Jacqueline Fick, CEO of VizStrat Solutions.
While South Africa’s Cyber Crimes Act is ranked among the world’s best, the lack of a national cyber security strategy obstructs its enforcement efforts, putting the country and its people at risk of cyber threats.
This is according to advocate Jacqueline Fick, CEO of VizStrat Solutions, speaking this week at ITWeb Security Summit 2024, in Johannesburg.
She discussed the key elements that effective cyber security legislation should address, exploring how good governance practices can assist with the practical implementation of cyber security legislation, regulations and standards.
SA’s Cyber Crimes Act 19 of 2020 was signed into law by president Cyril Ramaphosa in June 2021; however, it remains in partial operation.
The Act creates cyber crimes as new criminal offences under South African law. These relate to unlawful access to a computer system or computer data storage medium, as well as unlawful interception of data and/or processing of unlawfully intercepted data.
“While the Act is a brilliant piece of legislation, the laws are nothing on their own. The country first needs to have a national cyber security strategy and we have to…
