A third of Kenyan corporates report financial hack bids

Hackers attempted to break into the financial systems of a third of Kenya’s firms in the six months to June, highlighting their vulnerability in the wake of an increase in remote working.

Data from Global cybersecurity company Kaspersky shows that 29.3 percent of the financial malware attacks or 2,332 threats in the period targeted corporates.

Kenya recorded 7,962 financial malware attacks in the period, which was, however, a decrease from those reported in the first quarter of last year when firms adopted work from home policy to curb the spread of the Covid-19 disease.

Businesses have since March last year adopted remote working environments in response to the disruptions caused by the ban on social gatherings and a dusk-to dawn-curfew imposed to curb the spread of the pandemic.

“As local businesses have continued to adjust to remote work scenarios and the rest of the circumstances surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic, we have continued to witness cybercriminals using this to their advantage, exploiting the situation however they can,” said Bethwel Opil, enterprise sales manager at Kaspersky.

“When looking at such statistics, we believe it is evident that cybercriminals are more commonly targeting unsuspecting corporate users in Kenya as a way to compromise corporate systems.”

Financial malware includes viruses that are designed and developed to retrieve financial information and steal money from individuals and firms.

Hacking continues to cost firms billions of shillings and sensitive information, heightening the calls for firms to beef up their remote working systems.

Last year, two university students hacked into the NCBA Group system and stole Sh24.4 million using M-Pesa accounts.

With the remote working set to continue in the face of the fourth wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, Kaspersky said firms need to adopt anti-advanced persistent threat and endpoint detection and response technologies to guard against the threats.