IT costs, unskilled practitioners hampering efforts to skill business up to prevent cybercrime in Kenya.

IT costs and unskilled practitioners are hampering efforts to skill business up to prevent cybercrime in Kenya, according to a PwC report.

The PwC Kenya Economic Crime and Fraud Survey claims that with the increasing adoption of technology across various industries, attacks on these systems are becoming more sophisticated.

An excerpt from the report reads: “According to our respondents, cost, limited resources to run/handle results and lack of (appropriate) systems were the top three reasons preventing their organisation from implementing / upgrading technology in order to combat fraud, corruption or other economic crimes.”

Francis Kuria, CEO at cyber security firm OSBS Technologies, states that there are a limited number of cyber security training facilities in Kenya and those that are available are playing catch-up.

“Cybersecurity threats evolve at a faster rate than training programs, leaving training institutions playing catch up or abandoning cybersecurity training for the more rewarding software development training that focuses on building apps and making innovations,” says Kuria.

He advocates that training institutions partner with cyber security firms and research firms.

“This will ensure that trainees get relevant practical skills and are able to handle the cyber threats that exist on the country's landscape,” Kuria adds.

PwC says that there is no other way to protect institutions but to upgrade the skills level in tandem with the technology tools required.

“In addition to employing technology, investing in the right expertise, governance structures and monitoring mechanisms. Advanced technology by itself is not sufficient to combat economic crimes,” the company reports.

It adds that voice recognition and Machine Learning could be game-changers in the fight against cybercrime.

“Kenyan respondents highlighted Biometric Authentication as the most widely and beneficial AI technology with 34% of Kenyan respondents installing and deriving value from it,” it states.

Research shows that there is growing interest in AI as business leaders look to leverage big data and augment other technologies, including natural language processing and natural language generation, to help combat crime.