NAIROBI, Kenya June 27-Kenyans running online businesses and the increasingly ubiquitous payment portals, are the latest target for cybercriminals.
This revelation emerged during the inaugural Africa Cybersecurity Congress held in Nairobi, a development that has been fueled in part by the exponential growth in use of mobile payments.
Agora Group Co-founder and CEO Hadi Maeleb said that the threats to online businesses were growing at an exponential rate as more than 90 per cent of the business owners are unaware that their enterprises are at risk.
“Cybercriminals are now targeting small businesses more as they have realized that these enterprises do believe they would be exposed due to their comparatively low turnovers, until they lose their data and payments are compromised,” said Maeleb.
He noted that there is no silver bullet to cybercrime and in addition to awareness about the threats, the business owners must go beyond to invest in cybersecurity tools. Unfortunately for them, the business of cybercrime has evolved to a point where attacks like ransomware are now sold as a service.
“This ‘democratization’ of cyberattacks is expected to push losses due to business interruption, financial theft, personal data breaches and even ransom payments over the Kshs 4 trillion mark by end of 2022,” added Maeleb.
Kenya, he pointed out, is a leading country in the use of ICT, with more than 1 million businesses running online, using both websites and social media profiles. According to Maeleb, this is an attractive environment for threat actors, with reality only hitting business executives and owners the moment they become victims.
Kenya’s ICT Policy which came into effect in 2006, can be credited for providing the overall direction for the creation of an enabling environment for ICT growth and usage in Kenya.
To achieve Vision 2030 goal of Kenya as a regional ICT hub, the ICT sector was expected to contribute directly and indirectly to an additional 1.5 per cent to Kenya’s GDP by 2017/2018.
Nonetheless, it is important to note that the continued use of such platforms presents a growing sense of danger to the safety and security of such platforms, the experts noted during the congress.
The Communications Authority of Kenya reported a 47.3 per cent increase in cybercrimes in the past year reaching 37.1 million separate attacks.
