Kaspersky says throughout 2023 Africa remained one of the world regions most targeted by cybercrime.

As African organisations grow more digitised, phishing, web threats, assaults on industrial control systems, and attacks on the Internet of Things (IoT) have emerged as the continent's major cyber-crimes.

This is according to global cyber security firm Kaspersky, which says throughout 2023 Africa remained one of the world regions most targeted by cybercrime.

At a recent press conference in Johannesburg, Kaspersky shared some insights and statistics related to the regional threat landscape in the third quarter of 2023 and made forecasts on how the situation is going to develop in 2024.

In the third quarter of 2023 (Q3), according to Kaspersky ICS CERT, attacks were detected on 32% of industrial control systems (ICS) computers in Africa.

Kaspersky ICS CERT is an industrial system security research and information security incident response center created by Kaspersky.

In South Africa, the company says, attacks were detected on 22% of machines. Globally, malicious objects were detected on 25% of ICS machines.

In Q3 2023, South Africa accounts for 28% of attacks on IoT devices that were detected by Kaspersky in the African region. Kenya accounts for 12% of attacks on IoT devices, and Nigeria – for 6%.

“In forecasting the development of the cyber threat landscape for 2024, we anticipate a dynamic evolution of cyber threats marked by an upsurge in state-sponsored cyber-attacks, and 'hacktivism' will become one of the norms of cyber-warfare,” comments David Emm, principal cyber security researcher at Kaspersky.

“The prevalence of accessible generative AI is set to fuel an expansion of spear-phishing tactics, while the creative exploitation of vulnerabilities in mobile and IoT devices will be on the rise. Businesses today should be proactive and counter these cyber threats with advanced technologies such as threat feeds, security information and event management systems, endpoint detection and response solutions, and tools with digital forensics and incident response features.”