Cyberthreats in Kenya Increased 268.9 Percent Between July and September – CA

Cyber threats in Kenya increased by 268.9 percent between July and September 2021, data from the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) has shown. By the end of September, the number of threats had risen from 38.8 million in the previous quarter to 143 million.

Cyberthreat advisories by the regulator also increased 183.3 percent to 73,578 compared to 26,000 in the previous year. However, overall investigated cases fell 53.3 percent to 247 in the quarter ended June 2021, down from 529 in the previous quarter.

“The rise in cyber threat events detected was attributed to the significant increase in targeted attacks at critical systems and services; increased activity by ransomware groups; adoption of more sophisticated tools by cyber threat actors, increased targeted attacks at Internet of Things (IoT) devices,” said CA.

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According to the report, CA noted that hackers had adopted sophisticated methods to infiltrate systems. There were more exploits of third-party mobile application vulnerabilities, focused assaults on unsecured infrastructure, and an increase in the adoption of botnet and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack strategies, according to the report.

As of September 30, 2021, there were 59 million mobile phone devices accessing mobile networks. Out of these, 33 million were feature phones signifying a 67.9 percent penetration in the market while 26 million were smartphones, signifying 53.4 percent penetration.

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“In Q1 of the Financial Year 2021/22, the number of active SIM cards subscribed to mobile data/Internet services declined by 2.4% to record 44.88 million subscriptions from 46 million subscriptions recorded during the preceding quarter. The number of mobile data subscriptions reported by Safaricom PLC declined by a similar margin due to the conclusion of the various data promotions aimed at attracting new customers during the previous quarter,” said CA.

Since the coronavirus pandemic hit in March of last year, internet usage has increased as businesses, organizations, and consumers have moved online to maintain business continuity and to combat the spread of the virus.

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