NITDA, Kaspersky and Others Addressed Cybersecurity in Africa

With an aim to develop counter-intelligence to tackle the increasing number of cybercrimes in Africa, Tradepass hosted more than 800 cyber enthusiasts virtually at the 3^rd edition of CyFrica this week regarding cybersecurity.

With global pandemic impacting around the world, Africa experienced a surge in the remote working (work-from-home) figures with an increased usage of insecure remote/home servers, making the region more vulnerable to cybercrimes. CyFrica 2021: LIVE laid out the best practices required for public and private enterprises to understand the threats surrounding the digital landscape and the necessary measures to mitigate the whole issue.

“From time to time, there is a need for risk assessment to evaluate the risk of this new normal which is working remotely”, said Dr. Mohammed Onimisi Yahaya, Assistant Director, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) at the recent virtual conference CyFrica 2021: LIVE, commenced on 4-5 May 2021.

Kaspersky’s Head of Research Center META, Dr. Mohamad Amin Hasbini, while sharing his insight on the current pandemic period mentioned, “The attackers will continue to exploit the pandemic without any shame or restriction as they have not even spared the medical research centers that are working on developing the vaccine”.

Dell Technologies – DPS Division’s Manager of Systems Engineering, Ravi Baldev said, “If you want to protect your digital transformation journeys, you got to have the right mechanisms” while enlightening all the participants on data protection.

Talking about cyber resilient strategies for businesses, Enrico Salvatori, Business Consultant – Security at Micro Focus stated, “A resilient organization is one that understands how to anticipate threats, withstand problems, recover from breaches, and evolve to the next version of itself”.

The virtual summit covered a variety of topics like ‘Securing the future of work with Cyber AI’, ‘Diplomacy in Cyberspace’, ‘Africa’s Cyber Security Culture’ and many others. The summit also threw light on the emerging, new-age technologies and discussed the vulnerabilities faced by the 5G networks in Africa. Moreover, it left no stone unturned while giving analysis about cybercrimes and security, every piece of industry intelligence related to Cloud Management, Malwares, Ransomware, Implementing the Zero Trust framework, Banking Trojans, Security Breaches, AI for cybersecurity, etc.

Here’s a glimpse of the speaker line-up:

• Mohammed Onimisi Yahaya, Assistant Director, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA)
• Mohamad Amin Hasbini, Head of Reasearch Center META, Kaspersky
• Michael Byrnes, Director Solutions Engineering IMEA, BeyondTrust
• Kaleem Ahmed Usmani, Head, Computer Emergency Response Team of Mauritius (CERT-MU)
• Anna Collard, SVP Content Strategy and Evangelist, KnowBe4 Africa
• Andrew Tsonchev, Director of Technology, Darktrace
• Harrison Nnaji, CISO, FirstBank Nigeria
• Issam El Haddioui, Head of Security Engineering – Africa, Check Point Software Technologies
• Dave Meltzer, CTO, Tripwire
• Oriyomi Fowler, Group Head – Information Security and Network Operations, Dangote Group
• Philip Aiwekhoe, CISO, NPF Microfinance Bank
• Collins Oduor, Information Security Officer, United Nations
• Lehan van den Heever, Enterprise Cyber Security Advisor, Kaspersky
• Flavio Aggio, CISO, World Health Organization
• Shiraz Valji, Consulting Engineer, Fortinet
• Augusto Barros, VP of Solutions, Securonix
• Prasanna Kumar Burri, Group CIO, Dangote Group
• Ravi Baldev, Manager, Systems Engineering, Dell Technologies – DPS Division
• Thom Langford, Security Advocate, SentinelOne
• A Karthik, Chief Evangelist, ManageEngine
• Joylynn Kirui, Principal Cyber Security Assurance Officer, Safaricom
• Faheem Ali, CRO, Musoni Microfinance
• Daniel Adaramola, CISO, Unity Bank
• Bharat Soni, CISO, GT Bank
• Fene Osakwe, Director, Group IT-GRC & Strategy, IHS Towers

The sponsors included: Kaspersky, Check Point Software, Fortinet, Securonix, KnowBe4, BeyondTrust, Darktrace, Tripwire, Micro Focus, Dell Technologies, SentinelOne, ManageEngine, Redington Value, and Acronis.