by Gift Mashoko

Minister of Information Communication Technology, Postal and Courier Services, Kazembe Kazembe officially opened the national cyber security awareness week running under the theme ‘Think b4 click’, looking at the importance of cyber security.

Speaking at the breakfast meeting at a local hotel, Minister Kazembe Kazembe emphasised on the importance of Cyber Security for both business and individuals.

“We know that while the internet has brought many obvious advantages, it has also brought new friends, so we continue to grow in scale, sophistication and severity which have cost nations billions of dollars.

“Did you know that there is a hacker every 39 seconds, 95% of breach records came from 3 industries in 2016, the Government retail and technology. 43% of cyber-attacks target small businesses, 64% of companies have experienced web based attacks, 59% of companies have experienced malicious code and coordinates and 51% have experienced denial of service attacks,” said Minister Kazembe

Speaking at the same occasion, Zimbabwe Information and Communication Technologies (ZICT) leader Engineer Jacob Mutisi highlighted on what Zimbabwe information sharing and analysis centre is about.

“As an initiative from the ministry, we have created the Zimbabwe Information, Sharing and Analysis Centre. Its core mandate and its core roles are four things, information sharing, awareness and training, R and D collaboration and response coordination,” he said.

Development and cyber security strategist, Cade Zvavanjanja from Zimbabwe Cyber Security Centre, stated ways in which individuals and companies can make use of, to prevent cyber-crime, namely ownership, awareness and action.

“The whole issue of cyber security is something that requires our ownership, because it involves me as an individual, it requires my complete awareness and ownership, not to end there but take action. 20% of the world’s risks are cyber security and global costs, cyber security breaches reached USD6trillion, double the figures of 2015.

“If you look at Africa, 95% of our organisations we are operating way below the security datum line that’s very worrisome and it is mostly because of lack of investment where we don’t invest or take things casually. We have no choice but to invest in mechanisms and security systems that will protect our infrastructures, our networks, our phones our i-pads, including even the innocent camera it has an IP address. If you possess any device that can be connected to World Wide Web (www) you are exposed. We need to work together because we cannot work on our own,” he said.