Uganda to host the East Africa Cyber defence conference
Cyber security experts from the East Africa region will meet in Kampala to attend the East Africa Cyber defence conference.
The 7th edition of the annual conference will focus its discussion on how the five East African member states can prepare for cyberattacks.
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The two day conference will start on 6th September 2018 and end on 7th September 2018 and is expected to attract up to 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, public health, etc. 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 Shs158 billion) annually to cyberattacks, the losses are reported to be higher in neighbouring countries.
The East Africa Cyber Defence 2018 conference will be addressing how organisations, which are in particularly prone to cyber incidents, should be preparing and how they should effectively handle the crisis in case of its occurrence.
