Rennie Naidoo, professor in Information Systems at the Wits School of Business Sciences.
CYBER SECURITY IS A LIE. A SHAMELESS, MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR FRAUD sold to corporations and governments by consultants and tech vendors peddling what one expert calls THE ILLUSION OF CONTROL. In an explosive new paper, Professor Rennie Naidoo BLASTS the industry’s sacred cows, revealing that the very “maturity models” and “frameworks” companies rely on are NOTHING but a sophisticated con, giving executives a FALSE SENSE OF SECURITY while digital predators pillage South Africa with impunity.
Naidoo exposes a HARSH TRUTH: South Africa is a GLOBAL EPICENTER for cyber crime, yet local businesses are drowning in “metrics without meaning” and “dashboards” that glow green while their data bleeds out. Global standards like NIST and ISO 27001 are a CRUEL JOKE in a landscape defined by budget cuts, skills shortages, and fragmenting infrastructure. “What we call maturity,” Naidoo warns, “may in practice be a well-decorated dashboard. Audits pass while systems silently FAIL.”
The plot thickens with the DARK ROLE of ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. Naidoo declares AI a DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD empowering attackers FAR MORE than defenders, creating “black boxes” of automation where human understanding—and accountability—VANISHES. We are blindly outsourcing our survival to algorithms we cannot comprehend, in a desperate race we are GUARANTEED TO LOSE.
This isn’t just a technical failure; it’s a CATASTROPHIC CULTURAL COLLAPSE. The paper indicts corporate leadership for treating security as a “box-ticking exercise” while avoiding the hard questions of responsibility and judgement. The chilling conclusion? We have built a digital fortress on a foundation of SAND, and the coming wave will wash away EVERYTHING we thought was secure. The question isn’t IF your organization will be breached, but whether you are prepared to face the horrifying reality that you NEVER stood a chance.
Author: Kayitsi.com
