Cyberattacks rise by 47.5m on shift to online banking, remote working
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- 03 Jun 2022
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The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) said the country’s transition to a digital economy has attracted the attention of increasingly sophisticated cybercriminals locally and globally.
CA data shows the National Kenya Computer Incident Response Team – Coordination Centre (National KE-CIRT/CC) detected 43 per cent more cyber threats or 158.4 million in the year to June 2021 up from 110.89 million in 2020.
The National KE-CIRT/CC, which was launched in August 2017 and operates day and night throughout the year, is charged with detecting, preventing and responding to various cyber threats and is equipped with state-of-the-art systems to stop cyberattacks.
“This surge in cyber threats directed at local targets was attributed to increased internet penetration, uptake of e-commerce and cloud-based services to support remote working as well as a rise in the use of social media,” said CA.
Effects of Covid-19 pandemic
The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic has seen a rapid shift to remote working, e-commerce, online banking as well as digitisation of government services. The data shows malware attacks, including ransomware attacks, shot up 20 per cent during the period to 122.5 million up from 101.6 million in the previous year with criminals targeting the increasing availability of data of their would-be victims to infect their systems with malicious software.
At the same time, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks grew more than ten times to 17.6 million attacks up from just 1.4 million such attacks the previous year.
Cyberattacks on web applications also more than doubled to 16.2 million up from 7.6 million due to the increased adoption of mobile apps. CA said cybercriminals take on various forms including insiders, hacktivists, organised cybercriminals, cyber terrorists and even state-sponsored threat agents. Read More…
