Study the scenario and complete the question(s) that follow:
[Cybercrime in South Africa]
South African residents are at a high risk of having their personal details exploited by malicious actors, according to research from Surfshark.
The study ranked South Africa sixth in the world when it comes to the nations most threatened by cybercrime, but its numbers are relatively low compared to the UK and the US. The methodology behind the study included assigning figures for cyber threats, financial losses, and probability points to determine how likely residents of a country are to have their exposed data accessed and used maliciously.
Surfshark said it used FBI data to develop its index.
It lists South Africa seventh in terms of the number of cybercrime victims — behind France.
Transnet ransomware attack
Transnet was the victim of a cyberattack that forced the company to declare force majeure at container terminals and adjust to the manual processing of cargo.
South Africa’s port and rail company appeared to have been hit by a similar strain of ransomware linked to a chain of high-profile data breaches likely carried out by cybercriminals from Eastern Europe and Russia.
A ransom note left by the attackers claimed they had encrypted Transnet’s files, including a terabyte of personal data, financial reports and other documents.
As with many ransomware attacks, it also directed Transnet to a dark web chat portal to negotiate with the hackers. Public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan later revealed that no ransom had been paid during a media update in August 2021.
TransUnion confirmed that the data included ID numbers, date of birth, gender, telephone number, email address, physical address, marital status, employer, duration of employment, vehicle finance contract number, and vehicle identification number.
N4ughtySecTU — the group that claimed responsibility for the attack — alleged it had acquired 4TB of data that included a database of 54 million South Africans. TransUnion received a ransom demand of $15 million (R237 million), which it refused to pay.
Although TransUnion claims the attacker exfiltrated 3.6 million records from its systems, N4ughtySecTU said it obtained several databases.
These include an ANC member database, a Cell C customer database, and TransUnion’s own customer database for its identity protection product.
2.1 Assuming you have been invited as a security analyst, tasked with analysing the data breach and advising Transnet on the security systems they should put in place to prevent the data breaches from happening again.
a. Write a comprehensive report to the Chief Information Officer advising him on the policies, tools and security systems that Transnet should put in place to prevent another breach from happening.
(20 marks)
2.2 The increase in cybercrime has not only affected big companies alone. Civilian have continued to fall prey to cybercriminals daily. How can individual South African protect themselves against cyber-crime?