In the first 6 months of 2021, South Africa was the most targeted country in Africa with 32 million malware attacks, followed by Kenya with 23.1 million attacks and Nigeria with 16.7 million attacks. Ethiopia had 8 million attacks.
According to a study by cybersecurity firm Kaspersky, Kenya experienced a 13pc decrease in attacks compared to the other countries in the period while South Africa’s attacks increased by 14pc, Nigeria and Ethiopia had a 23pc and 20pc increase respectively.
Overall, Africa saw a 5pc increase in attacks in the first six months of 2021 as hackers took the Covid-19 work from home era as an advantage to focus on consumer and corporate vulnerabilities in attempts to gain access to sensitive data.
Kaspersky says that a lack of user education and understanding of cybersecurity has contributed to the high rates of malware attacks.
“This has contributed to a large number of personal devices still not having any form of cybersecurity software installed,” Bethwel Opil, Enterprise Sales Manager at Kaspersky in Africa said.
“Malware can get onto a device in several ways. For example, clicking on an infected link or advert, opening an attachment in a spam email, or downloading a compromised app. This means proactive malware protection is essential to safeguard individual users and corporates against these threats,” he added.
