As attack vectors expand, countries must learn from each other and use their collective expertise, resources and efforts to combat malicious actors, Paula Ingabire says at CybertechLive Africa

Paula Ingabire is doing her part to ensure that her country will never be known as the land of a thousand cyberattacks.

Speaking on Thursday during the first-ever CybertechLive Africa online conference, the Rwandan Minister of ICT and Innovation said her country has responded to increasing threats by strengthening the response capabilities in both the private and public sectors while building partnerships with foreign governments and organizations.

The minister said collaboration and dialogue between nations, industry players and all key actors of cyberspace "is very important for us to learn from each other's best practices, to understand which threats are lurking, but also to understand how we can join expertise, resources and efforts to really combat the cybersecurity threats."

During her keynote speech from Rwanda's capital Kigali, the minister pointed out that as the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, governments and companies have increasingly pushed for digitalization initiatives since every aspect of our lives, whether professional or personal, is dependent on these digital tools more than ever. "Emerging technologies such as AI, robotics, IoT, and blockchain are used in nearly every industrial setting, from education, health care, automation, manufacturing, and entertainment," she said.

This flood of new technologies, however, has created a new type of criminal, "looking to exploit businesses, individuals, consumers, and more worrisome is our children's safety that is now threatened by the same tools that we've put at their disposal to give them the best of learning opportunities today."

Statistics paint a clear picture of the urgent need to build the required capabilities and multinational partnerships to capably deal with the emerging cyber threats, Ingabire said.

"Today we see that cyberattacks occur more than 2,000 times every day. 92% of malware is delivered using email.  71% of breaches are financially motivated. And 43% of data breaches involve small businesses. Whereas 95% of these same data breaches come from the key industries which are government, retail and the technology industry." There is also a growing trend of traffickers using social media platforms to recruit and advertise targets of human trafficking, the minister added.

Thus, the importance of cybersecurity is on the rise and technology applications are rapidly growing and evolving, with the growth of the cybersecurity industry, now projected to be at $248 billion by 2023, critical to the growth of individual countries, regions, and the world as a global family, she said. 

In addition to the international cooperation to combat malicious actors, Ingabire noted that  "In Rwanda we've also been able to put in place different measures as we really seek to build the capabilities that are necessary to respond to these cyber threats which include the newly-established national cybersecurity agency that is going to be providing collaborative cybersecurity knowledge and services but also strengthening those capabilities, not just for government but across the economy including the private sector."

As for other cybersecurity-related steps being implemented, the minister said Rwanda has prepared a data protection and privacy law that was recently approved by the Cabinet and will be sent to the parliament for enactment. The government is also working with different partners who are helping to create awareness and educate on the threats of the online world, including child online protection campaigns being conducted with UNICEF.

In July, Ingabire's ICT and Innovation Ministry launched a Get Safe Online campaign to raise awareness and protect people from security risks in cyberspace.

These kinds of efforts, the minister emphasized, "are not just happening in Rwanda, but we are seeing across Africa, across the world where different countries are putting in place different interventions that will enable them to tackle and respond to the cyber threats that we are increasingly seeing."