advertisement
Facebook
X
LinkedIn
WhatsApp
Reddit

[TEDxJOBURG] “Your network will be breached. It’s inevitable.”

It’s an early start down here at TEDxJohannesburg, which is going on all day down at The Forum in Bryanston, and so far we’ve already been scared witless by talks on insider trader trading, money laundering and Osama bin Laden’s chain of retail honey shops.

But the highlight so far was PwC‘s digital forensics specialist Peter Fryer’s discussion of online security, in which he urged everyone to try and help educate the world about the dangers of phishing attacks – by far the most common threat online and the way corporate and personal networks are targeted.

“Your network will get breached,” says Fryer, “It’s inevitable. All you can do is not take cookies from criminals. Don’t click on those links.”

According to Fryer, large companies take an average of seven months to detect malware on their systems, which has usually been placed there via a phishing attack against an employee. Education is the only effective weapon, he says.

“We all have intuition in everyday life to detect when’s something’s wrong,” he says,”But you do click on the link because you sit in your place behind the screen, behind your electric fence, behind your security. But no-one is looking after your security online. No-one has warned you about ‘stranger danger’ online”

fryer 2

Fryer has some interesting insight about where the money gained from phishing attacks on bank details goes in South Africa. The most popular way of laundering the money is through small consumer goods, like airtime vouchers, liquor and – surprisingly – airline tickets. The latter, he says, sounds stupid because flying on a fake ticket is highly risky, but they’re passed on to drug mules.

Fryer also warned that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are increasingly being used to launder money from phishing attacks in South Africa – something we’ll try to get stats on at a later date.

Keep an eye out over the rest of the day for more updates from TedxJohannesburg.

 

advertisement

About Author

advertisement

Related News

advertisement