Critical aviation and marine services ‘interrupted’ by SA Weather hack

The South African Weather Services (Saws) says it is working around the clock to ensure its system is fully restored to online operation after cybercriminals targeted it twice in two days.

SA Weather confirmed on Monday that its information and communication technology (ICT) systems went down on Sunday night after “a security breach by criminal elements.”

“Aspects of critical services, including aviation and marine, have been interrupted,” it said.

Cyber Attack

The entity said an initial attempt to hack the service on Saturday night failed.

“The SA Weather is in the process of reporting the criminal act to relevant authorities. The attack was the second in the space of two days after the first attempt on Saturday, 25 January, failed.

“The public is advised to rely on our social media platforms for weather information. We still have our ICT people on site working on everything to make sure that we’re safe again. For now, the website is still down,” the Saws said.

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Cost of data breach

Last year, IBM’s annual Cost of a Data Breach Report revealed that the average cost of a single data breach case in South Africa was a whopping R53.1 million in 2024

The report showed that stolen or compromised credentials were the most common initial attack vectors in South Africa, accounting for 17% of all cyberattacks. These types of attacks averaged a total cost of R56 million per breach.

According to the 2024 report, 49% of breaches involved data stored across multiple environments, including public, private and on-premises. These breaches were also the most expensive, at an average of R59 million, and took the longest to identify and contain (263 days).

Organisations studied needed an average of 227 days to identify and contain incidents, 31 days below the global average for the data breach lifecycle, which was 258 days.

Cyber threats

Meanwhile, cyber threats evolved faster than before in 2024, primarily due to the rise and popularity of AI tools.

These tools assist cybercriminals in refining and making attack tactics more sophisticated and difficult to recognise, while helping cybersecurity professionals defend against attacks more effectively.

Stu Sjouwerman, CEO of renowned cybersecurity platform KnowBe4, said the landscape is rapidly evolving, and the dynamic between defenders and attackers has never been more complex.

“As we enter 2025, we must embrace the potential of AI to enhance our defences and protect organisations globally.”

Sjouwerman said it is more important than ever to focus on the human element in organisations to lower the risk of becoming a victim of cybercrime.

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