The Global Threat Intelligence Report for the first half of 2024 has revealed that the agriculture, forestry and fishing sectors, followed by government services, were the industries most targeted by cyberattacks, with small and medium businesses bearing the brunt of attacks.
The report was published by Mimecast Limited, a leading global human risk management platform, on Friday.
Brian Pinnock, VP sales director EMEA at Mimecast, said this report, along with many others, revealed that cyber actors were increasingly targeting SMEs rather than just big businesses.
“We are also seeing a rise in cyber-attacks on agriculture, forestry, fishing, and government services, as more governments in the region turn to the food economy to foster economic growth, reduce poverty and improve food security,” Pinnock said.
According to the report, file share abuse attacks predominantly came from domains including adobe.com, sharepoint.com and google.com.
The report analysed the threat landscape during the first six months of this year and offered actionable steps for organisations of all sizes to improve cyber defences.
It found that in Africa, cyberattacks still predominantly used spam and impersonation emails to infiltrate defences, relying on malicious links to deliver payloads to victims’ systems.
Attacks were said to be increasingly employing multiple layers of false information, requiring more interaction from victims. Victims were forced to click through links, respond to CAPTCHAs, and engage with false multi-factor authentication requests.
Mimecast said additional obfuscation layers allowed these types of attacks to fly under the radar, gaining entry where malware would be denied.
Globally, attackers were said to be using generative AI more often to create phishing templates, and this trend was starting to trickle into Africa. In one case, it was reported that attackers targeted corporate employees by sending 380 000 emails with an attached PDF document. Clicking on the file opens the PDF in a web browser and displayed a page hosted on an AI development service.
The IT security company said AI-driven attacks were not just impacting businesses. It said attackers were increasingly targeting consumers, using distribution lists to send mass emails that passed security checks and notified recipients of an imminent deduction or charge. This then prompted recipients to contact an AI bot call centre to collect information. In May this year, Mimecast detected more than 1.6 million email messages in this type of campaign.
As observed in the Q4 2023 report, small and medium businesses experienced the highest volume of cyber threats. Mimecast saw this peak below 40 threats per user (TPU) in Q1 2024 and at above 40 TPU in Q2 2024. Employees at both small and medium businesses continued to see more than twice the number of threats compared to users at large enterprises, according to the report.
The company said analysing businesses of all sizes, the average number of TPUs slightly increased from just above mid-20 TPUs during Q4 2023 to mid-20 TPUs (Q2 2024). The threats impacting large enterprises increased in the first quarter and slightly jumped in the second quarter of this year.
Pinnock said that with Africa containing some of the fastest-growing economies, and SMEs accounting for an estimated 40% of GDP in South Africa, the need for cybersecurity companies to offer tools and solutions was greater than ever.
According to a 2023 briefing by the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, South Africa was the eighth most targeted country in the world for ransomware. The briefing noted that the impact of cyber crime on the South African economy was currently estimated at R2.2 billion a year.
BUSINESS REPORT