Security is going to be a mega-issue once the submarine fiber lands in Mombasa. At the moment Kenya is spared the full-scale exposure from international cyber crooks simply because our slow satellite links don't lend themselves to modern tools of cyber-attacks. Here is my macro-projection of what will occur on the internet-security landscape in March 2009 or thereabout when the submarine cable is launched. 1. Continued delay of national and regional legislation makes Kenya and E.Africa a safe-haven for cyber-crooks. {following the delayed debate and enactment of the pre-requisite Cyber-legislations (e-Transaction Act, Cyber-crime Act, Data-protection Act, etc) Kenya has become the preferred destination for executing cyber crimes and getting away with it. The crooks are taking advantage of the lack of legislation as well as the incapacity for the authorities to investigate, collect, preserve digital evidence as well as prosecute cyber-crime. The newly launched submarine cables seem to have provided a conducive superhighway for the crooks to deploy there tools from the comfort of their Chinese, Eastern Europe and other territories. The Kenya Government seems to have been caught off-guard and the Internal Security Minister could not be reached for comment because he was holed up in a crisis-meeting....} 2. Local domains hosting critical national infrastructure get hit (Banking, KRA, Immigration, Medical Data) {....In particular, the successful deployment of eGovernment initiatives such as KRA, KPA, Banking, Medical and other data have become a soft-target for the criminals. They are launching various attacks that compromise poorly configured and insecure web-servers, they take advantage for ill-equipped employees who continue being the weakest link in the security chain of the respective organisations....} 3. 80% of International Bandwidth consumed by junk-mail, malware, porn. {....The BPO markets are the most affected in that operators are saying that they are getting allocated huge amounts of affordable bandwidth BUT they do not realise or experience the full potential of the links since 80% of the link is hijacked by spammers, porn-operators and other criminals....) Ofcourse I hope am wrong about these projections. But unless security is designed upfront into most of our digital projects, we definately are going to be hit and in a big way. walu. --- Alex Gakuru <alex.gakuru@yahoo.com> wrote:
Glad you raised security issues Walu,
While urging more content to be put online, we need to invest a little on securing our websites. Memories of various defaced sites should still be fresh?
There is a young effort to raise funds to send two internet security members of skunkworks to the next IEFT meetings. Would you, others, like to join?
Thxs
--- John Walubengo <jwalu@yahoo.com> wrote:
Local Content: Biggest thrust would be eGovernment programs. Put as much public stuff online as possible and get to train a wide sector of the society on how to access it (digital villages?) Ofcourse Increased Porn, Cyber Crime, etc would be expected to increase over the International Fiber. But that should be managed rather than provide a reason to lock our country into a little, digitally safe but internationally blacked-out island.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Be a better sports nut! Let your teams follow you with Yahoo Mobile. Try it now.
http://mobile.yahoo.com/sports;_ylt=At9_qDKvtAbMuh1G1SQtBI7ntAcJ
____________________________________________________________________________________ Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping