{"id":30980,"date":"2019-12-17T09:34:50","date_gmt":"2019-12-17T09:34:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/?p=30980"},"modified":"2019-12-20T09:15:40","modified_gmt":"2019-12-20T09:15:40","slug":"the-knowbe4-african-cybersecurity-awareness-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/2019\/12\/17\/the-knowbe4-african-cybersecurity-awareness-report\/","title":{"rendered":"The KnowBe4 African Cybersecurity Awareness Report"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Anna Collard, the Managing Director of KnowBe4 Africa, a specialist in cybersecurity awareness training, was in Mauritius to present The 2019 KnowBe4 African Cybersecurity Awareness Report<\/em> with over 800 respondents across eight countries in Africa: South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt, Morocco, Mauritius and Botswana. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The survey revealed the pressing\nneed to educate Africans to the different cyberattacks. The key finding of the report\nare as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 53% of Africans surveyed think that\ntrusting emails from people they know is good enough<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 64% didn\u2019t know what ransomware is, yet\nthey believe they can easily identify a security threat<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 28% have fallen for a phishing email and\n50% have had a malware infection<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 52% don\u2019t know what multi-factor\nauthentication is<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe results proved that respondents\u2019 confidence was based on the little they knew about cyber-attacks and it is where the problem lies,\u201d said Collard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAfricans are not prepared for these threats, making them increasingly easy preys to cybercriminals.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According\nto Business Insider SA, 525 million Africans were connected to the Internet in\nJune 2019 \u2013 representing 40% of Africa\u2019s total population. This number is\nexpected to grow to a billion people by 2022. As connectivity improves, users\nare faced with increasing cyberattacks. In fact, Africa has been among the\nfastest growing regions in terms of cybercrime activities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it comes more specifically to Mauritius, Anna Collard said: \u201cIt is one of the best prepared countries compared to other African countries with a Government prioritising the ICT sector and a vision to transform Mauritius into a Smart island by 2030.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMauritius is one of only a handful of countries on the continent with a legal framework in place to combat cybercrime.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Global Security Index (GCI)\nshows that Mauritius is ranked among the top ten most committed countries\nglobally and first in Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition, the survey showed a\nslightly higher awareness from Mauritian respondents when compared to other\ncountries. In fact, more than half of respondents in Botswana, Egypt, Kenya,\nGhana, Morocco and Mauritius have enough security smarts to avoid clicking on\nlinks or opening attachments they don\u2019t expect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the top five cybercrimes, financial fraud, impersonation scams, business email compromise, extortion attacks and DDOS attacks on critical infrastructure are expected to rise in the coming years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat makes Africa different to the rest of the world is that cybercriminals are shifting their attention towards the continent and other emerging economies,\u201d said Collard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many\ncriminals consider Africa a safe haven for their illegal operations, as many\nAfrican governments need to attend to other pressing issues such as fighting\npoverty, unstable politics, violent crime and large youth unemployment and\nstill regard cybersecurity as a luxury, not a necessity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In many organisations, cybersecurity\nbudgets are reported to be less than 1% or are non-existent. Africa also faces\nthe problem of a serious skill shortage of security professionals as well as a\nlack of awareness and skills among the general user population to protect them\nonline. Many African Internet users are connecting to the Internet for the\nfirst time and with the sharp increase in the next few years you are looking at\nmillions of people connecting without understanding the risks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another reason for why Africa is so attractive to cybercriminals is the lack of legislation and law enforcement. According to a report by the African Union, only about 20% of African states have basic legal frameworks to deal with cybercrime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kenya,\nSouth Africa and Mauritius are probably the most advanced in this regard and\nNigeria is coming up fast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We\nhave analysed the phish prone % (meaning user’s susceptibility to phishing)\nacross our 25,000 plus customers and nine million end users around the world at\nKnowBe4 and results proved that what starts off with a 30% baseline hit rate is\nlowered by half to 15% in three months and down to only 2% 12 months later,\nshowing a serious and measurable improvement and risk reduction,\u201d added\nCollard. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anna Collard, the Managing Director of KnowBe4 Africa, a specialist in cybersecurity awareness training, was in Mauritius to present The 2019 KnowBe4 African Cybersecurity Awareness Report with over 800 respondents across eight countries in Africa: South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt, Morocco, Mauritius and Botswana. The survey revealed the pressing need to educate Africans to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":30982,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9058,5,275,9057,19,54,9059,13,262,9060],"tags":[5475,1241,12058,388,424,708,889,12057,345,1124,685,277,453],"class_list":["post-30980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-enterprise-security","category-intelligent-technology-newsletter","category-north-africa","category-regional-news","category-research","category-south-africa","category-top-stories","category-used","category-west-africa","tag-anna-collard","tag-botswana","tag-business-insider-sa","tag-cybersecurity","tag-egypt","tag-ghana","tag-internet","tag-knowbe4-africa","tag-mauritius","tag-morocco","tag-nigeria","tag-ransomware","tag-south-africa"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30980"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31104,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30980\/revisions\/31104"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}