The Mauritian Cybercrime Online Reporting System (MAUCORS), aiming at coordinating and resolving social media incidents efficiently, was launched today by the Minister of Technology, Communication and Innovation, Mr Yogida Sawmynaden, at Le Meridien Hotel in Pointe aux Piments.
On this occasion, a cyber drill exercise for Top Management of organisations was also organised by the Computer Emergency Response Team of Mauritius (CERT-MU) in collaboration with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) of Geneva.
In his address, Minister Sawmynaden highlighted that the launching of the MAUCORS and the Cyber Drill exercise are indications of the commitment of the Ministry to further boost the level of cybersecurity in Mauritius, which is in line with Government’s vision to position the country as the leader in the field of cybersecurity within the region. Mauritius, he said, has made immense progression in the field of cybersecurity adding that as per the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Cybersecurity Global Index 2017, Mauritius is ranked first in Africa and sixth in the world.
According to the Minister, social media is a rich repository of valuable personal data which can be easily exploited by cybercriminals to conduct illegal online activities. He pointed out that the growing use of social media in the country has led to a rise in cybercrimes on these platforms. The common types of social media incidents that are reported to the CERT-MU and the Cybercrime Unit are namely, compromise of accounts; fake profiles; posting of derogatory contents; sextortion; sexting, and ransomeware, he added.
The MAUCORS, he emphasised, is one of the key initiative under the National Cybercrime Strategy that sets out to combat cybercrime in Mauritius. Mr Sawmynaden underscored that this online system will facilitate the reporting of incidents such as online harassment, hacking, phishing, cyberbullying, sextortion, identity theft, cyber stalking, online scams and frauds. It will also serve as a tool to analyse social media incident trends that could be used as an input to carry out risk profiling, he added.
As regards the cyber drill, Minister Sawmynaden pointed out that the ITU is supporting partner countries to transfer knowledge in conducting cybersecurity drills. On this score, he pointed out that this high level simulation exercise will enable to raise awareness on incident response and assess organisations’ preparedness to resist cyber threats.
MAUCORS
The MAUCORS is a secure channel which has been developed by CERT-MU for reporting cybercrimes. It will be hosted at the Government Online Centre with secure infrastructure and it will allow relevant stakeholders namely the CERT-MU, the Mauritius Police Force, the Data Protection Office and the Information and Communication Technologies Authority to log into the system and investigate on incident reported and take respective actions accordingly.
Cyber Drill for Top Management
A representative from the ITU, Professor Dr. Marco Gercke, provided assistance for the cyber drill. The cyber attack scenarios comprised targeted attack against Government employees; malware/ransomware; attacks against Ministries/Government agencies; attacks against critical infrastructure; and attacks against integrity of data.
Source: Government of Mauritius