Beating cyber attacks-Migrate data unto cloud sources-Roger Sels
One crucial thing in Africa and the Middle East is that connectivity at home is a bit of a hitting miss. If you are living in a rural location
The Vice President of Blackberry, Roger Sels has advised Businesses to migrate their data to cloud sources as a means of beating cyber attacks.
He predicted that most companies are likely to reach their most vulnerable states as their staff work remotely.
“I think there are several things to call out there but the first perspective I will like to share is to think of it in these terms. If you have an organization of closely let’s say 200 people or 50,000 people and the 200 people maybe you have one office or 5 offices and let’s say the 500, 000 people you have 100 offices,” he said.
“Now, if you have 50,000 remote workers, you have 50,000 offices in a way and you can’t ship equipment to everyone. Usually, in the office, we have our customs and our modes. We have our equipment there, internet connection came in and Everything was reviewed there and it worked,” he added.
Mr. Sels spoke to Odelia Ntiamoah ahead of a Thursday, October 7, 2021, Webinar on Cyber Security organized by the Canada- Ghana Business Chamber in partnership with JoyFM
Furthermore, he noted that working remotely is different because it exposes organizations to risks that people have at their homes.
“Now of course with remote working, you no longer have that. At the same time, you are as an organization, exposed to risks that people have at home. Maybe my home network was already compromised. Some malware is roaming about on my network. I plug in my laptop from work, and it’s compromised. So you have a heightened risk profile. You lose control as an organization because your processes may no longer run as effectively,” he noted.
“We have updates and all of that. If somebody said well, I can actually work locally on my machine and I connect once a week to the VPN, the rest of the time, you have no visibility on the attacks and you cannot send anything else unto the machine,” Mr. Sels indicated.
Background
Between 2016 and 2018, the country lost over US$200 million to recorded cybercrime cases.
According to the Ghana Police Service, more than half of these reported cases were linked to fraud.
Police also recorded an increase in cybercrimes in the country from 116 in 2016 to 412 in 2017 and further to 558 in 2018.
In conclusion, Mr. Sels indicated that one crucial thing in Africa and the Middle East is that connecting to the Companies’ central systems at home is usually a ‘hitting miss’ especially in rural locations thus Companies must get unto cloud sources that are cheaper.
“One crucial thing in Africa and the Middle East is that connectivity at home is a bit of a hitting miss. If you are living in a rural location. Also, you typically don’t want to be sending a lot of data back and forth to the central location. We have to find new ways to keep the environment working and resilient and in a cost-effective manner. I think organizations can adopt cloud and other services and initiatives to achieve this,” he ended.
