African Infrastructure Vulnerability: Protection, Management and Investment

As we move relentlessly forward into an era of global interconnectivity and a pervasive “internet of things”, the operational and security needs of critical infrastructure have deservedly been put in the spotlight. Certain crucial infrastructure sectors have the added challenge of having much longer update cycles, because of the sensitivity to availability and cost issues brought about by change. Once a system is functioning reliably, operators are hesitant to change components or platforms.

Increased digitalization is making the region more attractive to cybercriminals, so governments and businesses are acting to protect essential operations.

The recent public assets cyberattack in Africa have highlighted serious vulnerabilities in the continent’s critical infrastructure, with far-reaching and severe implications affecting both businesses and the public alike. As Africa increases its physical and economic connectivity among African Union member countries in line with Agenda 2063’s master plan, which includes projects such as Trade corridor highway network and the intra-Rail project should brace itself for attacks on its critical infrastructure as well.

With the rising combined GDP and a shift to the digital economy, Africa is heavily becoming a prime target for cyber-attacks, unsuspecting to operating private sectors, investors and government. Industrial systems across regional infrastructure incapacitated recovery ability have been undergoing unprecedented digital transformation in the past three decades.

The ACRIS Summit Group have observed through a designed system analysis that ageing industrial control systems are increasingly being connected to the internet to support digital transformation initiatives, delivering agility, computing power, and connectivity. We noticed was that, quite unfortunately this depleted infrastructure has been severely exposed to cyberthreats due to their non-agility and efficiency.