South Africa-based Investec, a private bank with more than 7,400 staff in 40 cities on four continents, recaps some of the latest trends and developments in cyber risks and security strategies in South Africa, and beyond.
Cybercrime is expected to cost the world $10.5 trillion annually by 2025, according to Cybersecurity Ventures. That’s exponentially bigger than the size of the global cybersecurity industry fighting to keep said damages at bay. It’s an industry in an almost real-time arms race to nullify and deflect cyber threats seeking to disrupt, steal, or compromise our data.
Deepfakes are one of the fastest growing forms of ‘adversarial’ AI, with damages growing by 32 percent annually, on track to top $40 billion USD in 2027, according to Deloitte. Generative AI has enabled synthetic voice and face techniques that can mimic the person(s) required to provide access or authorize specific transactions, tricking the victims into processing payments or revealing sensitive information.
Topping the list of cyber threats alongside deepfakes are malware, ransomware, insider threats, DDoS attacks, supply chain attacks, and man-in-the-middle (MTM) attacks.
Investec points to cutting edge cybersecurity technologies that are being used by South African organizations in 2024, including AI and machine learning for threat detection, quantum computing, cloud security, Blockchain security, and more.
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