This is according to the Democratic Alliance (DA), which said it has consequently tabled a Private Members Bill establishing a new Chapter 9 Institution in the form of the Office of the Cyber Commissioner.

While the response from the private sector and academia was overwhelmingly positive, the Bill’s reception in government and the public sector was predictably less positive, said Advocate Glynnis Breytenbach, DA Spokesperson on Justice and Constitutional Development.

Nevertheless, as the cyber-attacks on the country and our institutions increase daily, and the costs attached thereto continue to escalate, it remains a piece of legislation that requires serious consideration, Breytenbach said.

It appears from police statistics that they have only 544 cyber related fraud cases on their register, yet in excess of 100 000 cyber-attacks on banking accounts occurred in the 2024 year, according the SABRIC. This represents a loss of around R1.8 billion to individuals and represents an 86% increase in such attacks from the previous year.

“Clearly, there is a distinct problem in the fact that the SAPS have so few matters under investigation while the actual attacks have almost doubled. This again underlines the fact that we are in no position to deal effectively with the risk of cybercrime in South Africa. Our country is targeted precisely because of our inadequate structures set up to deal with this issue,” Breytenbach continued.

“The SAPS are underfunded, under-resourced and under trained. The Information Regulator is not adequately resourced nor equipped to deal with all these occurrences, and cyber criminals are having a field day.

“It is clear that some proactive steps must be taken urgently to revisit this issue, and we will continue to press ahead with this piece of legislation, designed to deal with cyber-crime, cyber-attacks and protocols in a more pro-active fashion,” Breytenbach concluded.

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