Online businesses and payment platforms have become the latest targets for cybercriminals. According to the inaugural Africa Cybersecurity Congress in Nairobi, this has been fueled in part by the exponential growth in mobile payment use.
Co-founder and CEO of Agora Group, Hadi Maeleb said Threats to online businesses are increasing exponentially, with more than 90% of business owners unaware that their enterprises are under attack.
“Cybercriminals are now targeting small businesses more as they have realized that these enterprises do believe they would be exposed due to their comparatively low turnovers, until they lose their data and payments are compromised,” said Maeleb.
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He said that in addition to raising awareness, business owners should invest in cyber security tools as there was no silver bullet for cybercrime. Implementing c2 solutions can help protect businesses from cyber attacks, as well as having appropriate data backup and recovery processes in place.
“This ‘democratization’ of cyberattacks is expected to push losses due to business interruption, financial theft, personal data breaches and even ransom payments over the Kshs 4 trillion mark by end of 2022,” added Maeleb.
He pointed out that Kenya was an ICT leader with more than one million businesses running online, on websites and social media platforms. Maeleb said the environment was attractive to cybercriminals, and business owners bolting to action only after falling victim to the attackers.
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