WACREN Cybersecurity and Trust Programme
Building Africa's Cybersecurity Trust Infrastructure for Research and Education — connecting trusted communities, training initiatives, operational incident response teams, and sectoral threat intelligence.
Why Cybersecurity Matters for Research & Education Networks
Research and education networks across Africa are expanding rapidly, connecting universities, research institutes, digital libraries, and digital learning platforms.
As digital infrastructure grows, cybersecurity threats targeting academic networks and research systems are also increasing.
Protecting these environments requires trusted collaboration, cybersecurity skills development, coordinated incident response capabilities, and sectoral threat intelligence.
Four Complementary Elements
The WACREN Cybersecurity & Trust Programme brings together four complementary elements that form Africa's emerging cybersecurity trust infrastructure for research and education.
Programme Architecture
What the Programme Delivers
TrustBroker Africa
A community initiative connecting cybersecurity professionals and incident response teams across Africa. It provides a trusted environment for collaboration, knowledge exchange, and operational coordination between teams responsible for protecting research and education infrastructure.
trustbroker.africa ↗Training & Capacity Building
The programme supports cybersecurity skills development through workshops, collaborative exercises, incident response training, and cybersecurity maturity development. These initiatives help strengthen operational readiness among cybersecurity professionals serving research and education institutions.
CyberBastion League
Introducing the CyberBastion League in Africa in collaboration with the Open CSIRT Foundation. CyberBastion provides a gamified cyber defence training platform where teams participate in simulated incident response scenarios and cyber defence challenges.
The league begins online and culminates with face-to-face finals during the TrustBroker Africa community event.
indico.wacren.net ↗WACREN ISAC
WACREN is establishing a sectoral Information Sharing and Analysis Centre (ISAC) to support threat intelligence sharing and situational awareness across research and education networks.
The ISAC will enable participating organisations to exchange cyber threat intelligence, identify emerging risks, and coordinate responses to cybersecurity incidents.
Under DevelopmentUpcoming Milestones
WACREN Conference 2026
The WACREN Conference will showcase the full cybersecurity ecosystem connecting community collaboration, training initiatives, operational CSIRTs, and sectoral threat intelligence capabilities.
TrustBroker Africa Community & Training Event
Bringing together cybersecurity professionals, CSIRTs, and research network operators from across Africa.
- Cybersecurity training workshops
- Community collaboration sessions
- Knowledge exchange
- CyberBastion League finals
Get Involved
Cybersecurity professionals, research networks, and institutions can participate in the programme through the TrustBroker Africa community.
Partners
