South Africans are not immune to cybercrime and a new survey from Kaspersky Digital Payment has showcased just how often locals are targeted by ne’er-do-wells.

The survey was conducted by Toluna which polled 2 004 respondents from the Middle East, Turkey and South Africa in March 2022.

The headline finding is that 35 percent of respondents encountered phishing scams when using online banking or mobile wallet services. The good news is that 94 percent of respondents said they are aware of financial phishing attacks while 95 percent said they were aware of online scams.

Unsurprisingly, respondents in this survey are of the opinion that banks and other financial institutions should do more to educate users about the threats online. In terms of security features, these are what most locals feel are most important.

• One Time PINs for every transaction (76 percent of respondents)
• Biometric security such as facial or fingerprint recognition (75 percent of respondents)
• Automated detection and intervention for fraudulent transactions (58 percent of respondents)
• Multi-factor authentication (51 percent of respondents)
• End-to-end encryption (22 percent of respondents)

“Whether we talk about the proliferation of phishing scams or mobile malware, it is important to establish some basic cybersecurity standards. Advanced security solutions, which are able to filter out most of the generic attack vectors, supplemented with other preventive measures such as good cybersecurity awareness and regular password changes, can help to keep your financial transactions secure,” explains SADC territory account manager for Kaspersky, James Gumede.

It’s good to see that South Africans are aware of the digital threats they may encounter. In 2020, the South African Banking Risk Risk Information Centre reported that digital banking fraud had increased by 33 percent from 2019.

This is in-line with the trend we have seen since the rise of the pandemic in which cybercriminals ramped up their efforts. Unfortunately, cybercriminals aren’t the sort to rest and there are constantly creating new tricks that are used to lure unsuspecting users to click something they shouldn’t.

[Image – CC 0 Pixabay]