Beware Kenyans, hackers are on the prowl

Kenya’s cyber highway is not safe from virtual fraudsters and other malignant cyber crooks, industry experts have warned.

They say unless the problem is addressed urgently, cyber crime will continue to prevail because it pays.

The moment the first submarine fibre optic cable landed, local businesses became more accessible on the World Wide Web (www), attracting the attention of international hackers.

The tragedy here is that local businesses did not move with high speed to upgrade their information security systems to ward off international hackers from accessing their networks and databases, said IT security expert Lionel Mbogho, who has operated in the US for several years.

These companies are now prone to hefty financial losses through theft or data corruption.

“Hackers have a considerable technical ingenuity and an anarchic capacity for destroying secure systems,” said Mr Mbogho.

Kenyan companies, he argued, face a higher risk because they lack advanced security systems found in developed countries where the hacker threat has existed for a number of years. 

According to Avinash Ramtohul, Oracle East-Africa Information security solutions manager, Middle-East and Africa, what used to be the domain of hobby hackers has now attracted the attention of criminals looking to profit.

“Ten years ago, one of the worst things that could happen was someone breaking into your website and changing the front page – today you have to worry more about them stealing your intellectual property,” he said.

For example, the full extent of the Ksh7.6 billion ($100 million) scandal at Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC), a private limited liability company in which the government is the only shareholder, is still unknown.

The alleged architects are yet to be apprehended.

Other glaring scandals that involved theft of data are Goldenberg and Anglo Leasing, which to date remain unresolved, despite continuing investigations.

In the past, only certain industries such as financial services and large organisations took cyber security seriously.

Today, information security has become a big business issue for companies across the board.

“A security breach today has the potential to hit hard at a business’s profitability and in some cases even impact business viability,” said Mr Ramtohul who spoke to the media at a meeting to introduce tools to help public sector organisations transform and innovate.