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April 19th, 2024 | 3:03 AM ET

The Cyber Threat in Africa

Posted: October 14th, 2015

By Paul Caiazzo

Paul Caiazzo is a Principal and co-Founder of TruShield Security Solutions, Inc., responsible for developing corporate strategy and leading technical product and service development efforts. He also serves as Advisor on Cyber Security for the Science and Technology Policy Center for Development, an organization focused on ICT in the developing world.

Africa faces some unique challenges pertaining to the security of mobile communications. A common misconception is that African networks and Africans themselves are not high value targets, and that they’re not on the radar of any of the major Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) or crime rings.   This is unfortunately not true.

As a rule of thumb, cyber criminals seek to monetize illicit access to information by the easiest, lowest risk means available to them.   And, put simply, data on African networks is often an easier target carrying a lower risk of being caught.   

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