Cybercrime on the Rise Around the World, Kenya Not Spared

“Strategic security spending demands that businesses identify and invest in cybersecurity practices that are most relevant to today’s advanced attacks. It’s critical to fund processes that fully integrate predictive, preventive, detective and incident-response capabilities to minimize the impact of these incidents.” These were the words of  Mark Lobel, PwC Advisory principal focused on information security as reported on Wealth and finance International.

Reported incidences in the information security around the world rose by 48 percent to 42.8 million. According to The Global State of Information Security Survey 2015 the increase brings incidences of cybercrime to 117,339 attacks per day. Of all the attacks, detected ones increased by 66 percent year-over-year since 2009.

According to the survey, a significant increase in incidences of information security has made the financial losses increase especially for large organizations with revenues of more than one billion dollars seeing losses of from 3.9 million dollars in 2013 to 5.9 million dollars in 2014 this being an increase of 53 percent.

Cybercrime is fast evolving and even the most powerful of countries like the United State of America is almost being overtaken. In the ongoing presidential campaigns in the United States, there have been allegations that the Russian government is involved in the hacking of the US intelligence as well the now familiar phrase ‘Hillary Clinton leaked emails’.

High profile attacks by nation-states, organized crime and competitors are among the least frequent incidents, yet the fastest-growing cyber threats. This year, respondents who reported a cyber-attack by nation-states increased 86 percent – and those incidents are also most likely under-reported. The survey also found a striking 64 percent increase in security incidents attributed to competitors, some of whom may be backed by nation-states according to Wealth and finance International.

According to The Global State of Information Security Survey 2016, enterprise organizations continue to be more impacted by security incidences than SMBs. The average number of detected security incidences for enterprise organizations in the last 12 months was 9,156 compared to 3,577 on average for SMB organizations.

According to a report released and published on GO-Gulf by 2017, the global cyber security market is expected to skyrocket to 120.1 billion dollars from 63.1 billion dollars in 2011. The estimated annual cost of global cybercrime is 100 billion. Victims of cybercrime per year are estimate to be at 556 million, 1.5 million per day, 18 per second and 232.4 million identities exposed.

The image below shows the global common types of information attacks:

Kenya has witnessed an increase in cases of cybercrime. The cases have negatively impacted on both the public and private sectors leading to huge losses.

It is said that 3,000 cybercrime related incidences are reported every month according to Information Technology, Security and Assurance (ISACA) Kenya chapter.

The cybercrime incidences in Kenya range from banking fraud, money transfer (MPESA) as well interference of personal data by hackers. according to the president of ISACA Roy Owino, “there is need to thoroughly protect the digital platform. Data and personal information is getting into wrong hands. Like in a month, we have received between 2,000 to 3,000 cases of cybercrime and they range from hacking of personal data, MPESA transactions and banking fraud as reported on Standard Digital.

According to the Kenya Cyber Security Report 2015, in the year 2015, the following sectors were at a greater risk of being subjected to cybercrime by rank from the most vulnerable:

1. Government
2. Banking
3. Financial services and mobile money
4. Manufacturing
5. Sacco’s
6. Telecommunication
7. Insurance
8. Retail
9. Hospitality
10. Professional services

According to the same report, the following are top ICT trends influencing cybersecurity in Kenya:

1. Cloud Based Solutions
2. ERP Automation
3. Outsourcing and managed services
4. Mobile and Internet
5. Commercialization of hacking
6. Industry regulation