Kenya is facing a growing wave of cyber threats, with more than 2,000 critical vulnerabilities and over 4.8 million leaked credentials uncovered in an assessment that has raised fresh concern over the country’s digital security.
Principal Secretary for Interior and National Administration Raymond Omollo said the findings had exposed the scale of the threat facing the country and called for stronger investigations, prosecution and international cooperation to deal with crimes increasingly being committed online.
Omollo spoke on Thursday during the launch of the Rapid Reference Guide on Offences under the Computers Misuse & Cybercrimes Act, where he said security agencies must improve their ability to deal with digital crimes and evidence.
“These findings confirmed what we have long known, it is no longer secret that our digital space is facing serious and growing threats,” Omollo said.
He said the changing nature of crime meant that security threats were no longer limited to physical locations, with criminals increasingly using digital platforms to target individuals and institutions.
“The threats to our security are no longer confined to the streets within our borders or the physical institutions that we represent, but increasingly they now extend into the digital space,” he said.
The PS said the rise in cybercrime required investigators and prosecutors to develop stronger skills in handling digital evidence, from identifying and preserving it to presenting it before courts.
“This changing threat landscape demands a corresponding evolution in how we prevent, investigate, and also prosecute the crimes,” Omollo said.
He noted that Kenya enacted the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act in 2018, but said the rapid pace of technological change had created new challenges that require institutions to keep adapting.
Omollo pointed to the growing use of artificial intelligence as one of the major changes since the law was enacted.
“Today we are talking of the impact of AI in terms of how we do literally everything,” he said.
He said Kenya had also taken steps to strengthen cooperation with other countries in tackling cybercrime, noting that the country had committed to sharing cybercrime information with 76 countries.
Kenya has also started the process of acceding to the Budapest Convention, which Omollo said would help improve international cooperation in the investigation of cybercrime.
The PS said the movement of money through different digital platforms had also made financial crimes harder to trace.
“Today, money is moving from M-Pesa, and before we know it, it has moved to virtual assets. There is cryptocurrency, and the complexity keeps increasing every day,” he said.
Omollo also called for greater public awareness, saying government agencies could not fight cybercrime without the support of the public.
“An informed and vigilant public is one of our strongest lines of defense,” Omollo said.
He urged security agencies to communicate their cybercrime measures in simple language that ordinary Kenyans could understand, saying the public needed to know how to protect themselves from digital threats.
“The fight against cybercrime cannot be won by government alone,” he said.
The warning comes amid rising cybercrime activity in Kenya and across Africa.
The INTERPOL African Cyberthreat Assessment Report 2026 recorded more than 46,786 distributed denial-of-service attacks against Kenya during the first half of 2025.
The report listed Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Rwanda among Africa’s fastest-growing cybercrime hotspots, with mobile money fraud and the growing use of artificial intelligence contributing to the rising threat.
It found that 55 per cent of reported cybercrime cases in Africa involved AI, while online scams remained the most common form of digital crime.
In Kenya, SIM-swap fraud rose by 327 per cent in 2025, according to the report. More than 123,000 fraudulent SIM cards were issued, with an estimated $3.8 million, equivalent to about Sh492 million, stolen from mobile money accounts.
INTERPOL warned that the rapid growth of digital services in the region had moved faster than efforts to secure them, leaving criminals with more opportunities to exploit mobile money services, social media platforms and AI tools.
The report said organised criminal groups were increasingly using these technologies to target victims across borders, making stronger investigations and cooperation between countries more important in the fight against cybercrime.