Seyoum Damtew Unmasks Cyber Threats Facing Africa

The second day of the Africa CISO Summit once again delivered value to the attendees with high profile presentation and engaging panel discussions. This included Seyoum Damtew, the Director of Information System Security at the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia who gave a presentation about the current threat landscape in Africa and the biggest threats that the continent is facing.

Damtew said that Africa is at a bigger risk now than ever before because of the expontential growth that is happening in the continent around digital adoption. This is majorly caused by the rapid population growth, with low digital literacy.

“The African population is growing exponentially and contributes to 18 percent of the global population. We are also the youngest continent with a median age of 19. This young generation has a high digital exposure and increase the surface area for cyber-attacks in the continent, especially because they also lack that digital literacy to know where the risk is,” Damtew remarked.

The World Economic Forum said that there is a current professional shortage of cybersecurity experts. As of 2020, Africa had an estimated 20,000 certified security professionals, serving a population of approximately 1.4 billion. This equates to one cybersecurity expert for every 70,000 individuals. With the low digital literacy, this puts Africa at an even greater risk of cyber-attacks.

As an IT Leader in the banking sector, Damtew further gave stats around the threat landscape in the continent’s financial services space. In Africa today, digital financial transactions with 77 percent of transactions in African banks being done digitally.

He further talked about how the cyber threat landscape has evolved over the years from when the biggest threat were viruses, worms and trojans to today when CISOs are dealing with banking malware, identity theft, phone hijacking, cyber warfare, mobile attacks, DDoS, and ransomware.

The Africa CISO Summit brought together CISOs, government officials, regulators, and industry experts from across the continent to tackle the most pressing cybersecurity challenges facing businesses and critical infrastructure. The two day event features presentations from top cybersecurity professionals and panel discussions amongst key stakeholders in the industry.