The Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS) has approved forty new standards to enhance information and cyber security and safeguard consumer privacy.
According to Bernard Njiraini, Managing Director, KEBS, the new standards outline various techniques and methods for securing corporate information by an individual or managers charged with the responsibility of ensuring institutional data is safe.
“Consumers are increasingly adopting digital technology, the data generated creates both an opportunity for enterprises to improve customer engagement and a responsibility to keep it safe,” he said.
Njiraini added that the new guidelines are to provide a robust system to fight against cyber security threats, breach of privacy and other information security measures.
“…to ensure that Confidentiality, Integrity and Authenticity (CIA) of information is maintained during the creation, usage, storage and transfer of information,” he added.
The standards are to also stipulate a frame work for ensuring privacy in information and communication technology (ICT) systems that store and process personally identifiable information (PII).
The new standards will be used by auditors, managers and management teams, trainers and assessors in the ICT.
Globally, 40 per cent of SMEs that experience data breach due to cyber security attacks are likely to close within a year.
Kenya is among countries that has faced more malware attacks in the continent so far, and remains among the most affected by cyber attacks, according to research from Kaspersky.
The multinational cyber security and anti-virus provider has reported 28 million cyber attacks and 102 million detections of potentially unwanted applications (PUA) – such as pornware and adware – in sub-Saharan Africa so far this year.
Online scammers are now using the Covid-19 vaccination process to dupe unsuspecting victims and gaining access to their financial and personal data.
A survey conducted by Kaspersky, dubbed “Spam and Phishing in Q1 2021” showed that online fraudsters have devised several ways of making money in the pandemic period.
Key among them is use of spam letters and phishing pages to extract information from their targets.
Through spam letters, recipients are invited to get a vaccine, but before that, they have to take part in a survey, or to diagnose Covid-19.