Uganda to host East Africa Cyber Defence Conference

CONFRENCE

KAMPALA - Uganda is set to host the seventh annual East Africa Cyber Defence Conference scheduled for September.

The conference is expected to attract over 150 cyber security professionals along with policy makers and representatives from critical infrastructure operators.

As 2017 has shown in many instances, cyber-attacks are on many occasions not an institutional, but national and even regional issue as cyber incidents can have great consequences to both the citizenry and the economy.

The unfortunate occurrence of cyber crisis in critical sectors such as finance, transport and public health can have disastrous effects and even lead to crisis at a national level, hence affecting the whole society.

Sub-Saharan Africa's economic growth is projected to reach 3.1% by the end of 2018, and to average 3.6% in 2020 as reported by Africa's Pulse, a bi-annual analysis of the state of African economies conducted by the World Bank.

Leapfrogging over old technologies and business models western countries took decades to get used to, African countries are improving in their adoption of technology in carrying out ordinary day-to-day tasks.

This fast pace absorption of technologies, the rapidly increasing usage of cloud-based solutions as well as the increasing economic gains are bringing new challenges to securing the cyber environment in East Africa.

According to 2017 Cyber Security report, Uganda loses nearly $42m (about sh158b) annually to cyber attacks, the losses are reported to be higher in neighbouring countries.

The East Africa Cyber Defence 2018 conference will be addressing how organisations, particularly those prone to cyber incidents, should be preparing and how they should effectively handle the crisis in case of its occurrence.

The event is co-organised by a European company; NRD Cyber Security and the National Information Technology Authority - Uganda (NITA-U).
NRD Cyber Security CEO, Vilius Benetis, was very enthusiastic about the progress the East African region has made so far.

"The most effective way to prevent cyber-attacks, is to be ahead by having good visibility of potential threats and a plan of how to react adequately.

" It is great to see that the region is already taking steps forward as the countries start thinking and talking about preparation before the actual crisis occurs," Benetis said. 

James Saaka, the Executive Director, NITA-U, shared that, " the Government of Uganda, through NITA-U established the National Computer Emergency Response Team and Coordination Center (CERT-UG/CC) to support centralised response for cyber related incidents as well as serve as a focal point for further building and implementing the National Culture of cyber security."

Relatedly, Arnold Mangeni, the Director Information Security at NITA-U highlighted that Government has put in place the National Information Security Framework which provides for minimum security outcomes every Government agency and Critical Information Infrastructure operator is required to maintain.

This includes incident response and crisis management largely focused on a prevention and proactive approach.

He further added that collaborations such as these are key for increasing cyber security capacity for both public and private sector entities which is critical for any effective protection response.