According to a poll performed by KnowBe4 across three African countries, 32% of corporate companies in Nigeria will continue to use remote work models on a flexible basis.
The survey, which looked at how remote working is changing the security paradigm for businesses, found that 57% of businesses in South Africa and 29 percent of businesses in Kenya will likely continue remote work.
The report titled ‘Remote Working & Cybersecurity in Africa,’ delves into the security risks and critical business considerations that should guide how African businesses approach remote working security.
“One of the immediate defences against cybercrime is an employee that has been well-trained and understands how to spot and report cyber threats. People should know what a social engineering attack looks like, and why they should not click on links or open attachments. While many respondents in the survey believed that their remote workers were adequately trained to withstand social engineering attacks, a significant percentage was unsure as to how well their people would react to a security threat. And this points to an urgent need for security training.”Anna Collard, SVP Content Strategy and Evangelist, KnowBe4 Africa
Companies that aim to use hybrid or remote working frameworks in the future will need to prioritise training in their policies and plans. Finally, a security breach might cost them financially and reputationally – especially now, in the era of stringent personal data privacy legislation – and poor user behaviour is a primary source of security events in all three countries.
While the overall number of security incidents faced by businesses decreased in 2021, the assaults that were successful used phishing, social engineering, ransomware, and malware. In South Africa, unintentional data leaks tied for third place with credential theft, while phishing and ransomware were the top threats in Kenya. The most serious issues in Nigeria were social engineering and phishing.
“Companies across Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa have also struggled with insecure home Wi-Fi networks and people sharing their corporate devices with family and friends. The pandemic threw everyone in the deep end in 2020, and they all spent 2021 learning how to swim. Now, in 2022, it is time to redefine and reshape how the organisation manages security and remote working as effectively and dynamically as possible.”Anna Collard, SVP Content Strategy and Evangelist, KnowBe4 Africa
Another report by Unisys has also thrown some light on cyber threats for remote workers which shows that there’s a greater need for attention in this aspect if remote work is the way forward.
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