Publications
Partners
- The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research have collaborated with the South African Police Service to fight cybercrime.
- The new initiative is set to give the South African Police Service a much more robust capability in dealing with and investigating cyber-related crimes in the country.
- South Africa is ranked sixth in the world for cybercrime density and it costs the economy an estimated R2.2 billion a year.
- For more, visit the tech and trends homepage.
The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) have collaborated with the South African Police Service (SAPS) to establish a "Cybercrime Designated Point of Contact".
It's a new initiative which will facilitate quicker turnarounds in cyber-related crime investigations.
Speaking at a press briefing on Tuesday morning, CSIR's research group leader for cybersecurity systems, Billy Petzer, said they were providing SAPS with their expertise to improve SAPS' capabilities in this regard.
"At the moment, we are housing the SAPS team here at the CSIR campus in Pretoria; this is where the Cybercrime Designated Point of Contact is located," he said.
"We are providing SAPS with our expertise and support in fully defining and implementing this capability [and] providing them with some of our forensic, cybercrime and security expertise to collaboratively ensure a quicker turnaround in the investigation of these types of crimes."
As a citizen, you would still typically go report a cyber incident at a police station, but the new initiative will give SAPS a much more robust capability in dealing with and investigating your cyber-related crime.
SA a cybercrime hotspot
In his presentation, Petzer revealed that South Africa was ranked sixth in the world for cybercrime density and that it cost the economy an estimated R2.2 billion a year.
Additionally, South Africa is the eighth-most targeted country in the world for ransomware (a type of malware that threatens to publish a victim's personal data or permanently block access to it, unless a ransom is paid), has the highest instance of business email compromise in Africa, saw a 63% increase in sim-swap fraud in 2021, and experiences incidences of cyber-extortion, sextortion and cyber-bullying that often go unreported.
"These are only the statistics that we know about and some estimates are placed much higher in reality," he said.
"While there's a global uptick in cyber incidents, South Africa has its own set of unique challenges," Petzer said.
READ MORE | Powercuts, vandalism and theft prompt MTN security moves
"We have quite a complex socio-economic landscape, so we have a high rate of poverty, unemployment and high crime rates. Since the population tends to earn under the breadline, we also can't recover easily from any incidents of fraud, financial theft or cyber incidents."
He said a lot of SA's resources and money went towards alleviating these problems, meaning that the country didn't have as much money and capacity to focus on things like technological challenges.
"These things are rife, but we don't currently have the luxury that many of our international or European counterparts have to focus more resources, specifically on cybersecurity."
- SA is one of the biggest economies in Africa;
- SA is the most technologically advanced country in Africa;
- SA has a high smartphone penetration (over 90% per capita);
- SA has high levels of internet access, with a large portion on mobile; and
- SA has a large youthful population.
"These are all good things, but they also tend to drive the challenges even further," Petzer said.
"Our levels of education are also quite low at an average, so while we have people who have access to devices, access to online services and access to online banking, they are not all necessarily tech savvy, and don't have the training and awareness that is technically needed to be able to interact with these devices in a safe and secure way."
He said the impact on a vulnerable individual is much higher than a more affluent counterpart.
Filling the skills gap
With 87% of organisations in South Africa not having adequate cybersecurity skills, and the global shortfall between the supply and demand for cybersecurity professionals sitting at 2.27 million people, Petzer said there were huge skills gaps to fill in dealing with the issue of cybercrime.
He said:
"This includes investing in sponsorships, training, bursaries, and we also need to realise that cybersecurity is not just technical."
He said soft skills had a big role to play in the cybersecurity domain - especially in fields such as economics, law, psychology, sociology, communication and media studies.
"People and processes are quite a big component."
