Cybercrime in South Africa is “significant” in a general sense, according to Andrew Pike of legal firm Van Velden, Pike and Nichols. “SA is as vulnerable as anywhere.” But he argued that banking and other financial institutions were probably the most targeted, large corporates and public sector majors in second place, and the shipping industry in all its forms much further down the scale. The worryingly obvious place for exposure to attack in the industry is through the electronic data interchange (EDI) network. “They could instruct the system to release a container to a false receiver, for example,” he said. Another target of attack, and quite frightening for mariners, Pike added, is diverting ships through hacking into their global positioning satellite (GPS) software. Either directing them to a hijacking point if theft is your motive, or into the wrong shipping lane for those with vandalism in mind. It may not yet be that evident, according to Andrew Robinson, director of Norton Rose Fulbright in SA, but much of that may be due to the fight against cybercrime. “For example, within our firm globally we have full departments dealing with cybercrime and the insurance against it,” he told FTW. And a big risk area is where a company electronically stores a client’s confidential information – but doesn’t have this adequately firewalled. “Then his client has a case against that company for not keeping it properly protected,” said Robinson. And that case could expand geometrically, as clients’ clients become involved, he added. And the simple, and probably most common, case of cybercrime in the industry in SA is an employee getting inside information and selling it to some rogue who wants to use it for criminal purposes. The warning is that companies are at risk from thieves who are becoming more sophisticated at pilfering data from their servers. All of which adds up to more revenue being added to the cybercrime coffers, and the sheer cost of electronic, administrative and insurance protection against the ‘hidden menace’. INSERT & CAPTION Within our firm globally we have full departments dealing with cybercrime and the insurance against it. – Andrew Robinson
