An all-female team of graduate students from the University of Johannesburg has won the inaugural SATNAC Cybersecurity Hackathon, in partnership with Telkom and Amdocs.
Under the theme “Fraud Management: Innovating against digital identity theft, business email compromise and insider threat in a cloud-based world”, this hackathon encouraged teams to address technical weaknesses within the ICT sector.
Today, more and more businesses are opting to establish and implement cloud-based infrastructure – this means that the risk of fraud and cyber-attacks is also on the rise.
In fact, 45% of all cybersecurity breaches are cloud-based, highlighting the immense risk that this technology poses when not coupled with the correct cybersecurity practices.
In particular, the telecommunications industry suffers huge losses as a result of sim-swap fraud, digital identity theft and other major breaches – with an estimated cost of R60-million per breach.
“From scalability and flexibility to cost optimisation, the benefits of cloud computing are unparalleled,” says Portia Malueke, IT services group executive at Telkom. “But that doesn’t mean we can ignore the threats and risks that organisations are exposed to, through adoption of this technology.”
To help mitigate this, 10 teams of developers, strategists, and thinkers, aimed to design a solution that could counter the rise of unauthorised SIM-swaps, digital identity theft and business email compromise.
After attending a variety of masterclasses and accelerator sessions, the teams had just 48 hours, from 16h00 on Friday, 19th of August, until 16h00, Sunday 21st of August, to develop and present their solutions. But it was the SecureIT team, made up by Lethabo Makopo, Angelique Mokwena and Lerato Tlhako, that topped the table.
“The solution we developed relies on the use of graphical passwords, as opposed to traditional passwords that can be uncovered using keyloggers. We also made sure to mitigate the major cybersecurity vulnerabilities using a variety of coding techniques,” says Tlhako.
The SecureIT team were awarded the winners of the hackathon at the annual SATNAC event in George, Western Cape. In recognition of their work, they received a cheque for R80 000 as well as the chance to present their solution to the entire cohort of SATNAC attendees.
“We are so proud of what we have achieved here. As an all-female team, we worked hard to break barriers, challenge ourselves and represent women in technology,” adds Mokwena.