Africa investors to meet in Kigali in March over cyber security

Investors and governments officials in Africa will meet next month in Kigali, Rwanda to seek ways of taming the rising risk of cyber crime.

Cyber security experts such as Security Africa, and technology firms like Secure Payments Solutions (SPS) and IBM will meet various officials from the financial sector, law enforcement agencies and government officers to discuss ways of fighting internet crime.

The officials will be targeting to seal loopholes in regulation, various incidences of fraud, and threats facing the financial sector.

The will discuss how to modernising payment technology through internet, mobile banking and the security challenges and cyber security threats for the banking sector in East Africa.

The will also brainstorm on combating financial crime by complying with set policies and standards to protect institutions, key elements of a good security plan, cloud and virtualization security threats.

The banking fraternity has been the most hit by the increased incidences of cyber crime with Kenyan banks losing an estimated Sh3 billion annually.

A US based international electronic facilitators; Bordelinx has suspended its services to Kenyan clients due to what it termed as serious fraud problems with certain Kenyan transactions.

The company said that in the last quarter of last year there were high cases of fraud which involved use of stolen credit cards in the purchase of items from online shops for goods destined to Kenya.

“We were forced to stop providing services to Kenya last December,” said John Bich the company’s chief financial officer.

The criminal incidences have increased dramatically following increasing connectivity with countries in the region getting connected to the fibre optic which brings with it speed of connectivity and cyber attack.

Kenyan banks which have been shying away from online businesses have lately started embracing the changes due to demand for the services but the less efforts has been put in place to avoid the associates risk.

Kenya has been a front runner in ICT innovation with products such as mobile money transfer, online transactions in a race to improve financial inclusion.

"The Banking and Cyber Security workshop will bring together key stakeholders from the governments, law enforcement agencies, finance institutions and leading ICT security experts to help in finding a lasting solution to address cyber crime," said the Africa manager for Cyber SecAfrica Sammy Kioko.

Target participants include bank managers, compliance personnel, information technology managers and those responsible for IT security within their respective organization and those who develop information security policies and procedures.

The region has also been keen to implement similar policy legislation across the region to avoid contradictions among member countries.