Rising Cybercrime in Africa: What is happening and what to do about it

The Africa Money and Defi Summit West Africa, held in Accra, Ghana, was fundamental for us to attend. Andrew Mori, our CEO, shared a presentation on “Rising Cybercrime ...

Ifunanya Okolie
Ifunanya Okolie

Administration Solutions Specialist

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The Africa Money and Defi Summit West Africa, held in Accra, Ghana, was fundamental for us to attend. Andrew Mori, our CEO, shared a presentation on “Rising Cybercrime in Africa: What is happening and what to do about it.”

Andrew started his presentation by quoting a hack at one of the biggest software companies in the world, Uber Technologies, whose data breach affected more than 50 million users.

What is happening in Africa? 

Africa faces a massive cybercrime threat as the pace of digitalisation increases. The region’s digital economy expects to reach $180bn a year by mid-2025, but it seems like inadequate efforts to block cybercrime have hindered this growth.  

Phishing attacks detected in the overall region are on a spree. Kaspersky analysis reveals that over the last three months, phishing cases in Kenya have risen more than 438%, with 4,578,216 cases reported in South Africa, adding more than 144% to the previous data. 

The phishing cases are due to a fast-evolving array of digital threats from espionage, critical infrastructure sabotage, organized crime, and combat innovation.

According to investmentmonitor.ai, African governments and corporations face the prospect of investing hugely in digital security, as cyberattacks become the norm and internet traffic doubles every 18 months. 

What to do about it?

According to Andrew Mori, businesses must start focusing on continuous monitoring of cloud-native environments, which entails companies educating their employees about the dangers of social engineering and how to defend against it. 

Social engineering attacks are becoming more common and sophisticated, so it’s critical to be aware of the dangers. Social engineering is a strategy cyber attackers use to fool their target through impersonation. They might pretend to be your boss, your supplier, someone from the IT team, or your delivery company. Regardless of who these hackers impersonate, their motivation is always the same: to extract money or data.

If you work for a company or any startup that holds sensitive data, ensure you know how to spot a social engineering attack and what to do if you encounter one.

New cyber threats emerge every day. Understand the risks you face, and protect your business by leveraging cybersecurity solutions to help protect you from the edge of the cloud. 

Cyber risks are constantly changing, so we must evolve and ponder upon the most pressing cyber threats with the potential financial impact to help our leadership prioritise the initiatives with the highest ROI. 

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In attendance, Deimos was one of the various players and stakeholders in the fintech and DeFi space, including Polygon, Flutterwave, Bamboo, Bitpowr, Paystack, EMTECH and many others.?

 

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