A Kaspersky announced that its latest research highlights that malware is rife across the African continent, with several countries exhibiting strong growth in all types of malware in the first half of 2021 when compared to the same period last year.
This represents a 5% increase across the continent as cybercriminals and hackers continue to focus on African countries, given the advances in digital transformation and the increase in teleworking resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Overall, 4 countries account for 85 million attacks, with South Africa being the most targeted (32 million attacks), followed by Kenya (28,3 million), Nigeria (16,7 million) and Ethiopia (8 million) .
All countries except Kenya saw the relative growth of all malware attacks. Ethiopia and Nigeria had an increase of 20% and 23%, respectively, and South Africa, an increase of 14%, while the number of attacks in Kenya decreased by 13%.
While the scourge of malware has always been a cause for concern, the past 12 months have highlighted how hackers are redirecting their efforts to compromise corporate and consumer systems and gain access to critical data and information.
Given the growth of digital transformation across Africa since last year, the continent has become an attractive target for those looking to exploit the lack of user education and understanding of cybersecurity.
This has contributed to the large number of personal devices that still do not have any cybersecurity software installed,” said Bethwel Opil, Kaspersky's corporate sales manager for Africa.
