FEATURE: PHISHING
South Africa is known by many epithets, from the‘ rainbow nation’ to the‘ cradle of humankind’. And the‘ World’ s phishing capital’ was not among them. Yet in 2025, phishing attacks made up 52 % of all cyberthreats in the country, compared to the global average of 28 %.
As one of the costliest attack vectors, phishing thrives because attackers know that fear, urgency, and curiosity are often far more effective than any line of malicious code. The strategy is simple: convince someone to click, and the rest takes care of itself. Unfortunately, this social manipulation has only become more sophisticated in the age of Artificial Intelligence.
Even with businesses providing cybersecurity awareness and training, attackers are still managing to infiltrate perimeters. With GenAI at their disposal, emails are no longer plagued by laughable grammar mistakes or clumsy writing. They are frighteningly real.
This necessitates a shift from the traditional practice of just training employees to detect phishing emails. Yes, employees are the first line of defence, and teaching them is undoubtedly the first step, but the usual email blasts won’ t cut it anymore. Beyond awareness, a phishing mitigation strategy in 2025 should have multiple layers with diverse safeguards in place.
Why let phishing emails into your inbox?
The most effective phishing defence is not just a single tool or solution, but rather a multi-layered approach. And the first layer should strive to block phishing emails before employees even have a chance to react to them.
This begins with something fundamental like email filters. They may sound basic, but they’ re remarkably effective when properly configured. Modern email filtering systems use Machine Learning to detect suspicious patterns, check links against databases of known malicious sites, and identify unusual sender
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