Local cyber-crime in the rise as hackers take advantage of system loopholes

Harare -SHOCKING revelations have it that Zimbabwe is not safe from cyber-crimes as it currently trends at number 140 out of 176 countries according to the latest global cybersecurity index, Express Mail Zim has learnt.

The report shows that Zimbabwe is the third most attacked country in the world and the yardstick to come up these statistics is through measuring how well a country’s cybersecurity defenses match up against the cyber threats it faces. It also considers the number of attacks and the number of impacted organizations within each country.
The gap/metric (Normalised Risk Index, or NRI) is given as a percentage. The bigger the gap, the more dire the situation.

POTRAZ Director General Gift Machengete acknowledged that Zimbabwe was lagging behind in terms of cybersecurity.
“Whilst ICTs are the backbone of modern day economies they have also come with drawbacks.

” They have brought new threats, threats that continue to grow in scale, sophistication and severity,” Machengete was quoted as saying.

“One of these threats is cybercrime where criminals are turning to the internet to facilitate criminal activities. It is estimated that proceeds from cybercrime worldwide are worth an estimated US1 trillion a year, constituting 5% of the global GDP,” he said.

Cybercrime in Zimbabwe includes money-related fraud, card cloning, identity fraud, phishing and bank card cloning.
The Cyber and Data Protection Act (Chapter 12.07) helps mitigate these threats and alleviate cyber-crimes and such related threats.

According to Veritas, Statutory Instrument 155 of 2024 establishes a regulatory framework for licensing data protection entities and appointing Data Protection Officers in Zimbabwe. It aims to enhance data protection practices, ensure compliance with legal standards, and protect personal data in the digital age.

POTRAZ has however taken an initiative to educate the masses on awareness in line in with cyber security.
In that vein, the authority has held several consumer education awareness campaigns nationwide.
The rise in cyber -crimes has been evident in Zimbabwe after the Harare magistrates court has been seized with such related cases.

Recently, Net One mobile financial services unit One Money fell victim and the hackers were brought to book and appeared in court.

International cyber- criminals have also targeted Zimbabwe with the Chinese national Zhao who ran a Ponzi scheme called E-creator easily coming to mind.

He was nabbed at the Robert Mugabe International airport when he attempted to flee the country with a loot of US$1 million in cash.