The Pan South African Language Board, in collaboration with Focal Point, announced this week that the South African word of the year is loadshedding.
This comes as no surprise for a country that has been plagued by the dreaded rolling black outs throughout 2022, even reaching level 6.
According to Carlo Bolzonello, South Africa country lead for Trellix, one thing companies in South Africa can rely on is the continuation of their cybersecurity defences during blackouts.
“Power outages can, in some cases, even prove to be beneficial, as when systems are offline, hackers are not able to use their cloud-based methodologies to gain access to your business network.”
Bolzonello goes on to explain that when power shortages happen, business targeted by cyberattacks have, in some circumstances, taken advantage of the opportunity to restore systems using their offline servers, and avoid paying any ransoms.
He adds that the majority of software providers have more than enough backup capacity to keep systems running through even extended power outages, and are unlikely to be affected at all.
“While there are many bleak realities South African businesses face due to load shedding, organisations can at least rest assured that their cybersecurity systems will remain in place, protecting critical business data and assets,” Bolzonello concludes.