Kenya is one of the African countries facing increased cybercrime threats due to the ongoing economic challenges according to Kaspersky experts. The experts list Kenya, South Africa, and Nigeria as some of the countries expected to witness growth in cybercrimes in 2021.
“Even though every country globally has had to deal with the pandemic in its own way, developing economies across Africa have been especially hard hit by national lockdowns and limited business activity. And thanks to the increased connectedness of people, the rise in unemployment will not only see a spike in traditional crime, but this will also extend to the digital environment – something we are already seeing,” says Lehan van den Heever, Enterprise Cyber Security Advisor for Kaspersky in Africa.
In addition, the rise in the number of remote workers is likely to expose companies to hackers as more employees use unsafe personal internet connections and personal devices for work-related matters. Lehan van den Heever says that few companies have considered how to adopt cybersecurity controls to the new remote working environment. As a result, “some databases and systems are inevitably being left open to intruders.”
Communications Authority of Kenya says that 35.1 million cyber threat incidents were reported in the three months from July to September 2020, 152% higher than the incidents reported at the end of June 2020.
‘‘This increase in cyber threat attacks detected was attributed to the move to working remotely and increased uptake of e-commerce in response to the COVID-19 pandemic,’’ the CA report says.
