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Cape Town - Global companies are facing unprecedented cyber attack risks as criminal groups bombard servers with malware, new research has revealed.
According to the 2015 Security Report by Check Point Security, 106 unknown malware hit organisations every hour, 48 times more than in 2013.
The company found that criminals were actively using compromised computers, also known as bots to spread malicious software.
Up to 83% of the 1 300 organisations studied in 2014 were infected with bots which allowed constant communication with cyber criminals intent on stealing sensitive data as well spreading malware to other PCs.
While most of the danger of cyber crooks centred on developed countries where the infrastructure facilitated internet access, South African organisations are also at risk.
State sponsored hacking
"When it comes to cyber security, we can no longer segment threats on a country-by-country basis. The same threats that cripple multinational organisations in America can take down an SME (small to medium enterprise) in South Africa - malware does not discriminate when it comes to organisation size or territory," said Doros Hadjizenonos, country manager of Check Point South Africa.
Even security firm Kaspersky Lab suffered an attack with malware that used a digital certificate from Foxconn which embedded itself on to the company's servers recently.
That malware, known as Duqu 2.0, was used to spy on UN-sanctioned Iran nuclear talks.
Malware is able to communicate with its authors on compromised PCs. (Duncan Alfreds, Fin24)
Security firm Trend Micro also recently discovered a sophisticated 'Operation Arid Viper' attack aimed at Israel and Egypt. The company labelled that attack as state sponsored because of the nature of the attack.
But beyond cyber warfare among state actors, cyber criminals take direct aim at stealing financial data.
According to underwriter Candice Sutherland around 974 million South African company records were lost or stolen in 2014. That loss was perpetrated mainly by disgruntled employees and amounted to a total financial loss of at least R5.8bn.
Check Point found that where an organisation has more than 2 000 mobile devices on its network, it is likely to experience a serious compromise of corporate data.
Strategy
"Seventy two percent of IT providers agreed that their top mobile security challenge is securing corporate information, and 67% said their second biggest challenge is managing personal devices storing both corporate and personal data," said the Check Point security report.
Hadjizenonos warned that a multiple security layer strategy to protect against data theft was critical for both companies and individuals to protect themselves.
"Today's cyber criminals are sophisticated and ruthless: They prey on the weaknesses in a network, approaching any security layer as an open invitation to try to hack it. In order to protect themselves against attacks, security professionals and organisations alike must understand the nature of the latest exploits and how their networks are potentially impacted."
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