With an aim to develop counterintelligence to tackle the increasing number of cybercrimes in Africa, Tradepass hosted more than 1500 cyber enthusiasts virtually at the 3rd edition of CyFrica recently.
With global pandemic impacting around the world, Africa experienced a surge in the remote working (work-from-home) figures with an increased usage of insecure remote/home servers, making the region more vulnerable to cybercrimes. CyFrica 2021: LIVE laid out the best practices required for public and private enterprises to understand the threats surrounding the digital landscape and the necessary measures to mitigate the whole issue.
“From time to time, there is a need for risk assessment to evaluate the risk of this new normal which is working remotely”, said Assistant Director, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Dr. Mohammed Onimisi Yahaya, at the recent virtual conference CyFrica 2021: LIVE.
Kaspersky’s Head of Research Center META, Dr. Mohamad Amin Hasbini, while sharing his insight on the current pandemic period mentioned: “The attackers will continue to exploit the pandemic without any shame or restriction as they have not even spared the medical research centers that are working on developing the vaccine”.
In his position, Dell Technologies – DPS Division’s Manager of Systems Engineering, Ravi Baldev said: “If you want to protect your digital transformation journeys, you got to have the right mechanisms”, while enlightening all the participants on data protection.
Talking about cyber resilient strategies for businesses, Enrico Salvatori, Business Consultant – Security at Micro Focus stated, “A resilient organization is one that understands how to anticipate threats, withstand problems, recover from breaches and evolve to the next version of itself”.
State Minister from the Ministry of Innovation and Technology, Ethiopia, H.E. Dr. Ahmedin Mohammed, in his address, laid the blue print for a Digital Ethiopia through his presentation where he mentioned that, “Countries that invest in future industries like Big Data, Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence, stand a good chance at becoming the leaders and innovators in the 4th Industrial Revolution”.
He also outlined how moving towards a digital economy will require a completely new mindset, leadership and an improved coordination between the government and the private sectors.
“Automation and Big Data are in my view the two sides of the same coin and if that piece of metal says digital transformation, then I think that is the new-age currency that the African continent really needs and specially to empower their youth through it”, commented Vice President, Africa & RoW, Automation Anywhere, Sriram Narayanan.
The virtual summit covered a variety of topics like ‘Securing the future of work with Cyber AI’, ‘Diplomacy in Cyberspace’, ‘Africa’s Cyber Security Culture’ and many others. The summit also threw light on the emerging, new-age technologies and discussed the vulnerabilities faced by the 5G networks in Africa. Moreover, it left no stone unturned while giving an analysis about cybercrimes and security, every piece of industry intelligence related to Cloud Management, Malwares, Ransomware, Implementing the Zero Trust framework, Banking Trojans, Security Breaches, AI for cyber security, among other recommendations.
The sponsors included: Kaspersky, Check Point Software, Fortinet, Securonix, KnowBe4, BeyondTrust, Darktrace, Tripwire, Micro Focus, Dell Technologies, SentinelOne, ManageEngine, Redington Value and Acronis. Media Partner for the event was Cyber Era NG.
