Hackers love South Africa, because cybersecurity measures are not as robust here, and even more so now during the COVID-19 pandemic, while a lot of employees are still working from home.

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In a world that has been struck by a pandemic that will forever change the way we work, businesses across the globe have had to adapt to working digitally. Fortunately, there are many apps and platforms that enable people to do just that. One aspect of working digitally that is often overlooked is the signing of legal documents. In many business processes we need to sign off documents but in our mad scramble to digitally enable ourselves, for many companies this is something that was overlooked.

Cyberthreats are constantly evolving in order to take advantage of online behaviour and trends. The COVID-19 outbreak is no exception. Cyber criminals are exploiting the current pandemic for commercial gain by targeting individuals and organisations with COVID-19 related scams and phishing emails. We've already seen hackers attacking the World Health Organization, cyber criminals hitting a COVID-19 vaccine testing facility with ransomware, healthcare workers being targeted with Windows malware using coronavirus information as the lure and hackers targeting Zoom domains.

By now a third of the global population is on lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic which caused a lot of people to be trapped in their homes for more than a month. There’s many people who are unable to work from home and even those who are able to work from home have to keep their kids busy and then there’s evening and weekends where everyone is stuck in their homes. You can clean the house, mow the lawn and play dress up (or WWE smackdown for those with boys) for so long. For many, the television turned out to be a saving grace.

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The topic of email fraud recently made the headlines in South Africa when a well-known investigative TV show highlighted how many people were defrauded out of hundreds of thousands of Rands by syndicates who intercepted invoices sent by email and then changed the banking details to their own. Completely unaware of the interception, the payment would then be made to the wrong bank account. Attorneys in property transfer transactions where large sums of money were transferred were particularly hard hit.

Digitisation and digital transformation have seen a significant organisational shift from paper-based processes and procedures. Most organisations have adopted alternative methodologies for signing documents to ensure auditable document trails while minimising the costs associated with paper-based transactions and the risks of fraud and identity theft. However, few recognise the difference between an electronic signature and a digital signature – a critical difference that can have an impact on the legalities and security of any document trail

Phishing scams are attempts by fraudsters to appear like legitimate organisations such as banks who try to trick you into giving out your personal information including passwords, credit card information and account numbers. Messages are designed to look authentic and often take you to a fake website which appears to be the real deal.