East Africa Alert for Cyber Security

By Esther Nakkazi

The recent landing of fibre optic cables along the East Africa coast has led to high Internet speeds and exponential growth in the use of the Internet but has also made the region more prone to security attacks. 

“The East Africa region is making conscious and deliberate efforts to enhance Cybersecurity management in the region,” said Michael K. Katundu

the Assistant Director, Information Technology Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK).

Michael Katundu of CCK

This is being done under the East Africa Communications Organization (EACO) banner made up of ICT regulators, telecom operators, postal and broadcasting operators in the five EA community member countries. 

EACO has a Cybersecurity Taskforce chaired by Kenya and was formed in 2008 to coordinate the development of a Cybersecurity management framework for the EACO region.

So far EACO has facilitated the establishment of National Computer

Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) to facilitate Internet-wide response to Cybersecurity events and conduct research targeted at improving the security of existing systems.

Patrick Mwesigwa, the acting executive director Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) says EACO coordinates responses to Cybersecurity incidents at the regional level and provides incident reports annually to EACO member countries.

Patrick Mwesigwa the chairman EACO

So far the EACO taskforce has attained partnership with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in the deployment of National Cybersecurity frameworks.

EACO member countries have also embarked on the establishment of national CERTs in their respective countries.

For instance to tackle cybersecurity, Kenya has enacted a law enshrined in the Kenya Communications (Amendment) Act of 2009 which mandates the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK).

However, the ‘Kenya Computer Emergency Response Team’ (KE-CERT) is in place to coordinate response to cyber security incidents at the national level.

The Government of Rwanda has also established a cybersecurity division under Rwanda Development Board (RDB) with special focus on developing the necessary cyber security policy and implementation strategy.

Allan Kabutura the head of the Strategy and Policy (RDB/IT) said the cybersecurity division has an immediate focus to develop the Government IT security master plan and to design and implement the National Public Key Infrastructure System (NPKI)

Uganda's cyber security legal framework has three sets of draft cyber laws – the Electronic Transactions Bill 2003, Computer Misuse Bill 2003 and Electronic Signatures Bill 2003. All the three pieces of legislation are in parliament due to be tabled in the main house before the end of the year.

Tanzania and Burundi also have established national CERTs to tackle cybersecurity.

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