How Cloud Migration Strengthens IT Security For African Businesses

Africa is accelerating its digital transformation at a record pace. Many African businesses and startups are expanding their online presence to redefine interactions with customers and partners, target online sales and leverage big data to improve operational efficiency.

In Kenya, this digital shift is particularly evident in fintech, e-commerce platforms and tech hubs. M-Pesa, Africa’s largest fintech mobile money platform, processes over 70 million transactions daily and serves more than 30 million active users across the region.

In e-commerce, a report by the Competition Authority of Kenya (CAK) says the sector is projected to grow to over 54 per cent by 2025 and generate approximately $216M (Ksh.28 billion) by 2027. E-commerce platforms like Jumia, Jiji, Glovo and Carrefour have adopted digital transformation to meet evolving customer demands.

Businesses in Kenya also leverage AI and ML to streamline operations and drive innovation. In fintech, AI-powered solutions improve banking through personalized services, credit scoring and real-time fraud detection. Tala, a fintech Kenyan company, uses AI to evaluate creditworthiness by analyzing smartphone data. In the health, machine learning (ML) is powering predictive analytics, diagnostics, patient outcomes, and operational efficiency. AI-based Ada and Ilara Health apps provide users with preliminary and affordable diagnostics. Meanwhile, AI-driven personal recommendations, chatbots, and automated inventory are revolutionizing the e-commerce industry platforms such as Jumia and MarketForce 360.

As Africa embraces digital advancements and increases its reliance on cloud solutions for communication, storage, computing resources, and operations, data security has never been more mission-critical. We explore the emerging security challenges African organizations face in 2025 and how cloud security providers are necessary partners to help protect their business systems for improved efficiency, productivity, continuity and customer loyalty.

Africa’s Security Imperative: Digital Expansion, New Threats 

In recent years, Africa has seen a significant increase in cyber threats, reflecting the continent’s digital growth and transformation. According to research by Check Point, the continent experienced the highest average weekly cyber-attacks—2,960 cyber threats—per organization in the 2nd quarter of 2024. This marked a 37 per cent increase compared to the same period in 2023.

For African businesses, we can conclude that while digital transformation has brought access to new business opportunities, it has also exposed them to new and sophisticated IT security challenges. Ransomware attacks, cloud breaches and AI-driven cybercrimes are rapidly evolving, posing significant security risks to companies across the African continent.

Hackers now employ advanced methods and tactics, such as DDoS attacks and AI-powered social engineering, to infiltrate source code repositories and databases to steal confidential data and information.

In Kenya, the National Kenya Computer Incident Response Centre – Coordination Centre (KE-CIRT/CC), which is responsible for the national co-ordination of cybersecurity, detected  1.1 billion cyber threat events in (April – June 2024), a 16.5% increase from the previous 971 million events reported in (Jan – March 2024). These threats exploited system vulnerabilities, targeting valuable or sensitive financial or health data.

The rise in cyber-attacks has significantly increased the average data breach cost in the country. In 2023, the Communications Authority of Kenya disclosed that the average data breach cost was $4.35 million (Kshs.561 million) and that Kenya lost $83 million (Kshs 10.71 billion) the highest in Africa, due to cybercrime.

Kenyan companies, particularly those in the financial sector, have become primary targets for hackers, with the Central Bank reporting that savings and credit cooperative societies (Saccos) are losing over $ 1,547 (Kshs. 200,000) to cybercriminals daily. These figures demonstrate the ongoing costly security challenges that Kenyan businesses face, as well as the urgent need for enhanced awareness and measures to address and mitigate upcoming security threats.

Some factors that make Kenya’s digital business environment vulnerable to cyber threats and attacks include the growing use of digital transactions, branch network expansions, increased connectivity to external IT networks, weak IT infrastructures, old technologies, and limited IT budgets.

A well-structured hybrid approach, combining localized data storage with advanced security procedures, provides businesses with optimal performance, flexibility and protection against evolving threats in an increasingly digital landscape. As African organizations invest in local data centres to comply with data localization laws—ensuring that sensitive data is stored and processed within national borders—implementing robust cyber security measures becomes ever more critical.

Regional businesses must prioritize building resilient and robust IT infrastructure by forming strategic partnerships with trusted and reliable local cloud service providers to strengthen their IT defences.

How cloud providers enhance cybersecurity  

Cloud providers play a critical role in protecting a business’s digital infrastructure against evolving and sophisticated cyber threats through advanced security frameworks and real-time threat detection, quickly and inexpensively compared to the costs a company would incur if it configured and maintained its own information security equipment.

Usually, a cloud provider’s infrastructure is far better protected than that of an average company. The reason is that cloud providers, by the nature of their business models, usually employ robust and advanced security tools and maintain teams of highly skilled IT specialists dedicated to safeguarding both their own systems and their clients.

For example, with the growing popularity of the IaaS model, cloud security providers offer information security as a service (in a bundle with the other security services), such as DDoS protection. Cloud providers also partner with information security vendors to offer businesses advanced IT security solutions and compliance solutions tailored to their unique needs.

Furthermore, cloud providers also leverage AI and ML to detect and mitigate malicious activities in real time before they can cause any harm/damage. Specifically, cloud security providers implement automated anomaly detection, predictive threat intelligence, automated incident response, and behaviour-based security AI models to stay ahead of AI-based cyber threats. Cloud providers also integrate fraud detection mechanisms in their platforms using AI techniques including pattern recognition, Natural Language Processing, Deep Learning, and facial recognition.

While many companies or IT decision-makers express concerns about data storage and security in the cloud, African businesses can adopt the hybrid cloud approach to store their business-critical data on-premise and move some of their IT systems or projects to a cloud provider’s data centre. Many finance, healthcare, and government organizations have adopted the hybrid cloud model in Kenya. The approach allows them to keep specific regulated data and information on their on-premise data centres while the less sensitive information can be stored on public clouds.

Not only does cloud infrastructure for businesses eliminate the need for physical hardware and software, it also provides necessary computing power for AI/ML workloads. Training ML models involves heavy data processing, and having cloud infrastructure ensures these models are trained faster and more efficiently.

Kenyan enterprises can scale their AI/ML projects seamlessly, from training large datasets to deploying models in production, with on-demand resources from cloud infrastructure. Cloud environments also offer businesses preconfigured AI and ML services, reducing client configuration time. Additionally, AI and ML projects often require sensitive data. Partnering with ISO 27001-certified local data center ensures data security and compliance with GDPR, DPA 2019, and PCI DSS standards. Cloud service providers also offer backup solutions, which can be an excellent alternative for a company to build and maintain its own data backup systems.

How exactly do cloud providers ensure the security of a client’s IT infrastructure and data? 

Through a multi-layered defence, often compared to the layers of an onion.

Physical security: Involves protecting hardware and infrastructure.

The fault tolerance of the cloud provider’s infrastructure systems surpasses that of its clients. For example, a cloud provider implements triple redundancy for communication channels, compared to the double redundancy typically employed by clients.

In case of power failures, a cloud provider’s data centre automatically switches to a backup power supply from diesel generators. Moreover, the data centre’s physical location is highly secure: they are securely fenced, security guards are on duty 24/7, and comprehensive video surveillance systems monitor location activities. Server access is strictly limited, ensuring access control only to select authorised personnel.

Operational security: Involves security policies, processes and practices that protect daily operations within an organization provided by a company with or without a cloud provider’s support.

A key aspect of operational security is to educate a business on the limits of the provider’s responsibility for the services and the necessary actions they need to take to uphold their information security. Understanding (and communicating to businesses) where the provider’s responsibility lies and where a customer’s responsibility lies reduces the risk of any security incidents.

Information security: Involves safeguarding data through encryption and access policies. By interacting with external network environments—such as online shoppers and remote employees— a company ‘exposes’ part of its infrastructure to the Internet.

Such exposures can create opportunities for even a green hat hacker (lowest level) to exploit system vulnerabilities. With just an IP address, a green hat hacker can launch attacks using automated tools capable of scanning ports, identifying operating systems, searching for vulnerabilities, and injecting malicious code. In the future, artificial intelligence (AI) may further enhance the carrying out of such attacks, which calls for urgent and advanced information security measures.

To help their clients, cloud providers employ various advanced security measures, such as Web Application Firewalls (WAFs), to counter these threats. When properly configured —requiring skill and expertise—these firewalls shield the information system layer from outside access while blocking all irrelevant requests. The system configuration remains a black box for attackers, making it more difficult to penetrate.

Cloud providers also offer services, including renting firewalls and helping with all the necessary configuration procedures, which are crucial for maintaining system integrity and protecting sensitive data. As stated above, forward thinking cloud providers also leverage AI to automate threat detection and safeguard a business’s digital assets from new and sophisticated threats.

How to ensure security when using cloud providers’ products 

African companies should adopt a comprehensive approach that addresses technology, processes, and people to ensure robust security when using cloud providers’ products.

Here are some key guidelines and practices to help achieve this

1: Areas of responsibility: Ensuring infrastructure security is a shared responsibility between a cloud provider and the business. The cloud provider secures the infrastructures on which a business’s products and services run, and the business secures the infrastructure location and trains employees on cybersecurity measures. This model helps balance security procedures because hackers often target company premises and employees, who can be the weak link to systems intrusion through social engineering practices.

2: Identity and Access Management: A reliable cloud provider allows clients to access the infrastructure using Identity and Access Management (IAM), which checks every request and ensures that only authorized users perform operations on company systems and networks.

3: Network security: Cloud providers secure IT infrastructures from malicious network threats through security barriers (firewalls) and restrict access to specific internet connection ports, which manage how data is sent and received over the Internet.

4: Security event management: With the help of an authorization log, cloud providers help businesses find out who used which account and when for audit processes.

5: Vulnerability management: A cloud provider recommends scanning servers for vulnerabilities using network vulnerability scanners or host software agents.

6: Systems backup: Systems backup ensures that critical business data is regularly saved and stored securely to prevent data loss in the event of hardware failure, cyberattacks, or accidental deletion. Businesses can consider on-site and off-site storage for added redundancy, ensuring they can quickly recover and resume operations without prolonged downtime.

7: Data encryption: Businesses should use encryption to keep sensitive data safe, whether stored in files, databases, cloud storage or sent over the Internet. Secure encryption measures protect data during transmission and prevent unauthorized access.

8: Anti-virus protection: Anti-virus solutions help companies detect, quarantine, and remove harmful software before it causes damage. Regular updates and scanning ensure the latest cyber threats are mitigated. Combined with anti-malware features, anti-virus protection provides organizations with a comprehensive layer of defence against cyber threats targeting the business infrastructure and systems.

9: Secrets management: Secrets management refers to managing sensitive information such as passwords, encryption keys, certificates, and other secrets that can be used to access data or systems. 

As digital transformation grows and IT systems in the African region grow complex, security incidents and cyberattacks continue to rise. Moreover, the potential for cybercrime may escalate further as Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology advances.

The good news for African businesses is that 99% of cyberattacks can be thwarted through robust multi-layered defences, and AI leverage with the help of a cloud provider as we’ve discussed above. Partnering with a certified local cloud provider offers businesses more than just rapid and efficient IT infrastructure deployment—it also ensures a strong ally in safeguarding their data and information security against new cyber threats.

Robin Peterz, Business Development Manager in Kenya at Servercore