The situation of cyber crimes in Asia and America is critical due to the speed of advancement of technology. The online crimes reported in a year as increased tremendously in the recent years. Cyber criminals becoming even more creative and using sophisticated tools to cause the damage. The online fraud activity has been common in most of the companies and banks. To counter the situation most of the company and banks have been very concerned with the issue of security in their networks and new tough measures have been set for those who will be caught participating in these illegal activities.
When we look in Africa in recent years there has been tremendously increase in online activities and almost each and everything has been done using internet and computers which makes us more vulnerable to the attacks by the cyber criminals. For example the Introduction of mobile money transactions such as Vodacom M-Pesa in Tanzania and others in other countries it is a proof that Africa is ready to do online transactions and e- commerce but the questions still remains are we prepared to fight with cyber criminals, do we have enough professionals to deal with the situation are we even prepared?
The consequences of getting into the world of online transactions and e- commerce unprepared with online criminals are extremely bad. Banks have gone bankruptcy due to this, as the industry grows in Africa people become even smarter. The smarter people they become the more vulnerable you become for attacks. When I was in India I heard a lot of stories about people stealing money from Tanzanian banks using Visa cards but I never even saw the reports on media about these bad activities meaning that even the people who were responsible to protect the bank from these online illegal activities were not aware on what is happening at that time. This is the small example of what will happen if you engage yourself into something which you are not prepared.
Due to the recent incidents in Rwanda,Rwandan police officer says“These days, there are criminals that hoodwink people through the internet. They are deceived that they will get huge profits, and many have lost money through these schemes,”
Bizimungu said.“My advice is that whenever you see someone promising excess profit, it is important for one to ask yourself whether you are not being targeted by fraudsters. We should all be very careful.”
Bizimungu added that a forensic laboratory project is in the pipeline to deal with such cases. He added that since cyber crime has no borders, Interpol is helping in fighting it.
The thing is we have a long way to go to be secure Jeremy C. one of the reading CISCO security professional believes “there is no network which is one hundred percent protected” but we should at least be able to understand the vulnerability and be ready to spend money to put people who are familiar with the situation and how to deal with it.
Nigeria is one of the leading countries in terms of production of spam letters which are used for online scamming and stealing. The questions is what are the steps taken by the Nigerian government to counter the situation does they even know that it exist, what is the penalty for someone caught doing these illegal activities is it even punishable by law those are the questions African government and authorities should look for answers before getting into the cyber world unprepared.
