Data breach at insurer Liberty highlights rising cyber security risk

Insurance and investment group Liberty has become the latest institution in South Africa to be hit by a data hack.

The breach potentially exposes the personal information of certain clients

The company said in a statement that it detected unauthorised third-party access to select data systems, and immediately took steps to mitigate the impact.

An SMS sent to Liberty clients reads: "Liberty recently detected unauthorised access to your personal information. Your policies and investments remain secure and our services are running normally."

Stephen Grootes gets comment from cyber security specialist Sibusiso Sishi, director at IronSky South Africa.

Sishi says hackers are able to extract more and more information as they become increasingly brazen, and South Africa has become a target for the ransomware groups out to exploit company systems.

He refers to another attack just a week ago where the Gauteng Provincial Government was hacked by a new ransomware syndicate.

"They potentially suffered a breach with 3.8 terabytes of data leaving the environment."

Sishi chuckles when asked if there is any way an institution can ensure that they are 100% protected against attacks like these.

"The only way that a company can ensure they're 100% secure is if nobody gets access to any sort of data! There is a balance between security and usability and, as in the case of LIberty, some firms have a lot of client-facing systems, a lot of systems that their own internal staff use... so it's virtually impossible to say you're going to be fully protected against any sort of breach."

The best you can do, he says, is to limit as much as is possible the amount of time a hacker does have to extract information out of your systems.

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