This archive report was first published on 5 July 2020.
Published on July 5, 2020, a report by Dimension Data revealed a 55% increase in insider-related cybersecurity incidents in East Africa over the last three months.
The sudden spike in cybersecurity incidents is attributed to attackers taking advantage of publicly available weak systems and security controls designed for traditional on-premise infrastructure, which are struggling to keep up with the shift to remote work.
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The Financial Services Industry (FSI) remains the most targeted sector due to the immediate monetary gain.
According to Ishmael Muli, Head of Dimension Data's Intelligent Security business in East Africa, most insider threats in the region originate from employee negligence and other close associates ignoring corporate cybersecurity policies, misuse of data, and installation of unauthorized applications.
Dimension Data's Intelligent Security unites all the capabilities and security offerings previously managed by its subsidiary brands into one business, offering world-class solutions from global partner NTT Ltd while developing locally relevant solutions tailored for protecting organizations in East Africa.
Mr Muli emphasized the importance of cybersecurity in emerging markets like Kenya, stating that the company plans to focus on local skills development specifically in the threat intelligence space.
Current attacks in East Africa are being linked to hackers employing smarter methods to distribute their server networks and occasionally purchasing command and control systems in other countries, making it difficult to trace the origin of the attacks.
According to the Communication Authority's Annual Report 2018/2019, malware attacks were the most prevalent threats, accounting for approximately 78% of all cyber threat detections by the National Kenya Computer Incident Response Team – Coordination Centre (National KE-CIRT/CC).
Moving forward, cyber criminals will increasingly automate cyberattacks.
The first half of the year has also seen an increase in reconnaissance attacks, accounting for 40% of all observations in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region, according to NTT Ltd's Global Threat Intelligence Report 2020.
A rise in Web Application attacks on common Content Management Systems (CMS) such as Joomla and WordPress accounted for over 20% of observed attacks, while service-specific attacks increased by 40% targeting known vulnerabilities that may have remained largely unaddressed by various organizations.
Mr Muli advised organizations to invest in threat intelligence services to gain regular visibility of what is happening in their internal networks and to automate incidence response to reduce the average remediation time.
