Cyber crooks target SMEs

Tech Reporter

BoHe - secondary tecHnology driven solutions

Private institutions accommodate approximately 5% of the population with a growing number of private institutions offering an online education. Home schoolers have more than doubled over the last 20 months, making up some 300 000 students or 2.5% of the school learners since the start of COVID-19.

“As a pioneer in private higher education specialising in online and distance learning over the past 30 years, the Boston Group realises the challenges faced by parents who select to home school their children. Together with corporates that include Arena holdings and a banking institution, BOHE has reached out to sponsor learners.

Our mission is to create new opportunities for home education parents and learners.

• We give parents their own log-ins so they are always able to monitor progress and participation.

• We use gamification to motivate participation and progress.

• We identify knowledge gaps with the artificial intelligence platform we use, and work to close the gaps before further progress is made in the syllabi

• We are a registered Cambridge Associate, and can assist students in the ‘how’ of assessments, mak- ing the examination journey way more successful.

• It is important for learners to be registered with an institution that is recognised by Cambridge so that the institution has access to the Cambridge Support Hub. This will ensure that the learners are being taught in terms of the specified guidelines and assessment objectives

• We work to provide an international aspect to schooling, making our students global players when it comes to work, further studies and networking.

BOHE creates an aspirational online learning experience by offering support to the Cambridge Assessment modules, i.e. International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) and Advanced Supplementary (AS) Levels, or group awards, i.e. International Certificate of Education (ICE) and Advanced International Certificate of Education (AICE),” says Eli Katz, CEO Boston Online Home Education. “In partnering with Arena, we will make the homeschooling experience alive, successful, academic as well as sociable.”

Covid19 caused borders around the world to close, but at the same time opened them in terms of digital working and digital learning. Thus, the Arena group sees the value in selecting a knowledge base that is international, as our school leavers must be able to communicate, work and study on an international level. BOHE supports Cambridge Assessment. Renowned globally, the Cambridge qualifications are recognised by over 1 400 universities worldwide, including all UK universities, 600 US universities (including Ivy League universities) and other top student destinations including Canada, Australia, Singapore, South Africa, Germany and the Netherlands.

Cyber security researchers have indicated that disregard for IT security is being exploited by cybercriminals.

They say this often happens when small business owners face many responsibilities at the same time, and cyber security may appear complicated and unnecessary.

Security researcher at Kaspersky, Denis Parinov says with the shift to remote work and introduction of advanced technologies in the daily operations of even small companies, security measures need to evolve to support these sophisticated setups.

“Cybercriminals are already way ahead, so much that every organisation will experience a breach attempt at some point. For small companies it is not a matter of whether a cybersecurity incident will happen but when. Having trained staff and an educated IT-specialist is no longer a luxury, but a must-have part of business development,” he says.

Kaspersky researchers assessed the dynamics of attacks on small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) between January and April, and the same period in 2021, to identify threats that pose increasing danger to entrepreneurs.

In 2022 the number of Trojan password stealing ware (Trojan-PSW) detections in South Africa increased by 69% when compared to the same period in 2021; 20 922 detections in 2022 compared to 12 344 in 2021.

Trojan-PSW malware steals passwords along with other account information, which then allows attackers to gain access to the corporate network and steal sensitive information. Another popular attack tool is Internet attacks, specifically web pages with redirects to exploits, sites containing exploits and other malicious programmes or botnet C&C centres. While in South Africa the number of these attacks decreased in the first four months of 2022 by 13%, (419 506 infections in 2022 compared to 483 846 in 2021), the amount of attacks remains high.

With the shift towards remote working, many companies have introduced the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), technology that enables computers on the same corporate network to be linked and accessed remotely, even when the employees are at home.

While the number of attacks on RDP has decreased in South Africa, this is still a challenge globally. In the first trimester of 2021 there were about 47, 5 million attacks in the US, whereas for the same period in 2022 the number had risen to 51 million. Having a special security solution enables attack visualisation and provides IT administrators with a convenient tool for incident analysis. The faster they can analyse a leak, the better they can solve consequences.