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South Africa launches national hub to fight cyber crimes

Xinhua, October 30, 2015 Adjust font size:

The South African government on Friday launched the National Cybersecurity Hub in a bid to fight rising cyber crimes.

The hub will serve as a central point for collaboration between the industry, government and civil society on all cybersecurity related incidents in South Africa, Minister of Telecommunications and Postal Services, Siyabonga Cwele said at the launch ceremony in Pretoria.

The information gathered by the hub will be used to monitor cyber-attacks and provide warnings to stakeholders of emerging threats, serve as information centre for solutions on how to deal with treats and enable stakeholders to get updates on the global for preemptive measures to strengthen their systems against cyber-attacks, Cwele said.

"It is a centre for collaboration among all stakeholders to empower us to jointly defend ourselves against the criminal elements that abuse our global resource, the internet, for attacking us in order to disrupt our activities or to steal," the minister said.

The hub will offer its services free to the public.

In terms of cyber attacks, South Africa has a higher rate than other African countries. In 2013, the country was number three in the world in phishing incidences.

"We learn daily of incidences of internet fraud where the poor are lured to buy products which appear cheap but are required to deposit funds only to find it was fake," Cwele said.

The functions of the hub will be to receive incident reports from stakeholders and establish clear incident management processes, disseminate information to stakeholders about threats and attacks as a pre-emptive measure as well as mitigating procedures against emerging attacks and create an archive of lessons learnt to ensure ease of access in dealing with future threats and vulnerabilities, among others.

The hub will also create platforms to allow parents to share information on how to manage their children online and also provide links to Internet resources to assist both children and parents.

For the very first time in South Africa, the hub will ensure collaboration between businesses and create a platform for partnership between government and the private sector on cybersecurity, Cwele said.

"We need to mobilize all our cybersoldiers to come on board to defend South Africa and her people. We can beat cyber attacks and disruptions," said Cwele. Enditem