Security News > 2022 > March > South Africa wants to fight SIM swapping with biometric checks
The independent communications authority of South Africa has submitted a radical proposal to tackle the problem of SIM swapping attacks in the country, suggesting that local service providers should keep biometric data of cellphone number owners.
SIM swapping attacks are a multi-million problem for all countries and service providers globally, allowing threat actors to port people's numbers to attackers' SIM cards, essentially hijacking the subscriber accounts.
On activation of a mobile number on a telco's network, the licensee must ensure that it collects and links the biometric data of the subscriber to the number.
If a subscriber requests a SIM swap, the licensee must ensure that the user's biometric data match those associated with the mobile number.
Ahmore Burger-Smidt, the Director and Head of Data Privacy and Cybercrime Practice at Werksmans Attorneys in South Africa, told Bleeping Computer that ICASA's proposal might very well be the only solution to crack down on SIM swap fraud.
The case of data privacy and security in SA. We have repeatedly covered news about telecommunication service providers being breached by hackers, so a database containing sensitive biometric data that can't be reset or changed poses a significant risk for tens of millions of mobile subscribers in South Africa.