Cybersecurity
OPIT – Open Institute of Technology Welcomes New African Students as the January 2026 Computer Science Intake Opens
The EU-accredited online institution responds to the growing demand for AI, Cybersecurity, and Data Science skills by providing flexible learning opportunities for students from around the world.
Responding to Africa's Growing Demand for Digital Skills
Throughout African markets, businesses in the banking, energy, telecom, logistics, IT services, and public administration sectors are stepping up their hunt for specialists in AI, data science, software development, and cybersecurity.
“The future of work demands educational institutions that combine rigorous European academic standards with the flexibility professionals require,” said Professor Francesco Profumo, Rector of OPIT and former Italian Minister of Education.
OPIT's EU accreditation assures that its BSc in Computer Science provides a globally recognized degree, which is a significant benefit for African professionals seeking career advancement or transitioning into high-growth sectors driven by artificial intelligence and digital transformation.
A Flexible and High-Quality Pathway for Working Professionals
OPIT's BSc in Computer Science is designed to provide students with a solid technical foundation in:
- Software Development
- AI and Machine Learning
- Data Science and Analytics
- Cybersecurity
- Cloud Computing and Emerging Technologies
The program's competency-based learning model enables students to progress and manage their studies with demanding job and family commitments. Courses incorporate hands-on projects and real-world scenarios to guarantee that graduates are job-ready.
OPIT's international faculty brings experience from major institutions and corporations such as Amazon, MIT, Microsoft, McKinsey, and Morgan Stanley, ensuring that academic excellence meets market requirements.
Student Voices: African Professionals Advancing Without Pausing Their Careers
First-hand experiences from current African students show OPIT's role in supporting career progression while maintaining work-life balance:
“OPIT's learning model, with optional live sessions and expertly curated asynchronous study materials, allows you to fit a high-quality accredited program into an already demanding work schedule.” - Charles Watson Ndethi Kibaki, OPIT student
“OPIT challenged me to think strategically, not just as a technical expert, but as someone who can influence high-level organizational decision-making.” - Obiora Awogu, OPIT student
These experiences represent a bigger trend across the African continent: professionals are consciously pursuing programs that combine global academic standards with instant applicability to the industry.
Applications Now Open
African professionals looking to boost their careers in software development, AI, cybersecurity, or data science can now apply for OPIT's January 2026 BSc in Computer Science intake.
The Open Institute of Technology, OPIT, a fully online and EU-accredited higher education institution that specializes in technology disciplines, is now accepting applications for its mid-January 2026 intake for the BSc in Computer Science, reinforcing its commitment to meeting Africa's growing demand for advanced digital skills.
In the last few years, OPIT has seen an increase in the number of applicants from Nigeria, Cameroon, South Africa, Ghana, Ethiopia, and Kenya have enrolled at OPIT. African students now represent 20% of OPIT's international student base, reflecting the continent's accelerating interest in practical, industry-aligned tech education.
OPIT - Open Institute of Technology, a fully online and EU-accredited higher education institution that specializes in technology disciplines, is now accepting applications for its mid-January 2026 intake for the BSc in Computer Science, reinforcing its commitment to meeting Africa's growing demand for advanced digital skills.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of OPIT - Open Institute of Technology.About OPIT:
OPIT - Open Institute of Technology is an EU-accredited online institution dedicated to offering high-quality and affordable education in technology and digital disciplines. Its degrees follow a competency-based learning method and are taught in English by international faculty. OPIT's mission is to unlock global career opportunities by training the next generation of leaders in computer science, digital business, data science, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity.
More information: www.OPIT.com
Protecting the game: Fighting piracy to keep African football alive
On the evening of 21 December 2025, a football match will kick off between Morocco and Comoros in Rabat. It will be the opening game of the 35th edition of the TotalEnergies CAF African Cup of Nations (TotalEnergies CAF AFCON) tournament. The game will have an audience of millions.
There will likely be a full house of 68,000-odd fans at the Prince Moulay Abdellah Stadium, but the overwhelming majority of fans will watch the game via streaming and television, from across the African continent – and the world.
At the previous TotalEnergies CAF AFCON tournament in 2024, the semi-final match between South Africa and Nigeria had a record-breaking audience (https://apo-opa.co/4rJl26Z) of 10.3 million. The tournament itself had an estimated cumulative total viewership of 1.4 billion TV viewers.
The sale of broadcast rights to reach this enormous audience provides the income that makes the tournament possible. Media businesses invest billions in securing the feed for their home markets. In sub-Saharan Africa, those rights (https://apo-opa.co/4iGjuXm) have been secured by MultiChoice, a CANAL+ company, through SuperSport, its sports broadcasting affiliate.
Beyond rights payments, media investment sustains an entire economy that runs for the duration of the month-long tournament. Film crews, accommodation, logistics, and catering are hired by broadcast teams.
Media funds football
Broadcast licence fees also finance the Confederation of African Football (CAF) itself, the body that administers football on the continent. In many ways, media coverage funds football. Revenue from broadcast rights underpin the development programmes that find talent at youth level, and help to nurture it.
Media income funds infrastructure that makes football possible – the fields, the kits, the match officials, the transport, the administrators. At the top level, media income funds national teams, the coaching teams, and the elite training camps, so they can attend the continental showpiece, where they carry hopes and dreams of their nations.
However, the entire football edifice is a precarious one, heavily dependent on the ability of official media partners to recoup the multi-million-dollar costs of broadcast rights. If broadcaster income from subscriptions, contracts and pay-per-view sales does not cover rights fees, then ultimately, football dies.
Only large media businesses, with the advantage of regional scale, are able to fund the costs of media sports coverage. Perversely, their business model is threatened because the same sports events they bring to their viewers are prime targets of content piracy.
Viewers might not see the harm of accessing a pirate stream, but the impact runs deep. Where a subscription paid to a legitimate rightsholder would help to fund African football, any income earned by a pirate stream goes directly to criminal syndicates in other parts of the world.
Content piracy undermines football. It robs football associations of the funding they desperately need to survive, to develop youth structures and to compete at the highest level. It's therefore critical that sports fans understand the damage they do to the sport they supposedly love when they use pirate streams.
The impact is global. In Spain, LaLiga (https://apo-opa.co/4oC1TRL) reported that audiovisual fraud was costing Spanish football €600 and €700-million. In the UK, the Premier League blocked more than 600,000 illegal live streams (https://apo-opa.co/4pt6VRU) in a single season in its fight against piracy.
Pirate websites also place users at risk, exposing them to malware, hacking and identity theft, as well as unwanted pop-ups, viruses, fraud and adult content. When football content is spread across hundreds of thousands of sites, it also becomes harder to measure audiences, and makes the sport less attractive to sponsors.
Fight to save the game
Helping to fight sports piracy and keep football alive are initiatives such as Partners Against Piracy, which work to strengthen legal frameworks to prosecute pirate sites and pirate users, and to educate fans about the consequences of piracy.
Cybersecurity organisations like Irdeto harness tech and digital solutions (https://apo-opa.co/4aB6nog) to protect streams and track the source and the users of pirate feeds. For instance, a new innovation enables continuous renewal of authentication keys, which degrades the pirate experience and shifts users back to legal platforms.
The best partner in the fight to save football from piracy is the African public. Knowing how piracy destroys the football ecosystem empowers fans to make ethical choices in how they support their sport and makes them more likely to access games through legitimate channels.
As a fan, when you watch football content, the choice is yours: Will you be part of destroying football, or building it up? Choose wisely, the future of your sport depends on it.
- To report content piracy, contact Partners Against Piracy on any of these channels:
- International Hotline: +27 11 289 2684
- piracy@multichoice.co.za
- mcg@irdeto.com
- supersport@irdeto.com
- Visit: https://apo-opa.co/44KEGpm
The number of the year: Kaspersky detected half a million malicious files daily in 2025
Kaspersky's (www.Kaspersky.co.za) detection systems discovered an average of 500,000 malicious files per day in 2025, marking a 7% increase compared to the previous year. Certain types of threats saw growth globally – there was a 59% surge in password stealer detections, a 51% growth in spyware detections, and a 6% growth in backdoor detections compared to 2024.
These findings are part of the Kaspersky Security Bulletin (https://apo-opa.co/44CY5Zj) series where we review the key cybersecurity trends of the past year.
Windows remains the primary target for cyberattacks. 48% of users on Windows were targeted by different types of threats throughout 2025. For Mac users, this figure stands at 29%.
Web threats
Globally, 27% of users were attacked with web threats – these refer to malware that targets users when they are online. Web threats are not limited to online activity, but ultimately involve the Internet at some stage for inflicted harm. In Latin America, 26% of users were attacked by web threats in 2025, while this share reached 25% in Africa, 21% in Europe and 19% in the Middle East.
On-device threats
33% of users were attacked with on-device threats. These include malware that is spread via removable USB drives, CDs and DVDs, or that initially makes its way onto the computer in non-open form (for example, programs in complex installers, encrypted files, etc.). Africa headed the rating with 41% of users attacked with this type of threat; APAC reached 33%, Middle East – 32%, Latin America – 30%, and Europe 20%.
“The current cyberthreat landscape is defined by increasingly sophisticated attacks on organisations and individuals around the world. One of the most significant revelations made by Kaspersky this year was the resurgence of the Hacking Team after its 2019 rebranding, with its commercial spyware Dante used in the ForumTroll APT campaign, incorporating zero-day exploits in Chrome and Firefox browsers. Vulnerabilities remain the most popular way for attackers to get into corporate networks, followed by using stolen credentials – hence the rise in password stealers and spyware we see this year. Supply chain attacks are also common, including attacks on open-source software. This year the number of such attacks increased significantly, and we even saw the first widespread NPM worm Shai-Hulud,” comments Alexander Liskin, Head of Threat Research at Kaspersky. “This increasingly complex threat landscape makes implementing robust cybersecurity strategies vital for organisations, as failure to do so can lead to months of downtime in the event of attacks. Individual users should also always use reliable security solutions, otherwise they put not only their data and money at risk, but also those of the organisations where they work.”
Follow this link (https://apo-opa.co/44CY5Zj) to learn more about other KSB reports.
To stay protected, follow the recommendations below.
Individual users:
- Do not download and install applications from untrusted sources.
- Do not click on any links from unknown sources or suspicious online advertisements.
- Always use two-factor authentication when available. Create strong and unique passwords, using a mix of lower-case and upper-case letters, numbers, and punctuation. Use a reliable password manager to help to remember them.
- Always install updates when they become available; they contain fixes for critical security issues.
- Ignore messages asking to disable security systems for office or cybersecurity software.
- Use a robust security solution appropriate to your system type and devices, such as Kaspersky Premium (https://apo-opa.co/4pFVUMB).
Organisations:
- Always keep software updated on all the devices you use to prevent attackers from infiltrating your network by exploiting vulnerabilities.
- Do not expose remote desktop services (such as RDP) to public networks unless absolutely necessary and always use strong passwords for them.
- Use advanced Kaspersky Next (https://apo-opa.co/4pQstI1) security products for comprehensive visibility across all company's corporate infrastructure to rapidly hunt out, prioritise, investigate and neutralise complex threats and APT-like attacks.
- Use the latest Threat Intelligence (https://apo-opa.co/3MdQvOI) information to stay aware of actual TTPs used by threat actors.
- Back up corporate data regularly. Backups should be isolated from the network. Make sure you can quickly access the backups in an emergency if needed.
All statistics in this report come from Kaspersky Security Network (KSN). For 2025, the statistics cover the period from November 2024 through October 2025.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Kaspersky.For further information please contact:
Nicole Allman
nicole@inkandco.co.za
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About Kaspersky:
Kaspersky is a global cybersecurity and digital privacy company founded in 1997. With over a billion devices protected to date from emerging cyberthreats and targeted attacks, Kaspersky's deep threat intelligence and security expertise is constantly transforming into innovative solutions and services to protect businesses, critical infrastructure, governments and consumers around the globe. The company's comprehensive security portfolio includes leading endpoint protection, specialized security products and services, as well as Cyber Immune solutions to fight sophisticated and evolving digital threats. We help nearly 200,000 corporate clients protect what matters most to them. Learn more at www.Kaspersky.co.za.