Team ‘represents women’ in hackathon

Johannesburg - A team of female University of Johannesburg students has won the inaugural Southern Africa Telecommunication Networks and Applications Conference (SATNAC) cyber security hackathon, in partnership with Telkom and Amdocs.

Under the theme Fraud Management - Innovating against digital identity theft, business email compromise and insider threat in a cloud-based world, the hackathon encouraged teams to address technical weaknesses in the ICT sector.

As businesses establish cloud-based infrastructure the risk of cyberattacks increases. It has been noted that 45% of cyber security breaches are cloud-based; highlighting the risk this technology poses when not coupled with appropriate security practices. The telecommunications industry suffers huge losses from SIM-swap fraud, digital identity theft and other breaches, with an estimated cost of R60 million per breach.

Telkom IT services executive Portia Maluleke said: “From flexibility