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Interpol is creating a new cybercrime operations desk with UK funding to boost the capacity of 49 African countries to fight cybercrime.
According to global cybersecurity firm–Kaspersky, Kenya is among African countries facing a possible increase in cybercrime in 2021, amid economic uncertainty occasioned by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Kenya Computer Incident Response Team – Coordination Centre (National KE-CIRT/CC) detected 35.2 million cyber threat events between July and September 2020.
According to data from the Communications Authority of Kenya, this represented a 152.9 per cent increase from the 13.9 million threat events detected in the previous quarter.
On their website, Interpol said the Africa desk will help shape a regional strategy to drive intelligence-led coordinated actions against cybercriminals and support joint operations.
Cybercrime is one of the most prolific forms of international crime, with damages set to cost the global economy USD 10.5 trillion annually by 2025.
UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said they are working with like-minded partners, to make sure that the international order that governs cyber activity is fit for purpose.
“Our aim should be to create a cyberspace that is free, open, peaceful and secure, which benefits all countries and all people,” he said.
“We want to see international law respected in cyberspace, just like anywhere else. And we need to show how the rules apply to these changes in technology, the changes in threats, and the systematic attempts to render the internet a lawless space.”
A 2017 assessment done in Africa found that each act of Internet fraud enabled cybercriminals to steal an average of Sh288m from companies and Sh45m from individuals.
Raab said the project will provide opportunities to take regular pulse checks on cybercrime in Africa and to publish annual threat landscape assessments that will underpin operational activities.
While the increase in these crimes will vary by country, African nations must prepare themselves for the inevitability of increases in malware that already topped 28 million by August last year, according to Kaspersky research.
Kaspersky security solutions in September reported 28 million malware attacks in 2020 and 102 million detections of potentially unwanted programs (pornware, adware among others), where South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria were the most affected.
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