The national cyber risks assessment workshop held in Cameroon from 2-4 April addressed issues on cybersecurity and cybercrime in the country, national critical assets identification and the protection of critical cyberspace
The workshop is part of the Commonwealth’s Cyber Security Programme to support low and middle-income countries to tackle cyber threats.
Ebot Ebot Enaw, the general manager of the National Agency for Information and Communication Technologies (ANTIC), highlighted the severity of cybercrimes in Cameroon, including scamming, phishing, identity theft through the creation of fake social media accounts, web defacement and skimming.
Moreover, with the exponential growth of internet usage in Cameroon, Enaw said there have been more than 1400 cases of scams, more than 2000 cases of phishing, particularly with mobile money transfers, 32 government agencies and ministries web defaults, and several local banks have suffered considerable financial losses estimated at more than US$6.2mn.
Rowan James Laxton, the British high commissioner to Cameroon, added, “Advances in technology are transforming businesses, and transforming lives, around the world. The way we do business, use information and communicate with each other has changed beyond recognition in our lifetimes.”
“In the wrong hands, these powerful capabilities can be used to disrupt our everyday lives, instead of improving them. They can be harnessed by malign actors to disrupt our democratic elections, undermine our financial systems and cripple our critical infrastructure,” he added.
“The UK is developing its own capability through a system called active cyber defence which is blocking fake emails, taking down phishing attacks and preventing public sector systems from switching to malicious servers. In the past year, this system has stopped more than four and a half million malicious emails from reaching users and has weeded out more than half a million scam emails that pretended to come from government accounts,” he stated.
