Angolan companies should avoid negotiating a ransom with cybercriminals, as reaching an agreement opens up the possibility of always being under cyberattacks.
This opinion was defended by cybercrime specialist Hélio Pereira, speaking to the weekly newspaper Novo Jornal, stressing that “don't negotiate with the criminal", where as someone who knows how this sector works recommends "not to pay the ransom, because, first, there is no guarantee that the key is correct and, second, it opens up the possibility of always being underneath the attacker".
"I mean, you tell the hacker that he can, that he knows the way. If you don't plug the hole, he might come back or use blackmail as a means of communication.“, underlines the expert.
Speaking of the cyber attack that the company NCR suffered, Hélio Pereira says that at the national level “we have a significant growth in the level of awareness of top management", where we have seen a "concern about security, now what still hurts is that many in senior management among our top leaders need to add cyber risk to the risks to be thought about in terms of strategies".
"For example, we have countries like Ukraine that have not added cyber risks to their strategies, so they have become vulnerable. We have examples of companies that didn't do this and lost a lot of money.“, reiterates.
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Still in his approach, the founder of CyberSecur highlights the lack of literacy on the part of people who use digital media, since “it is very worrying, because, on a scale of zero to one hundred, we are not even 5% educated on how to use computer media safely".
"What we lack most is cyber education and internal control. We have several places that have some control and cyber security. Senior management doesn't even know what cybersecurity is, they don't know what cybernetic danger is, they still think it's something from other countries, something from movies, and what worries them most is that there are companies that don't know they are being attacked because they have no control that monitors this type of thing“, he informed.
Finally, based on the fact that national companies have been suffering cyber attacks in recent times, with emphasis on the SONANGOL, BPC, NCR and many others, concludes that there is an urgent need to invest more and better in the issue of cybersecurity in all sectors of our country.
