South African government infrastructure faces about 3,312 cyberattacks every week, with cybercrime costing the country roughly R2.2 billion annually.
This is according to the Communications Risk Centre’s (Comric’s) Telecommunications Sector Report for 2025.
However, the report also highlights cybercrime’s impact on the private sector, with the average cost of a data breach reaching nearly R50 million in 2023.
Comric points to ransomware attacks as the most common. These typically involve attackers encrypting the victim’s data and extorting them for a decryption key.
Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni recently highlighted the increase in cybercrime incidents, particularly ransomware attacks.
Comric reported that approximately 78% of South African businesses experienced at least one incident in 2023.
Comric’s report said Kenya faces 4,719 weekly attacks on government infrastructure, Nigeria 4,718, and Moroccan government organisations a whopping 8,733 attacks a week.
This makes the North African country one of the most targeted nations on the African continent, with the government recently facing a state-sponsored cyberattack.
National Treasury attacked
South African government departments and entities have suffered several attacks in the past year. The National Treasury was the most recent victim.
It discovered malware on its Infrastructure Reporting Model website, which is its online reporting and monitoring system.
The government department indicated that the issue was related to the recent attacks on SharePoint, a widely used web-based platform developed by Microsoft for document management and collaboration.
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