber-security-threats-for-businesses-in-south-africa\/\">The biggest cyber security threats for businesses in South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Data breaches are rising across the world, and play an increasing risk and cost to companies who often do not know that their data has been breached. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":48261,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9878],"tags":[8556,19268,753],"class_list":["post-747668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-ai","tag-data-breaches","tag-ibm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747668","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\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=747668"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":754837,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747668\/revisions\/754837"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=747668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=747668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=747668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}