Cybercrime is one of the major threats to national security, according to Maj Gen Jim Muhwezi, who is also the minister for security. Muhwezi has said Uganda needs to act very fast against cyber threats because the country is at risk from all angles.
Muhwezi, who was on Tuesday speaking at the Governance and Security Program Development Partners’ Dialogue, said there is a need to deliberate on ways to find maxim security against cyber threats.
Fighting security threats emanating from cyber, Muhwezi said it needs joint efforts from government and private agencies. Muhwezi warned that cyber threats alongside terrorism do not know boundaries and can happen to anyone at any time.
“There are new threats that emerge all the time. There is cybercrime, there is terrorism localization, where we all need our involvement as security, but also your support, especially the development partners,” Muhwezi said.
A week ago, Maj Tom Magambo, the director Criminal Investigations Directorate -CID, released crime statistics for 2022 where it was established that Ugandans lost over 19 billion shillings in cybercrime.
Cyber attackers have the capacity to withdraw money from people’s mobile Sim cards and have severally accessed accounts in banks and channelled huge amounts of money. In 2021, Banks lost over 11 billion shillings when hackers access the banks aggregator Pegasus.
Muhwezi elaborated that the cyber-crime threat manifest in the hacking of online systems for organizations, and online recruitment into terrorism activities. The minister added that there is an attack on government agencies’ internet systems, and this new threat calls for appropriate counter-measures.
Racheal Odoi Musoke, the head of the Governance and Security Program secretariat, said that the program has realigned sectors of accountability, security, justice, law and order sector, as well as public administration.
Musoke highlighted that the program intends to come up with new approaches to the changing fashion of crime, by addressing weaknesses in policy as well as institutional frameworks to make sure that the desired results are achieved.
“We still have the existence of internal and sometimes external security threats, especially with growing extremism and other threats such as terrorism. We also have to deal with crime a little sophisticated, using technology, and we also have new threats and new approaches,” she said.