The event was braced by representatives from GSMA, SUSE, the British Standards Institution (BSI), and regulators from the UAE, Indonesia that digested Huawei’s call for a unified approach to cybersecurity based on facts and verification, other than suspicion and misconceptions.

“While we are deepening digitalisation across the world, cybersecurity is becoming more important than ever before

According to research from Cybersecurity Ventures, damages from cybercrime are set to reach US$6-trillion in 2021.”

says Dr. Ken Hu, Rotating Chairman, Huawei.

Pointing to the rise of remote work and the increased amount of time people are spending online as a result of the pandemic, he points out the globe is facing deeper cybersecurity challenges than at any other time in its history.

In order to address these challenges, Hu says, a unified, collaborative approach between corporations, nation-states, regulators, and industry bodies is required.

“Cybersecurity is a complex, evolving challenge that requires collaboration,” he says. “In some places there is still a misconception that country of origin affects network security. This is not true and prevents us from taking a unified approach to cybersecurity.”

The new transparency centre, he says, aims to change that and help facilitate collaboration across the ecosystem.

“At Huawei, cybersecurity is our top priority,” he says, pointing out that the company employs more than 3 000 cybersecurity professionals and spends five percent of its R&D budget on cybersecurity.

“The new centre will demonstrate solutions, facilitate communication and joint innovation, and support stakeholders around the world,” he adds.

The event also saw Huawei launch its Product Security Baseline Whitepaper, which represents a further step in its quest for cybersecurity collaboration.

The whitepaper sets out the end-to-end framework which Huawei uses when it develops, tests, and launches products to ensure that they’re as secure as possible.

“The baselines outlined in the whitepaper ensure all Huawei products keep to regulatory standards,” says Sean Yang – Director of Huawei Global Cyber Security and Privacy Protection Office.

In making the baselines public, Huawei hopes to further foster a spirit of collaboration and transparency.

“We want to share knowledge with all stakeholders, to help ensure that end-users are kept secure while having their privacy protected,” he adds.

In Uganda, recent cyber attacks have targeted the financial industry with key focus on mobile money operators and commercial banks which have lost millions of dollars to hackers. By this trend, Huawei Uganda as a leading ICT infrastructure provider has made cybersecurity a top priority for all its partners in order to protect them from all kinds of cyberattacks.

The emergence of new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cloud computing, 5G, and the Internet of Things (IoT) has brought to book a new series of threats that can only be dealt with through collaboration from ICT companies, consumer enterprises, and Government to foster new cyber regulations.

On a balanced scale, ICT technologies bring huge social and economic benefits, but it also becomes critical to manage associated cybersecurity risks. For instance, the more digital transformation is enabled in developing countries, its the more cyber resilience becomes a must with data and privacy protection as key elements for industrial transformation.

Over the years, the more ICT technologies have developed, it’s the less sophisticated attacks have become since users are aware of all present cyber threats and hacking tricks that may befall them. When the Internet emerged in 1983, cracking and guessing passwords was the common trend of cyber attacks, but of recent AI and IOT attacks have made all old attacks obsolete.

To protect customers and partners, Huawei Uganda has outlined cybersecurity and privacy protection as top priorities that can be achieved through complete end-to-end (E2E) network, employee, and supply chain security. Through cooperation with customers to maintain stable, reliable, and secure networks in situations like natural disasters, conflicts, or hacker attacks, Huawei Uganda has stamped end-to-end security practices as key to fighting evolving cyber-attacks.

“We look forward to continuing to grow our open, progressive relationship with our partners across Uganda.”

says Gavin, the Managing Director of Huawei Uganda.

The conference was hosted by the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) in collaboration with the Makerere University college of Engineering, Design art, and Technology (CEDAT) under the theme, connectivity, resilience, and innovation in the COVID19 era.

The Chief Guest, Hon. Judith Nabakooba the Minister of ICT and National guidance noted that the pandemic has increased the uptake of ICT services in Uganda. Under the new normal, usage of e-services like online shopping, e-meetings, and online streaming have become more common.

“ In the COVID19 period, technology was available for people to use, many resorted to the regular use of Internet services by shopping online, using Zoom to engage in company meetings, and more. This is a plus for the ICT industry since it shows more growth for the usage of eServices, and our desire as a ministry is to see the whole country connected to the Internet ”

Said Judith Nabakooba, Minister of ICT and National Guidance

According to the UCC Executive Director Ms. Irene Kaggwa Sewakambo, the pandemic has stimulated a greater need to integrate ICT in different sectors and in aspects of our daily lives as many people globally moved away from physical to virtual contact, interaction, and working.

“ As we reflect on the disruption of COVID19 to our way of life and the world around us, our challenge as scientists, researchers, and innovators, is to leverage this as an opportunity to identify and develop solutions to the critical problems facing our society today, and ways in which the various services can be improved for the betterment of our country ”

– said Irene Sewakambo

According to the 2020 World Economic Forum Report on Global risks, cyber-attacks and data fraud/theft are among the top 10 risks in the world. Now, with the COVID19 Pandemic, changes in internet usage have made life and business more dependent on networks.

As ICT technologies become more open, telecom networks continue to migrate to the cloud, and smart devices become more pervasive, services are converged for fast user adoption. But when converged, it’s the more data security and privacy protection faces an increase in cyber-related threats since cloud boundaries become blurred, and data processing turns complex.

In a presentation by the Huawei Uganda Delivery & Service Vice President Mr. Lizhi. Cybersecurity is key for today’s reliability and resilience of public networks as people are getting used to the nature of working from home than ever before.

“At Huawei, in the past 40 years, we have phased our cybersecurity approach into 4 steps, code, code to software, software to running, and supply chain security. These help in the design and implementation of secure networks with better reliability for general performance”

– said Lizhi

Additionally, Lizhi noted that Huawei as an ICT company builds security into products, and to address cybersecurity challenges, end-to-end integrity must be ensured from factory to the customer site with compliance to the ISO2800 security policy of Open, transparent, compliance, security, efficiency, and quick recovery.

In a panelist discussion moderated by Dr. Andrew Katumba of Makerere University, speakers marked that innovation in a crisis like the current COVID19 pandemic has profound challenges and solutions. Common challenges include shifts in end-user behavior and network threats which slow the rate of innovation due to less process reliability.

As a result, network stability and security should not be a matter of region, country, or organization, but instead a general concern for the reliability and resilience of networks. For best cybersecurity practices, everyone must recognize the need to establish a globally open, reliable, transparent, and standard process system.

Last week, the Body celebrated 50 years of its existence in an event that was braced by IT professionals and certified sector players for a 3-day long conference ignited by NITA Uganda as the main partner onboard.

During the conference, key speakers like the NITA-U head of eGovernance Vivian Ddambya inked their top future technological predictions amidst a 3 day scrutineering on IT and digital security in this fast-pace generation.

The event was kicked off by the Kampala ISACA President MR Hercules Bizure who inked the role of cybersecurity as the middle element in the 4th industrial revolution digital digest as he commented.

With all the immense digital opportunities today, we’re seeing an exponential growth in cyber attacks. This is why and the time for organizations to prioritize having a cyber security strategy as part of their business strategy

Hercules Bizure – President ISACA Kampala

Among the key points of discussion for the conference included the NITA-U ignited data protection law that was recently turned into a law by H.E Yoweri Kaguta Museveni__The President of Uganda. The law was discussed by the NITA’s Director of regulation and legal services Ms. Stella Alibateese.

The law which was established as a digital protection element is aimed at benefiting both individuals and companies on their data shared across the digital waves. As a Spice, Ms. Stella asserted that it further protects the use of personal data collected by organisations for purposes of private usage.

In an event where an organization discloses private data as a public venture without a court order, then the data privacy and protection law would step in to prosecute the violating institution. This applies to Nude picture leaks where the affected party would have the right to sue the initial sender without further question.

On the Sate of Cyber Security in the Digital revolution path

In a master class hosted by Musa Wesusa, the Managing Director at Sentinel Africa Consulting. eh drew more light on the new levels cybersecurity professionals must attain to rule deal with the low awareness and more rising cases of cyber attacks.

The master class was titled “How to build, implement and maintain an effective cybersecurity awareness program in organization”. Among the key take away points included the fact that password safety is now a core component in a digital era.

The same way you can check the strength of your password with a tool we previously shared, Is the same path you every digital user must choose to keep a password as safe as its strength crawls to. A majority of users cling to one password for almost all internet accounts putting safety and privacy at risk.

So, through the conference, major stakeholders stated that cybersecurity is still a rising need and more professionals could guarantee a safer global network as the future draws closer to new 5G standards. Nonetheless, with ISACA celebrating 50 years of its existence, its impact continues to draw more professionals riding in the audit league.

The central bank which has so far suffered a massive loss of over $210 million in hacking attempts against banks and telecoms has now directed all payment services to develop new cybersecurity policies to be reviewed this month.

Deemed as a plan to tighten financial security amidst increased cyber attacks, Kenyan banks could be on the right track to save huge chunks of money lost to online criminals.

History of Cyber attacks in the East African region

In 2009, Uganda created the National Information Technology authority (NIRA) to oversee and regulation information technology services. However much, Kenya and Tanzania have just woke up from the deep sleep, Hackers robbed a total of $394 million in 2017 alone.

While Kenya lost at least $210 million, Tanzania by $99 million and least followed by Uganda at $89 million. Hackers reaped big from fresh grounds to a sense that Kenya’s central bank now wants fresh new cybersecurity rules implemented.

In the same fashion, the Kenyan national computer emergency response team & co-ordination center has been created to tackle all cyber-related incidents. To clarify the creation of a new cyber body and pull up of new rules, the central bank of Kenya released this statement in support of new measures.

The purpose of this is to create a safer and more secure cyberspace that underpins information system security priorities, to promote stability of the Kenyan payments system sub-sector; establish a co-ordinated approach to the prevention and combating of cybercrime

The progress of Kenya’s protection of critical data

Kenya hopes to improve the identification and protection of critical information in order to maintain public trust in the national payments system according to CBK. However, with new Cybersecurity rules to be implemented, the officials claimed this is an extra step in tackling all cyber-related crime with financial institutions developing new modules for this.

The board of directors and senior management of payments service providing institutions are expected to formulate and implement cybersecurity strategies, policies, procedures, guidelines and set minimum standards set for the institution. All these must be documented and made available for review by external auditors and CBK

As Cyber attacks continue to evolve in East Africa & Africa generally. A cross-country conference will be held in Kampala next month to tackle all cyber-related issues concerning the region. Although Kenya is now applauding its official steps towards the hard to locate hackers, the conference will be a common ground to tackle all cyber loopholes.

It’s to be noted that earlier last month Uganda pulled off a suicidal move on social media. Even though many users bypass it with multiple VPNs, OTT tax is a gradual move to eliminate hackers in the overall equation in relation to Kenya’s move. Nevertheless, Banks and Telecoms like Safaricom now have less than a month to conquer their fears with new cyber rules by CBK.