by MTHULISI SIBANDA
JOHANNESBURG – A DISPARITY between digitisation and cyber security implementation has placed Africa as the continent’s most vulnerable to cyber criminals globally.
While digitisation has been rapid, cyber security adoption on the other hand has been lax, said a technology executive as the African countries are dominant in the list of the countries most targeted.
In an interview with CAJ News Africa, Lionel Dartnall, Country Manager for Southern African Development Community (SADC) at Check Point, mentioned the possibility of Africa being a testing ground for cyber criminals before they carry out their illegal activities in more advanced economies.
Eight African countries are among the Top 20 most targeted by malware practitioners in the Global Threat Index for April 2025, released this week by Check Point Software Technologies.
Ethiopia continues to occupy the number one spot as the most targeted country globally, of the 107 involved in the Check Point survey.
Others on the continent include Zimbabwe, which is globally third most targeted.
Mozambique (9th globally), Angola (11th), Nigeria (12th), Ghana (17th), Kenya (18th) and Uganda (19th) also make the unenviable Top 20.
Dartnall explained this trend, pointing out a mismatch between digitisation and adoption of cyber security systems.
“Africa is in a phase of rapid digitisation across all industry and government sectors,” he said in the interview.
Dartnall explained digital transformation came with configuration complexities and increased attack surfaces.
“This rapid adoption unfortunately means that rigorous cyber security adoption is not being matched and is often just a tick box exercise. Procuring quality cyber security solutions and implementing them properly are two separate processes, which are both equally and vitally important,” Dartnall said.
He advised, “African organisations need to be far more vigilant in their cyber security implementations.”
“Cyber criminals are attracted to weak security and often test their attack initiatives against organisations on the continent before applying them in more robust markets.”
Dartnall offered more advice to African governments and organisations to shield themselves from such cyber attacks.
“We do business in a hyper-connected world in an AI era, which brings significant challenges to organisations to do business safely and keep their assets secure,” he said.
Thus, organisations need to re-evaluate their current and planned architecture and ensure that it is designed with security at its core.
Robust user and device authentication coupled with security controls at the endpoint are critical, according to Dartnall.
“A security platform with end-to-end visibility, unified policy and single management interface, will significantly improve an organisation’s security posture.”
Dartnall commended Egypt and South Africa as leading the charge against the scourge.
He noted Egypt featured regularly in Check Point’s Monthly Most Wanted Malware Reports as the most robust country when it comes to resisting malware attacks.
“South Africa’s banking and financial sectors also have a strong focus on cyber security,” Dartnall concluded.
