AFRIPOL organized an “Cybercrime Awareness Day” which was held virtually on June 27, 2024.
Indeed, this action was initiated by AFRIPOL to align all law enforcement services in Member States of the African Union with the various threats identified on the internet, as well as the new trends adopted by criminals, such as specified by INTERPOL’s Africa Cyber Threat Assessment Report 2023, where BEC, phishing and other online frauds have become a growing concern in Africa due to the rapid transition to an increasingly digitalized economy, compounded by widespread access to the Internet in the absence of digital literacy, which has made many individuals and organizations easy targets for fraudsters and cybercriminals.
The Africa Cyber Threat Assessment report also highlights that ransomware attacks and digital extortion are on the rise, often targeting critical infrastructure such as government institutions, hospitals and internet service providers.
The event brought together eight (08) international experts and several officers from the cybercrime units, criminal intelligence and IT structures of the law enforcement agencies of the Member States of the African Union, was marked by the high level and quality interventions by experts, who covered the most topical areas of cybercrime, in particular, the cybercrime threat landscape during the first three months of 2024, virtual assets and cryptocurrency, detections and investigations on Internet, Managing the consequences of a security breach, sextortion as well as investigations in Social Media.
More than fifty (50) participants representing a significant number of member states capitalized on significant know-how both in the technical fields presented and in the operational aspects, essential to the conduct of cybercrime investigations.
