News item | 16-03-2017
The cermony for the official launch of the report ‘Cyber crimes and cyber security trends in Africa’ was held on March 10th 2017 at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa. The report is part of a Global Forum for Cybersecurity Expertise (GFCE) Initiative, which is a cooperation between the African Union, Symantec and the United States.
A GFCE initiative
The aim of the GFCE initiative ‘Cyber crime and cyber security trends in Africa’ was to establish and bolster relationships amongst stakeholders so that they can share both aggregate and specific cyber threat information. Governments and other interested parties could then utilize this information to identify gaps and to strengthen prevention and response mechanisms to confront the diverse range of cyber threats.
To address this information gap on cybersecurity issues in Africa, the African Union Commission (AUC) in collaboration with USA Department of State and Symantec Corporation have engaged in a Public-Private Partnership and have drafted a comprehensive report that collects and presents detailed technical data on the main cybersecurity threats and trends in Africa.
Assessing cyber trends in Africa
The report reflects the cybersecurity readiness of 32 AU Member States and explores various cybercrime trends experienced by the AU Member States which includes major occurrences of cyber incidents and illicit cyber activities affecting organizations and individuals in Africa. The core objective of the report is to contribute to achieve better understanding of how criminals and other actors are targeting and exploiting cyber-related vulnerabilities in the territory of AU Member States and encourage the cooperation and sharing information and best practices among AU Member States.
As opposed to other threat reports on cyber vulnerabilities in Africa, this report is unique in that it incorporates the perspectives of African Union Commission Member State governments and online threat data from Symantec’s comprehensive cyber threat monitoring network.
The African Union Commission reiterated the importance for AU Member States to build up national cybersecurity frameworks based on legal and technical measures to fight against all kind of cybercrime and cyber-attacks both at national and continental levels to secure the African cyberspace and allow African citizens to access the internet and digital services.
