The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) has scaled up measures to safeguard the country against cyberattacks.
This follows a sharp rise in the number of attacks, from 7.7 million in 2018 to 444 million in 2023, ranking Kenya among the top three targeted countries in Africa.
CA Internal Audit Director, Rosalid Muriithi, said the efforts target building capacity for institutions to disrupt cyber threats, fix newly discovered vulnerabilities, and counter emerging threats.
She said the National Computer Incident Response Team (KE-CIRT), domiciled at the Authority Headquarters, was working round the clock to ensure that Kenyans were protected.
“Cyber threats are unpredictable. You cannot plan how or when it will happen. Our team at CA works 24 hours a day to monitor and give feedback to institutions that are being hacked so that they can enhance their systems,” she said.
She said the focus was on safeguarding the digital economy from data breaches, hacking attempts, identity theft, and malware attacks.
Speaking in Kisumu during the awards ceremony of the Kisumu edition of the Communications Authority Cybersecurity bootcamp and hackathon series 2023, Muriithi said the initiative targets to instill skills in ICT students to boost the country’s capacity to address emerging threats in the sector.
“It is envisaged that through these capacity-building sessions, the Authority will contribute towards building a pool of cybersecurity professionals who can meaningfully participate in addressing emerging threats in the changing ICT sector,” she said.
Through partnerships with Huawei and the Kenya Cybersecurity Forensics Association (KCSFA), the bootcamp and hackathon series 2023 has attracted 6, 000 students.
“We have been running this in Nairobi, but this time we have scaled it up to the counties. The winners here in Kisumu will meet with the winners from the other regions in October in Mombasa for the finals,” she said.
The competitors were taken through a Huawei Certification e-learning course on cyber security, virtual laboratory exercises, and mentorship from experts.
KCSFA Vice Chairman, Fredrick Wahome, said the initiative was a milestone in the creation of cybersecurity experts.
Wahome said the rapid growth of technology and internet penetration in the country called for local solutions to address emerging threats.
“The bootcamp and hackathon target to activate the innovation spirit in students so that they can come up with local solutions to address cyber security,” he said.
“As a country, we don’t have any locally made cyber security solutions, We need to develop our own anti-virus and firewall to mitigate the rising threats,” he added.
He further asked universities and other institutions of learning to align their ICT programmes with the emerging trends in the sector to churn out graduates who are up to the task.
By Chris Mahandara
