The cyber attack, which began last month, has thus far hit some 200,000 victims globally, but IT experts fear that the number of victims could increase.
Cyber security experts say the spread of the virus dubbed WannaCry - "ransomware" which locked up computers in car factories, hospitals, shops and schools in several countries - has slowed, but that any respite might be brief.
The Tanzanian government said it was not officially aware of any institutions - public or private - that have been affected by the cyber attack in the country as of now.
“As government, we haven’t identified any company or institution that has been affected by the computer virus in Tanzania, but what we do is to alert people to take precautions against this new computer attack,” the Deputy Minister for Works, Transport and Communication, Edwin Ngonyani, said recently.
The list of African countries affected by the WannaCry ransomware includes Tanzania, South Africa, Angola, Mozambique, Nigeria and Kenya as the attack continues to spread globally, cyber crimes experts warned.
The Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) issued a "critical alert to computer users" in the country to watch out for the cyber attack.
"Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority is aware of a number of reported incidents of widely spread computer malicious software named WannaCry Ransomware that infects computer files. The infection has affected several thousands of computers worldwide," TCRA said.
TCRA said hackers behind the attack demand a certain amount of money from victims as ransom to release infected files from their computers.
The regulator explained that the WannaCry Ransomware infects Windows-based computers that have outdated and unpatched software.
TCRA advised computer users in Tanzania to keep their computers’ security software, operating system and other software up-to-date, review security alerts issued by the Tanzania Computer Emergency Response Teams, apply patches to Windows systems as published in Microsoft security Bulletin and perform regular backup of all critical information and store offline to limit the impact of data or system loss and for easy restoration of data if affected.
The telecoms watchdog also advised Tanzanians to avoid opening unknown attachments in unsolicited email and where necessary scan all attachments with up-to-date antivirus before opening, avoid following links to an external unknown website, especially when not sure of the link and employ a principle of least privilege to its users by restricting any user to have access to install software into the organisation’s computers.
The head of the European Union's police agency (Europol), Rob Wainwright, said the cyber attack was unique in that the ransomware was used in combination with "a worm functionality" so the infection spread automatically.
He said Europol and other agencies did not yet know who was behind the attack but "normally it is criminally minded and that is our first working theory for obvious reasons".
Wainwright said Europol had been concerned about cyber security in the healthcare sector, which deals with a lot of sensitive data, but declined to comment on whether Britain's National Health Service had been adequately funded.
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