Zambia Central Bank Hacked

Zambia Central Bank has reported a breach of its computer system by hackers which happened on Friday and affected some of its operations.

Besnat Mwanza, Assistant Director of Communications at the Bank of Zambia, said in a statement, “The disruption which affected some systems at the bank such as the bureau de change monitoring system and the website, emanated from a suspected cyber security indent.”

 She said the central bank experienced a partial disruption of its information technology (IT) applications on Monday.

Mwanza noted that the affected systems have been fully restored, but players in the financial sector to be vigilant as the incident may not be isolated.

Sophistication and the severity of cybersecurity attacks have increased in the last two years as organisations embraced remote-working and shifted some of their resources to the cloud. And African banks are particularly prone to cyberattacks. A research study from Deloitte indicated the financial loss for financial institutions in Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, and Zambia since 2011 to be more than $245 million.

The fast-growing threats and cybercrimes are expected to cost the world $10.5 trillion annually by 2025. This will be an upward trend from $6 trillion in 2021. To fix this alarming growth of cyber threats, Microsoft proposes increasing cybersecurity experts as a countermeasure.