Africa's food and beverage sector had the highest web malware attacks during the first half of this year according to networking technology firm Cisco.

Last month, Cisco released its 2014 midyear security report, which examines weak links and cyber security trends for the first half of the year.

And the report found that geopolitical events across the wider Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Russia (EMEAR) region expanded the risk landscape.

Such geopolitical events have included West Africa’s Ebola breakout.

And Greg Griessel, consulting systems engineer for security solutions at Cisco South Africa, has told ITWeb Africa that cyber criminals use such events to trick people into clicking onto compromised websites.

“Specifically for the African region we picked up that the industry where we see most of the attacks come from is really from the food and beverage industry,” he said.

Griessel said it is unclear as to why this industry is the hardest hit, but he said it may be tied to this sector’s interest in general news and how it affects the food and beverage space.

Cisco’s report further notes that the attacks are coming from both mobile and web malware.

Griessel explained that there has been an increase in mobile malware in the Africa region because of the dramatic rise in handset usage on the continent. According to the Broadband Commission’s State of Broadband report, Africa has 172 million mobile internet users.   

“The biggest proliferation of malware is still from the traditional desktop system, but the greatest pick up is within the mobile space,” he said.