Africa-Press – Uganda. As Uganda’s digital landscape continues to grow rapidly, so too has the threat of cyberattacks, raising urgent calls for stronger cybersecurity measures. This concern took center stage at the 5th Annual CEO Cybersecurity Breakfast, organised by the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC).
The event brought together CEOs from leading telecom companies and cybersecurity experts to reflect on emerging challenges and chart future strategies for protecting Uganda’s digital space.
A Cybersecurity Expert from Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams, Audrey Mnisi Mireku, emphasised the importance of collaboration among key stakeholders to effectively combat cybercrime.
“Collaboration is not an option anymore. It’s survival. You need to collaborate.
Don’t be afraid to pull resources together. If you send those messages, you work together, you engage in national campaigns, it will not be seen as your entities having problems, but rather you’ll be seen as working together to fight the common adversaries,” says Mireku.
Mireku also warned telecom operators to be vigilant against five major cyber threat actors currently targeting the industry.
“Africa’s top five threat actors are organised criminal groups with cutting-edge hacking tools and skills. In addition, pay attention to your internal staff, these are the most dangerous ones. Make sure you keep them motivated, and well-compensated”.
Telecom leaders, Sylvia Wairimu Mulinge, the CEO of MTN Uganda, and Soumendra Sahu the Managing Director of Airtel Uganda, highlighted ongoing initiatives to secure customer data, such as investing in advanced detection tools and strengthening internal defences.
“We send out a lot of messages to customers telling them not to give away their PIN. We have also enforced very tight mechanisms in terms of even how we onboard customers onto their mobile services,” says Mulinge.
“And recently we have launched with this first AI-based anti-spam tool which is designed and created by Airtel only. And I’m very pleased to say that with this, we are actually communicating to our customers that this is a non-solicited message. This can be spam, so be aware of it,” Soumendra explains.
From the regulatory front, UCC Executive Director George William Nyombi Thembo issued a public advisory, especially targeting ordinary users.
“Hotspots are not secure.. And always when you connect to a hotspot, they will show you a disclaimer that this network is not secure. But you see it, and you go on to start sending money on the hotspot.”
He stressed that UCC has implemented minimum cybersecurity standards for all licensed telecom operators, covering areas such as data encryption and internal control mechanisms to safeguard users.
“You must have trained people to manage the systems. And these people should be satisfied with the minimum qualifications. Our resilience in cyber security space is as strong as the people we have,” Nyombi concludes.
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