CAMEROON CYBER SECURITY LANDSCAPE ANALYSIS

1.1 Cyber Security Landscape in Cameroon and the World

The cyberspace offers lots of opportunities in the areas of information and communication, entertainment, education, exchange and trade. However, users of the internet super highway are vulnerable to various forms of menaces which can affect individual, businesses and state security. The legal, political and strategic problems identified cyber terrorism, internet fraud, spying, scamming, intrusion, phishing, spamming, viruses, malware, piracy etc. as some of the menaces inherent to the cyberspace in Cameroon. Other international threats include stolen or leaked IP, stolen funds, stolen computer resources, stolen business information, account data breach, employee information, email dump, DDoS attack, Cyber bombs, back doors, marketplace fraud, physical theft / sabotage, audio surveillance, brand phishing
Cameroon is currently experiencing rapid growth of e-services (e-Government and e-Commerce related services) development, Internet usage increase and high penetration of mobile services.
 
1.2 Analysis of the Impact of Cybercrime

1. Increase in cyber-criminality: The world loses millions annually to cybercrime, with Cameroon now ranked among the top 10 countries in the world where the crime, popularly known as “419”, is most prevalent
2. FCFA 3 billion lost by banks in 2015 due to skimming (ANTIC: 2015). Skimming is the act of hacking magnetic cards with special devices inserted in automatic bank teller machines.
3. Increase in simboxes: a device which enables people abroad to place calls at local tariffs, causing huge financial losses to companies as well as the Treasury. Four telecom operators lost over fcfa 18 billion and the state lost fcfa 4 billion, due to the simbox fraud in 2015(ANTIC:2015)
4. Close to 90% of the software and operating systems used in Cameroon are hacked.
5. Government prioritizing capacity building in other to empower people to master the tools and solutions available to combat cybercrimes (CTO: 2013).
6. Industries and government are progressively providing lots of services online, and the need to address security issues is important.
7. Cameroonian Web sites are the most dangerous in the world for unwary Web surfers. More than half the sites in Cameroon’s domain space–sites ending in the abbreviation “.cm” are determined to be engaged in shady behavior, such as infecting visitors with password-stealing or spam-sending software. (McAfee: 2015)
8. The survival of Cameroon's digital economy depends on good cyber security
9. Certification: Cameroon does not have any officially approved national (and sector specific) cybersecurity frameworks for the certification and accreditation of national agencies and public sector professionals. (data source: United Nations Statistics Division, December 2012) Agency Certification: Cameroon does not have any certified government and public sector agencies certified under internationally recognized standards in cybersecurity.
10. Foreign Aid: In 2011, Antic became a member of the ITU-IMPACT, an international multilateral partnership against cyber threats that offers high-level training programmes to help partner countries (Cameroon inclusive) to fight and prevent the scourge.