Zim Receives $400K To Counter Cyber Security Threats

The WSBI Africa Regional Group Meeting hosted last week in Vic Falls seems to have bore some fruitful impact in boosting Cyber Security budgets locally as the country is said to have received $400 000 from the International Telecommunications Union.

The money is supposed to be allocated towards fending off cyber security threats:

Very soon we will set up a computer institute research committee which will have a national approach on how to respond to cyber threats.

We are working with ITU which has offered $400 000 towards this project and setting up of the committee

Alfred Marisa – POTRAZ Deputy Director General

What’s gone wrong thus far

Details regarding when the committee will be setup and what exactly they will set up to do have not yet been disclosed but it’s no surprise that there are steps being taken towards cyber crime which has been spreading like a veld fire over the past few years.

Last year, there were over 150 cases of card cloning and this year there have already been a few high-profile cases with no signs of a slow down on the horizon.

It also doesn’t help when the police force comes out and blatantly states that they are not prepared to help victims of cyber-security infringements since they don’t have adequate resources or training for those kind of tasks.

What’s been done thus far?

The only preventative action which has been taken is the submission of Cyber Security Policies by banks at the end of last month. Or at least they were supposed to submit them. Starting from today banks are also supposed to be issuing out EMV compliant cards which are supposed to be harder to clone and thus a safer option than what some people have in their pockets on a daily basis.