Pretoria - South African Minister of Telecommunications and Postal Services Dr Siyabonga Cwele launched a virtual hub on Friday to tackle cyber crimes, which include phishing – a phenomenon which is prevalent in the country.
The National Cybersecurity Hub of South Africa, which was developed in a partnership between the CSIR (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research) and the National Cybersecurity Response Team, will see industry, government, and civil society working together to tackle the growing scourge.
“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.”
Two years ago South Africa was rated number three in the world for phishing scams.
Phishing is when someone tries to gain access to the information of internet users such as login credentials and account information by posing as a person or reputable entity in an email or other forms of electronic communication.
Cwele said he hoped the new cyberhub would reverse this trend.
While encouraging South Africans to embrace the internet, Cwele stressed that even in the digital age, people needed to be aware about the dangers of cyber crime.
Cyber attacks, he said, “are real and no single individual or company may afford to single-handedly defend him or herself against hackers and havoc-wreckers”.
He called on the country’s “cybersoldiers” to contribute to safeguarding the country’s cybersecurity.
African News Agency
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