With the disruption on both the local and global scene emerging as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic which saw uptake of digital technologies, the rise of cyber threats and related challenges is hardly surprising.

While many adopted digital technologies to work remotely as well as access services amidst lockdowns and other measures to curb Covid-19, users were exposed to hackers and malware with data and funds at stake.

As the economy moves towards adoption and utilization of digital platforms, there have been reported to exist challenges such as user access to information, data loss and recovery, visibility and control of data, and compliance challenges.

The June 2021 Global Cybersecurity Index by the International Telecommunication Union reported that African countries have seen a rise in digital threats and malicious cyber activities with consequences including sabotaged public infrastructure, losses from digital fraud and illicit financial flows, and national security breaches involving espionage and intelligence theft by militant groups.

Other commonly reported challenges include malware, ransomware, and data breaches like data extortion, data leakage and data disclosure.

With the accelerated pace of digital adoption and integration, the incidence rate is unlikely to drop in the coming days.

Among the recommendations to address the vulnerabilities include increasing public awareness campaigns to ensure users are aware of possible cyber threats and preventive measures as well as increased investments in building up capabilities and technologies to detect and mitigate cybercrime.

Other key recommendations included devoting more resources to setting up and ensuring adequate capacity to monitor and respond to incident reports.

Often, there has been a perception that cyber security preparedness measures are costly, complex and out of technical reach of a majority of local companies, firms and individuals.

In other instances, the local market has often relied on off the shelf solutions from international markets which could include some that are not tailored to local context, local challenges or priced out of relatable pricing.

To build and develop increased capabilities and technologies to detect and mitigate cybercrime among other things requires locally tailored and relevant solutions which reflect key challenges and pain points of local stakeholders.

This will among other things see higher adoption rates of cyber security mitigation measures as well as clear understanding by the local market.

At BSC, aware of the need to ease the cyber security mitigation process and have taken it upon ourselves to ease the process through our Managed security services (MSS).

The solution dubbed NetShield allows us to support organizations in developing plans for cyber security resilience, conduct assessments as well as help them to prevent, detect, and rapidly respond to cyber-attacks.

This has reduced the cost for firms, technical inputs and expectations expected of said companies as well as made it possible to have round the clock monitoring and response to cyber threats.

Approaches that are affordable, practical and convenient for users could be an avenue to drive up risk prevention and management approaches, protecting the cyber environment, as well as individual and corporate end-user assets.