Digicel Business continues to pump millions of dollars into its cybersecurity services as the company has seen an uptick in fraudsters not only emanating from T&T but also Eastern Europe, Russia, China, North Korea, and most recently Brazil in South America.
“We invest millions of dollars annually to protect ourselves from cyber criminals,” David Esler, general manager of Digicel Business T&T, told the Sunday Business Guardian.
He said it is “absolutely vital” for the company not to become complacent, adding that it works with the best cybersecurity entities in the world to safeguard its brand.
Esler shared the latest statistics on cybersecurity impacting the region and the country noting, “In the Caribbean, you’ve already heard that as at May 2022, there were 144 million cyber threats.”
Drilling further down into vulnerabilities discovered in T&T, Fortinet’s Anti-Botnet services detected approximately 400,000 threats as of May 2022.
Fortinet, a global renown cybersecurity firm, describes botnets as “a network of computers infected by malware under the control of a single attacking party, known as the “bot -herder.”
Each machine under the control of the bot-herder is known as a bot.
What makes botnets dangerous, according to the firm is their ability to control an organisation’s computer and use it (the computer) to carry out attacks.
“Think about the revenue impact on your business if a botnet manipulated your computer or the computer of a company with whom you do business,” Esler said.
“What would be the implications for your company if your supplier’s system malfunctioned and you can’t receive the necessary inputs or services to operate? What would occur if it happened to one or several of your trading partners? Do you want to wait to find out? You can fall prey to cyber attacks/cyber theft without being aware or present,” he said.
Cyber Security Ventures, a research firm on cybersecurity forecasts global cybersecurity spending to surpass $US1.75 trillion from 2021 to 2025.
Additionally, PricewaterhouseCoopers’ (PwC) 2022 Global Digital Trust Insights showed that more entities are expecting their cyber budget to grow compared to previous years.
Of these companies, PwC indicated that over a third of them project double-digit cyber-spending growth.
Noting that cybersecurity affects everyone, not just Digicel Business or its customers Esler advised, “It’s really important that when it comes to cybersecurity it’s not just people who can access the internet or the banks looking after really sensitive information.
Cyber criminals don’t care who they attack. All they care about is being able to cause chaos, confusion and try to monetise cyber crime.”
On whether these attacks have resulted in a loss of Digicel’s customer base he said this was not the case as the company continues to work and protect customers’ information to mitigate attacks.
However, he admitted when these events occur, it does cause some level of reputational damage in the business that has been impacted.
“It does cause a lack of customer trust, and it does cost financial impact as well, not just in paying for ransomware attacks, not just because they’re offline and unable to conduct their business. So customers can go out of business and they can stop trading because of a cyber attack. But we do everything we can to protect our customers,” Esler maintained.
He cited that in 2021, the highest type of attacks globally were system intrusions, representing around 40 per cent. More and more, Esler added, attackers are trying to find “zero-day exploits” meaning they are researching applications and environments, trying to exploit them, and trying to gain access to them.
“Sometimes an attack happens or an attacker gains access to your system and you don’t even know. They are just in the network for weeks or months observing, copying out your information, and understanding your network before they try to hit you with ransomware.”
If there’s no proper monitoring this will never be known.
“Or if you’re not doing the proper due diligence you’ll never find this out. T&T is very vulnerable to these types of attacks and attackers don’t care if the country is large or small – the only thing they see is your weaknesses and the potential to make money from exploiting a company’s exposure,” Esler added.
Also speaking with the Sunday Business Guardian was Douglas Thomas, Digicel Business Protect Cyber Security Expert who also noted that there’s been “nefarious activity” coming into T&T as he identified that threats generally come from Eastern Europe, Russia, China, and North Korea.
He noted that these are the largest areas from which threats emanate especially because Eastern Asia is not sanctioned and there is no control or regulation regarding technology.
“So you basically have all types of hacking tools and software being developed and there are no regulations on it,” Thomas said.
On the issue of how long a business may last after being exposed to a cyber attack, data from a Digicel Business survey showed 60 per cent of small businesses close within six months after being hacked.
However, the general manager for Digicel Business T&T noted that the length of time that a business remains operational after falling victim can vary greatly depending on the severity of the attack and the resources available for recovery.
In some cases, Esler said a business may be able to recover quickly from a cyber attack and resume normal operations within a matter of hours or days.
For example, he explained if the attack is limited to a single system or device, the business may be able to isolate and contain the problem and restore normal operations relatively quickly.
However, in other cases, a cyber attack can be much more serious and can result in extended downtime for a business.
For example, Esler said if a business’ entire network is infected with malware or its data is encrypted by ransomware, the process of recovery can be much more complex and time-consuming.
In such cases, it may take weeks or even months for a business to fully recover from a cyber attack.
Esler said the length of time a business remains operational after a cyber attack can also depend on the resources available to the business for recovery.
For example, he cited that a larger business with a dedicated IT security team and robust disaster recovery systems may be able to recover from an attack more quickly than a smaller business with limited resources.
Cyber attacks, especially those linked with scams have been prevalent in T&T and the region in the last few months - with notable hacks occurring in supermarket chains and other companies.
It was only this week that the Bankers Association of T&T (BATT) issued a press release warning of an account sharing false information about a partnership with commercial banks in T&T to solicit funds from unsuspecting individuals.
“This is a scam and is not sanctioned by or affiliated with BATT or any of its member banks. If you have seen any of these posts, please ignore. This is a fraudulent ad and neither BATT nor its member banks have given any approval to anyone to act on our behalf with respect to any proposed investment scheme,” the organisation advised.
