The company Thales is setting up in the Alawi kingdom to implement an operational system to secure the management and administration of African companies

Morocco hosts Africa's first cybersecurity centre

photo_camera Ciberserguridad Marruecos

Morocco continues to attract investors who are setting up in the country to open up the African market. Thales, a French group, world leader in high technology, defence and aerospace, has chosen the Kingdom as its next target. The company has announced that it will soon set up in the North African nation, where it will open the first centre dedicated to cybersecurity in Africa.

Thales is thus making inroads in Africa. In Morocco, it will set up its sixth cybersecurity operational centre (SOC). The new building will be dedicated to network security and will allow administrations and companies in the country and on the continent to carry out any management with a means of supervising procedures to prevent any attack and information theft.

"The SOCs bring together threat detection and analysis capabilities 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and provide responses in accordance with the country's cybersecurity infrastructure and policies," the company said in the statement.

Thales

The company has also announced that it will serve any country on the continent that requires its advice to enable them to stay safe from online attacks. "The digital transformation of African societies, illustrated by the widespread use of mobile payment on the continent, and the rise of teleworking as a result of the health crisis, has led to a significant increase in cyber-attacks in Africa," the document notes.

Digital transformation is changing the way we do things and, as a result, hackers are taking advantage of this boom in online services to create chaos for people. "While businesses, administrations and individuals are becoming increasingly connected, this dynamic still needs to be accompanied by an increase in the level of protection against the multiplication and sophistication of attacks," says Thales.

The choice of Morocco is no coincidence, as the country has recently entered the list of countries with the best cybersecurity in the world. This ranking created by the United Nations (UN) placed the Kingdom in 50th place.

Ciberseguridad

The pandemic has forced all commerce and all types of management to be carried out online in order to avoid the smallest possible number of contagions, but this is compounded by the fact that online criminals are becoming more and more numerous. The Moroccan government, following the boom in Internet use, has turned its attention to the fight against cyberthreats. Over the past year, Morocco has reported almost 400 attacks on its system that sought to weaken the country's network infrastructure.

Due to this increase in online crimes, the Kingdom is being framed to create methods and ways to prevent online attacks. Different types of systems are being developed, including one that scans for flaws in a programme to identify where cybercriminals can attack and another that evaluates a website's entire defence scheme.

The DGSSI - General Directorate for the Security of Moroccan Information Systems - has developed several encryption programmes, of 100% Moroccan origin, which have been implemented in the Kingdom's government departments and ministries. This system serves to repel any type of attack and, in the same way, to improve telecommunications channels at the national level. "Threats in cyberspace have become a daily reality," says the DGSSI. 

Ciberseguridad

The latest Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2022 report has revealed that 2021 has been a tough year in this area, and is already the year where the most damage has been recorded on the internet. The company says that cybercrime is becoming increasingly serious and seems to know no bounds. This rise in criminality is due to ransomware, one of the main viruses that are sent to emails and, when opened, can steal any kind of personal information from users. 

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