Cyber security awareness should go beyond schools.

Despite its numerous advantages in learning, development and research, the social media comes with its own perils that are affecting people and businesses all over the world.

That should explain why in November 10, 2016, the Speaker of the National Assembly, Rt Hon Cavaye Yeguie Djibril, while addressing legislators called social media “a new form of terrorism,” which he said  has created a “social pandemic”, perpetuated by “amateurs, whose ranks, unfortunately, continue to swell and who do not have a sense of etiquette and decorum".

It is in that context that The Guardian Post welcomes a campaign launched last week by the National Agency for Information and Communication Technology, ANTIC. 

The corporation said it was intensifying cyber security awareness among youth, particularly students, because they constitute the greater proportion of ICT users.

The campaign, which was limited to some schools in Yaounde, and will end with a television presentation on Wednesday, is said to be in a bid to help students securely leverage the benefits offered by the new technologies.

The students were sensitised and educated on the importance of the internet as well as the dangers and risks linked with its use. They were told that in as much as the internet plays very important role in their studies, especially when it comes to research, it also has its bad side.

They were informed that the advent of the internet and social media has also come with internet scam, online harassment, propagation of fake news, exposure of people’s private lives, pornography among others.

The team from ANTIC later engaged students in interactive sessions in order to enable them better grasp the information they come across in the web.

It has been a continuous chain of "campaigning" for safety of the use of the internet. Last August, the Director General of ANTIC, Prof Ebot Ebot Enaw, divulged that Cameroon’s financial losses to cyber scamming since 2010, is estimated at seven billion FCFA.

Speaking during a three-day seminar in Limbe, South West Region, to raise the awareness of magistrates and judicial police officers of the Region on cyber security and cybercrimes, he revealed that, scamming represented about 80% of cybercrime cases in the country in 2021, when the country lost 12.2 billion FCFA.

According to a data published by ANTIC, the loss is almost doubled the figures recorded in 2019. In 2020, ANTIC published a report showing close to 6 billion FCFA was lost to bank fraud in 2019. 

According to an ANTIC audit, 27,052 vulnerabilities were detected in public and private administrations' IT systems in 2021.

At the Limbe campaign, the ANTIC boss explained that internet fraud, notably scamming, was rated as one of the most dangerous and common cybercrimes affecting cyberspace in the country. 

Other cybercrimes included mobile money scams used for cyber blackmail or money extortion from victims, stealing credit card details and manipulating victims into transferring money from their mobile accounts to cybercriminals.

Phishing, he furthered explained, made up about 27.8% of cybercrime cases in Cameroon in 2021, with the introduction of e-banking services by banks accounting for a rapid increase.

“Nearly 6,000 incidents of identity theft have been reported wherein cybercriminals usurp the identities of high-profile state dignitaries and state institutions, of which 4,000 have been closed down, thanks to the collaboration between ANTIC and Facebook,” Prof Ebot Ebot noted. The

ANTIC DG identified magistrates as key players in the fight against cybercrime. 

“The final decisions in a criminal case rest with them and the quality of their decisions have a direct bearing on the work we do at ANTIC, acts as a deterrent and helps build trust and confidence in the entire judicial process,” he had said.

He then encouraged all stakeholders to constantly raise awareness and continuously train actors of the cyber security chain.

Although the ANTIC campaigns are praiseworthy, they are basically a pedestrian approach of fighting cybercrime, given the evolving trends in the development of ICTs, which has now included Artificial Intelligence.

The rate of cybercrimes is soaring at astronomically. Many countries are developing ICT programmes and applications to fight the scotch.

In Cameroon, the fight should go beyond campaigns for Secondary and High Schools students, magistrates and law enforcement officials. Research has indicated that in the near future, Artificial Intelligence, AI, could be cleverer than human beings and may be used by criminals to commit atrocious economic and military crimes.

How will Cameroon survive that, when it is unable to stop the mutilation of the front pages of The Guardian Post newspaper for instance or identify the culprits to face the excruciating sword of justice?

The Guardian Post welcomes the humble initiatives of ANTIC in its campaign to keep students aware of the risks of social media crimes. While the campaign should also be extended to parents, university students and jobless graduates who are unfortunately turning scamming into a profession, the government must equip ANTIC and universities with the resources to develop technologies that can curb cyber criminality in the country. 

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