Alarm as Kenya records 840 million cyberthreats in three months

A staggering 840.9 million cyberthreats were detected in the country between October and December 2024, new Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) data shows, raising alarm over the state of cybersecurity.

CA’s report on the second quarter of the 2024/2025 financial year shows a 27.2 per cent increase in cyber threat events compared to the first quarter (July to September 2024) when the regulator recorded 657.8 million events.

System vulnerabilities were the most prevalent at 752.4 million threats, representing a 28.9 per cent rise, while malware incidents increased by 0.1 per cent to 33.9 million.

Of the threats, Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, where attackers flood a server with internet traffic to overwhelm it and prevent users from accessing connected online services and sites, went up the most.

CA recorded a 727 per cent increase in DDoS attacks from 1,826,259 between July and September to 15,095,217 between November and December.

Others were web app attacks, up from 3,520,651 to 4,542,939, and mobile app attacks (117,661 to 138,175).

At the same time, Kenya saw an increase in smartphone uptake (80.5%) while feature phones went down (59.3%) during the review period.

“The rapid uptake in smartphones is attributable to the increased expansion of mobile broadband networks across the country that currently stands at 97.0 per cent population coverage,” CA said.

“Increased availability and affordability of smartphones coupled with increased demand for access to digital services have significantly boosted smartphone penetration.”

Meanwhile, active mobile (SIM) subscriptions grew by 2 per cent in comparison to the 1.6 per cent growth recorded at the end of September 2024.

“This growth is mainly attributed to the busy festive season that runs within the same period pushing active SIMs to 71.4 million and a penetration rate of 138.5 per cent,” the authority noted.

Safaricom still maintains a lead in mobile service (SIM) subscriptions as of December 2024 with a 65.2 per cent market share, followed by Airtel (30.1%) and Telkom (1.6%).

Mobile money services like M-Pesa and Airtel Money also saw a 4.1 per cent growth to 42.3 million, resulting in a penetration rate of 82.1 per cent during the period under review.