Zambian telecoms regulator fighting cybercrime

A report on BizTechAfrica says Zambia’s telecommunications sector regulator, ZICTA, has established Computer Incident Response Teams in locations around the Southern African country to fight cybercrime. The teams will help with creating awareness of cyber threats affecting organisations and individuals.

According to the article ZICTA has also partnered with the ITU to establish a watch and warn centre with a computer system which will regulate mail activities on the Internet. It’s not clear exactly how this will work.

Computer security issues like phishing are increasingly occurring in Zambia, like they are in other countries on the continent, and ZICTA has been creating awareness of the problems to help Zambians avoid becoming victims.

The development is a worthy one because cybercrimes have always been high in Africa, but most financial institutions that fall victim do not publicize due to fears of losing their clientele. A recent story not far from home is the PostBank one in South Africa where the bank was robbed of US $6.4 million in January of this year. The hackers created what they call a backdoor in computer security, and used this to access the computer network as well as to transfer the funds to their accounts which they emptied at ATMs.

Source: BizTechAfrica