CyberSecurity: Africa’s Cyberattacks Rise By 30%

• CyberSecurity: Africa’s Cyberattacks Rise By 30%

Industry leaders at the Third Africa Cyber Security Conference held in Abidjan, Ivory Coast have said that Africa must invest in cybersecurity as the continent is being increasingly targeted by hackers.

As made known by the industry leaders, cyber attacks have gone up by a 20 or 30 per cent over the period and there are possibilities of a further rise.

They also stated that cyber threats have no borders and data pirates attack everything that is progressive.

Michel Bobbilier, the leader of IBM’s elite security unit, the Tiger Team, said that the expertise of cyber attackers have become tremendous; they launch no simple but complex attacks.

“They have organisations, real structured ecosystems, with a great deal of money and technology to launch complex attacks”.

The cybercriminals carry out various forms of operation; mostly bank fraud, exploitation of electronic payment methods, mobile money transfers and mobile money apps, which are spreading with speed all over the African continent.

Speaking on the matter, the Managing Director of Talentys, an Ivorian company operating in West Africa, August Diop, stated that cyber hackers world all over in 2015, made up to a huge sum of 3,000 billion euros ($2,600 billion), a sum he foresee doubling by 2021 if appropriate measures are not deployed.

Although a narrowed down figure is not available as regards to the staggering sum cyber attackers have amassed from Africa, banks and telecommunications companies have continuously suffered a lot of attacks; as the pirates focus on them as their main target.

“Everyone is threatened in Africa, notably by data theft from individuals, companies and governments”.

“As a latecomer to digital technology, Africa can turn its handicap into an advantage by avoiding the errors made in cybersecurity by Europe and America”. August Diop further suggested.

Adebayo Shittu, the Minister of Communication, Nigeria, made known that Nigeria’s yearly losses to cyber attacks amount to N127 billion.

Orange CyberDefense, a subdivision of a multinational telecoms operator, Orange, is set to launch open a CyberSecurity hub in Morocco in 2019, with satellites in Tunisia, Senegal and Ivory Coast.

The industry leaders further made known that, attackers are fast developing new methods, the hackers presently use ransomware, in which they use a malware virus to penetrate a computer and encode a system’s data; after which they propose to offer a code to unlock the data on payment of a ransom.