When Thabo Mahlangu was in his second year of high school, he went to an open day at the Tshwane University of Technology and was amazed by the projects on display.
“All the things I had always dreamed of building - these guys could build!”
That’s when he decided to pursue a career in technology, eventually deciding on computer systems engineering.
These days, when asked what he does for a living, Thabo Mahlangu laughs and describes himself as a ‘professional nerd’. He is much more than that. As a senior Artificial Intelligence (AI) researcher at South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the thirty-one-year-old is part of an elite team tasked with defending the country against homegrown and external cybersecurity threats and attacks.
A late start with tech
Mahlangu had very little interaction with technology or technological devices while growing up. In the village in Mpumalanga province where he started school, there were no libraries, so he learned from shared textbooks, sitting on shared classroom furniture.
“The public schools I went to had very limited resources with a shortage of desks and chairs,” he remembers. “The older bullies would sometimes come to take our chairs, and I would have to sit with a friend.”
The internet was an unheard-of concept, and computers were not commonplace.
“I was in primary school when I first saw computers in the movies I watched, and then I recognised one in our school office, but it was always off so I don’t even know if it was working,” he says with a laugh.
“The high school I attended had a lab that had old computers but it was not accessible to students; there wasn’t a teacher trained to teach us computer skills.”
That was when he got to visit Tshwane University - and fell in love with technology.
His father, Mandla Mahlangu, and his mother Marriam Rakgwale, were supportive of their son’s dreams.
“My father, who worked at a mine, bought me my first desktop when I was 17 years old,” he remembers fondly. “I asked him whether, instead of giving me money for my matric farewell dance, he could buy me a computer instead.”
He was overjoyed when his parents agreed. “I missed out on the dance, and all my friends had fancy new clothes, but I had a computer!”
He taught himself how to operate the machine.
“It was exciting and scary and it looked so expensive,” he recalled with a laugh.
“For a while, I was so scared that I would break it but after a few months I got comfortable using it and was able to even change the hard drives.”
While he now had a computer, however, there was still no access to the internet.
“I only learned how to surf the internet through a mobile phone that my parents bought me when I completed my final year of schooling.”
This opened a whole new world for him. “I now know that if I had access to resources I would have performed much better at school.”
Despite this late start, Mahlangu was determined to catch up to his peers.
“My mom is a professional nurse but she did not pursue her nursing career until we were mature enough to take care of ourselves,” he recalls. Her decision to complete her qualification when he was a teenager had a big impact on him.
“She has taught me it’s never too late to pursue your dreams.”
His love for research and technology was born long before his first interaction with a computer though, spurred on by his love for television and film.
“A lot of my interest and knowledge came from watching science fiction movies and cartoons like Pokemon,” he laughs. The popular 90s show, he says, is where he first learned about evolution. He also learned how to speak English from watching TV.
He loved watching spy movies, and was intrigued by the technology and high-tech gadgets that they would use in fighting evil. “I always wanted to build my own technologies,” he says. “As a kid, I saw a remote control car and I asked my parents to buy one for me, but they never did.”
Mahlangu decided to build his own.
“I did build it, but I had no idea how to control it,” he said, laughing again.
“How to control it was not a question I could ask anyone, not even my elders, so I decided that when I grow up I would find a job that would allow me to build things and invent things, and the more I learned, the more I realised a career in research and development was the best way to do this.”
Fighting cybercrime
Mahlangu's skills are now very much in demand. Cybercriminals have taken advantage of the COVID-19 crisis to target critical - and vulnerable - hospitals, infiltrating vulnerable networks to lock legitimate users out of the system, in ransom - or "ransomware" - attacks. The criminals then demand exorbitant amounts of money before they release access back to the rightful owners. Thanks to Mahlangu and the CSIR team he works with, however, none of the attempted attacks on hospitals in South Africa have been successful. All have been stopped - saving not only money but also lives.
Young scientists and researchers are a vital part of the fight against COVID-19, he says, because “young minds are limitless in their capacity for imagination, and this is where inventions and innovative ideas come, and why they are needed on the battleground.”
Mahlangu provides cybersecurity awareness training and develops cybersecurity tools to make threat hunting and detection quick and easy. “I use AI to solve a variety of problems in various domains, specifically in the cybersecurity domain,” he explains. “At CSIR we make use of huge datasets to build AI models that can predict threats in cyberspace and give insights into how to best fight these threats.”
Investigations not even the cops can handle
The cybersecurity space is an exciting one to work in. “As a cybersecurity engineer you get to deal with investigations that not even the police can do, because it’s very difficult to get tangible evidence in cybercrime cases,” he says.
“You are forced to constantly learn new things because the cybercriminals are always trying new ways to hack and attack digital spaces, and we have to be on the top of our game to ensure that we are always one step ahead.”
And being one step ahead is no mean feat, especially in Africa. The continent is awash with innovation and that means its home-grown cybercriminals are original and creative in their approaches, too.
“Due to the lack of job opportunities, cybercrime in Africa is largely economic in nature, and as a result our cybercriminals are very innovative in their scams,” he explains.
“We don’t see as many people trying to break into systems, like the majority of criminals on other continents; instead they are continually developing ways of phishing money from people.”
For this reason, Mahlangu believes it’s necessary to address two things: the economic hardships on the continent that drive people to commit this type of crime, and user awareness to stop people from falling victim to online scams.
“The big challenge we have in South Africa is the lack of cybersecurity awareness,” said, shaking his head.
“People are not aware of the potential threats that are associated with cyberspace and we see this from user behaviour on social media, where people overshare personal information about themselves publicly.”
The rise of cyberbullying on social media platforms is another cause for concern, but while Mahlangu acknowledges that this is a major challenge for the continent, he has always been more interested in solutions. He is busy with his Master’s degree at Tshwane University of Technology, focussing on the detection of cyberbullying using artificial Intelligence.
Innovation from Africa, for Africa
While fighting crime at the cutting edge of computer technology may sound glamorous, Mahlangu believes it is more important to get the basics right at a formative stage.... that way, he believes, Africa can have a brighter future. He feels that that encouraging Africa's huge youth population to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields is important.
“This enables a person to view problems in a different way and develop problem-solving skills,” he explained.
“Sadly, because of poverty, problem solving and innovation are often the last thing on the mind of a graduate in Africa, due to pressures to start assisting financially at home.”
He says the state of the economy has a very real impact on innovation and a lot of the continent’s top innovators leave for "greener pastures".
“STEM fields can empower a generation to solve its current problems, and also make it easy for future generations to continue advancing.”
And while a lot of people think Africa and innovation are not synonymous, Mahlangu says this is a belief that needs to be shaken. “Innovation is African, and Africa is innovation,” he explains passionately.
“We have been innovating here for as long as we have been here, but unfortunately we struggle to commercialise our innovation.”
He believes the continent remains underappreciated as it struggles to compete with the rest of the world. However, he suggests, there is a better way.
“We need to see innovation as a solution to our own major problems and not to the problems elsewhere, and need to shift our focus away to developing our own products - products from Africa to Africans. In that market, no one can compete with us because we know our continent better than anyone else does.”
If this can be achieved, he says, the world will have no choice but to sit up and recognise the continent’s homegrown excellence. Technology should be embraced.
“Many people fear that technological advances and artificial intelligence will take away their jobs, but I see AI as having given birth to data science, machine learning, deep learning engineering… all fields that did not exist ten years ago.”
Technology may have changed certain jobs, but it hasn’t stolen them. According to a non-profit IT security organisation, ISC², there are currently 2.93 million cybersecurity positions open and unfilled globally. Data scientists are in short supply.
“This is exciting to me,” he says, adding that when these numbers are considered, the problem is not creating jobs, but rather bridging the skills shortages needed to access opportunities and keep up with an ever-changing world.
Technology, he says, can make the world a better place. Mahlangu’s movie hero, Tony Stark, and his "Iron Man" persona uses knowledge and technology to solve problems.
“He inspires me because he is a superhero without superpowers, and this shows that anyone can be a hero, and you don’t need special abilities to make the world a better place.”
bird