Business Daily (Nairobi)
James Ratemo
14 December 2011
Cyber crime is a major challenge in this era of high speed Internet.
According to Information and Communication PS Dr Bitange Ndemo, the high speed connectivity brought by undersea cables has seen businesses and individuals exposed to the growing threat of cyber crime.
Dr Ndemo said the government had launched a master plan to streamline payments as well as counter cyber attacks and other fraud-related activities executed over virtual networks.
“A few years ago we spent most of the time talking about connectivity, but we have overcome this with the superhighway.
Now we face a much bigger problem of security,” Dr Ndemo said during the opening of the annual East Africa ATMs, Cards and Mobile Banking Security Summit 2011 at Laico Regency Hotel in Nairobi on Tuesday.
He said more Kenyans were joining the virtual world, adding that the earlier the country deals with security threats the better for business and economic prosperity.
Most innovations come from ICT, he said, thus making most businesses relying on IT-enabled services vulnerable to cyber attacks.
The two day conference has been organised by Cyber Sec Africa, an ITC solutions provider, to give insights in banking payments fraud and how to address them.
Mr Sammy Kioko, the African alliance manager for Cyber Sec Africa, said financial flows are growing rapidly and in an increasingly unguarded form.
Quoting a May report by Deloitte, Mr Kioko said banking fraud had tripled in 2010 to a massive sh3 billion compared to 2009.
“The amount banks lost to fraud amount to an average of sh246 million a month with about Sh1.2 billion lost during the year.
He said credit card usage grew marginally to 117,835 from 111,383 as at June 2010, with the value of transactions increasing by 26.40 per cent to Sh555.2 billion.
He said entities that store, transmit or process credit cardholders data are required to be compliant with PCI DSS standard, the global benchmark for security, but most have yet to adapt.
PCI Data Security Standard provides an actionable framework for developing a robust payment card data security process – including prevention, detection and appropriate reaction to security incidents.
“Anyone using mobile applications to purchase services needs to understand that mobile threats are becoming more sophisticated and they need to secure their mobile phones and devices,” he said.
Dr Ndemo said the government-initiated public key infrastructure (PKI), whose study is almost complete, will give a legal framework for virtual transitions.
“There’s no single ID to create virtual ID,” he said.
“The success of M-Pesa has been purely because of civil registration.
Safaricom can confirm with the national registry any details of applicant.”
He said 60 per cent of cyber crime was internal, and urged organisations to foster discipline and value system to counter the problem. “If we avoid the 60 per cent then we will be very safe,” he added.
He said the Master plan on mobile payments, e-payments and ATMS, to be launched in April 2012, will incorporate e-government initiative. E-commerce is growing,” he said. “We want to be a step ahead of the industry.”
AllAfrica – All the Time