As digital transformation accelerates, with over 500 million internet users and increasing cloud adoption, the region has become a prime target for cybercriminals. Organizations across banking, telecom, healthcare, energy, and government sectors face an alarming surge in ransomware, phishing, data breaches, and supply chain attacks, leading to billions in economic losses and operational disruptions. Africa’s cybersecurity landscape is complex and evolving, driven by rapid digitalization, regulatory developments, and emerging threats. Ransomware groups and state-sponsored actors are targeting critical infrastructure, exploiting weak security frameworks, outdated systems, and low cybersecurity awareness.
The Cybersecurity Summit: Africa 2025 is the premier event for enterprise security leaders, policymakers, and technology pioneers committed to strengthening Africa’s cyber resilience. This summit will bring together top cybersecurity experts to explore AI-driven threat detection, cloud security, cyber threat intelligence sharing, social engineering defenses, and evolving regulatory frameworks. Attendees will gain actionable insights, best practices, and strategic roadmaps to navigate Africa’s dynamic threat landscape, mitigate risks, and fortify their cybersecurity infrastructure for the future.
Our Summit Advisory Committee comprises industry visionaries whose guidance ensures the conference programs remain relevant, cutting-edge, and aligned with the most pressing cybersecurity challenges and opportunities – enabling attendees to apply the insights and learnings to their daily work.
ISMG Summits bring the foremost thought leaders and educators in the security space to the stage, interactive workshops and networking events. Learn from the “who’s who” in cybersecurity passionate about the latest tools and technology to defend against threats.
As high-profile breaches involving vendors become more common, enterprises must develop a continuous, risk-based approach to vendor management — focusing on real-time monitoring, access governance, compliance auditing, and incident response readiness. This session will explore how organizations can move beyond checklist-based vendor onboarding to build dynamic, proactive vendor risk management programs that safeguard sensitive data, critical operations, and regulatory compliance across complex supply chains.
The session will cover:
Abdul-Hakeem Ajijola, Chair, African Union Cyber Security Experts Group
But can defensive AI truly outsmart offensive AI, or are we entering an arms race with unpredictable consequences? This session explores the evolving landscape of AI-powered cybersecurity, weighing the opportunities and risks of using machine intelligence to detect, defend and respond in real time.
Key takeaways include:
Examining how offensive AI is transforming the threat landscape through automation, obfuscation and scale;
Exploring how defensive AI can be deployed to accelerate detection, reduce response time and anticipate attack patterns;
Discussing the strategic, ethical and operational implications of an AI vs. AI security paradigm, and what it means for enterprise defense planning.
Preeta Bhagattjee, Director and Head of Technology & Innovation, Werksmans Attorneys
Nadia Veeran-Patel, Information Security Officer (CISO), LRMG
Insider incidents can lead to devastating breaches, financial losses, and reputational damage, often bypassing traditional security defenses.
This session will explore how enterprises can proactively detect, mitigate, and manage insider threats by leveraging behavior analytics, identity-based security, zero trust frameworks, and strong governance models. Security leaders will share strategies to build a culture of trust and vigilance while balancing employee privacy and organizational protection.
The session will provide insights into real-world applications and best practices for deploying comprehensive IAM systems.
This session will discuss:
Simon Nare, Head of Information Security, TransUnion Africa
CISOs see AI as a “basket of opportunities but plenty of “vendor blind spots.” As the conversation shifts from generative to agentic AI, it’s clear this emerging technology holds tremendous potential to ease zero trust fatigue, but only when guided by business context, quality data and human oversight
This session will include:
Sithembile Songo, Group Head, Information Security, Eskom
Varsha Sewlal, Executive Legal and Deputy Information Officer, Railway Safety Regulator
Enterprises must move beyond basic lift-and-shift migrations to smart, strategic cloud architectures that balance cost efficiency, cybersecurity resilience, and high availability. This session will dive into how African organizations can adopt cloud cost governance, intelligent workload placement, security-first cloud strategies, and AI-driven optimization tools to achieve maximum value. You will learn actionable insights on aligning cloud spending with business outcomes while ensuring peak operational performance and regulatory compliance.
The session will cover:
Dr Sylvia Sathekge, Partner and Chief Information Officer, SNG Grant Thornton
Tunde Dada, Group CIO/BCM, inq. digital
Automated monitoring tools have greatly improved process efficiency, but CISOs must find ways to combine human skills and machine learning abilities to eliminate risks. This session will delve on the importance of dark web monitoring, open-source intelligence and real-time analysis on preventing cyberthreats.
This session will include:
Galeboe Mogotsi, CISO, University of the Witwatersrand
Ntombothando Sigabi, Information Security and Risk Manager, Western Cape Blood Services
Mojalefa Mofammere, Network and Security Manager, Assupol
However, malicious cybercriminals have found ways to exploit weaknesses in certain MFA types, such as phone and SMS-based authentication, to infiltrate devices. There is now a need for organizations to switch to stronger MFA controls, such as biometric authentication, adaptive authentication using AI and blockchain-driven identity management to secure corporate accounts.
This session will cover:
Corradino Corradi, General Manager: Information Security Strategy, Architecture and Technical Excellence, MTN
Ishaaq Jacobs, Chief Cyber Security Officer, Sasol
Bernard Chadenga, Founder & CEO, The Cimplicity Institute
However, effective cybersecurity resilience necessitates a strategic alignment between cybersecurity experts and senior management. In a heavily regulated industry, what are the best ways to achieve compliance while ensuring the effectiveness of risk management strategies?
The session will cover:
@ISMG_News
#ISMGSummits
RSVP here to attend our events.
ISMG Summits offer Continuing Education Credits. Learn informative and engaging content created specifically for security professionals.
Upcoming ISMG Events
