NEWS
Over 1.5 million South Africans engage with
COVID-19 WhatsApp helpline
S
outh Africa’s National Department of
Health (NDoH) has launched COVID-19
Connect – a WhatsApp-based helpline to
deliver accurate, up-to-date information
to the country’s citizens. The service has
already engaged with more than 1.5
million users and has served over 15 million
messages. COVID-19 Connect was created
in a week by Praekelt.Org, using Turn.
io technology that delivers automated
responses providing answers to the most
frequently asked questions about COVID-19
and the Coronavirus. COVID-19 Connect,
endorsed by the National Department
of Health and the National Institute for
Communicable Diseases (NICD), is said to
be playing an important role in supporting
the NDoH’s national response. The service
is enabling the South African government
to have direct communication with the
public, empowering individuals with the right
information and alleviating pressure on the
national call centre.
Debbie Rogers, MD of Praekelt.org, said:
“The NDoH has previously pioneered the
use of WhatsApp to take its MomConnect
maternal health programme to scale. Our
ongoing relationship with the NDoH and
our experience on this, and other large-scale
health initiatives worldwide, has enabled us
to rapidly implement COVID-19 Connect.”
COVID-19 Connect uses Turn.io’s Machine
Learning technology to provide automatic
prioritisation enabling conversations
at scale. South Africans can join the
conversation by texting ‘Hi’ to +27 600 123
456 on WhatsApp.
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South African networks face increase in attacks as
workforces shift to remote access
T
here has been a sharp spike in
network attacks in South Africa this
month as more people work from home
during the pandemic. Kaspersky statistics
showed that between March 15 and 21
affected devices increased in number from
the 20,000 to 30,000 average to peak at
approximately 310,000.
The peak coincides with a time in South
Africa when remote working increased
in response to national emergency
containment measures in an effort to flatten
the curve of spread of the Coronavirus
(COVID-19) in the country.
Maher Yamout, Senior Security Researcher
for the Global Research and Analysis Team
(GReAT) at Kaspersky, said: “The region is
seeing an increase in attempts to break into
organisations’ systems to establish control
over them, sabotage their work or access
sensitive information.
14
INTELLIGENTCIO
“Remote working provides cybercriminals
a prime opportunity to target devices,
especially those that don’t necessarily have
adequate IT security measures in place.”
The types of attacks varied, yet a third of
them used repetitive attempts at various
password combinations. This technique is
common and often works well with weak or
repetitively used passwords. Kaspersky, along
with other market commentators, have
recently shared advice linked to working
from home strategies and the important
security elements to consider.
www.intelligentcio.com