Rwanda National Police says six institutions were affected by the cyber-attacks.
In 2016, Rwanda faced 1000 cyber-attacks everyday. Most of them were blocked before affecting any institution, company or individual. The attacks, which were mostly aimed at banks, targeted to steal $700,000 but did not succeed.
Of the 350,000 cyber attacks faced by the Rwanda Central Bank in 2017, 70% were from outside Rwanda.
Experts in ICT say that it is still difficult for Rwanda and Africa to have safe secrets on the information kept digitally because the ones in charge of that information security are from abroad.
They made the remarks on Tuesday, September 25, 2018 as the students from the Adventist University of the Central Africa (AUCA) met to discuss the methods of getting solutions on security of the information kept inside the country.
In the meeting, it was said tough security measures need to be taken in order to better protect the digital information that the cyber attackers do not access that information.
Jean Pierre Niyodusenga, a lecurer at AUCA, said the local cyber security systems need to be created in order to protect the country from outside cyber attacks.
“We still have a problem in teaching because, software development is taught more than cyber security is. Now we should think of how to protect ourselves from hackers because the modern war is not of guns but to fight the cyber war so that nobody could enter and hack our systems,” he said.
He said that bringing foreigners to protect the information systems is itself a problem of which solution lies in the youths studying cyber security.
“We have a gap we have to fill and that will be done by Rwandans. What we protect is ours and it should be protected by Rwandans. Bringing somebody from abroad to protect your information is risky because he might go and sell that information. That has to stop,” added Niyodusenga.
For Edwin Kairu, a lecturer at Carnegie Mellon University Africa, that foreigners are hired to protect the cyber security is a mistake because they steal information, while money worth millions paid to them would rather be spent to train many nationals who would also develop more trustowrthy and firm software programmes.
Nicolas Iradukunda, a student and the Chairman of the Cyber Security Club at AUCA, said the discussions helped them get knowledge beyond what they get from class and they sharpen their intelligence which will help them fill the gap seen in the cyber security today.
The most known cyber-attack Rwanda faced was in 2016 when $516,000 was stolen from Rwanda Education Board. The money meant for tuition for 14 Rwandan students in Nigeria was diverted to an account in Spain.
Figures indicate that African countries lost $2 billion in 2016, with Kenya recording the highest loss of $171 million, Tanzania losing $85million while Ugandan companies lost $35 million.
According to an analysis conducted by Cyber Security Ventures, the cost of cybercrime could reach $6 trillion by 2021 (global annual cybercrime costs has been estimated $3 trillion in 2015).
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