ISO boss Col.Kaka defends break-in at MTN servers; “It was done legally”

The Internal Security Organisation (ISO) Director General, Col.Kaka Bagyenda has admitted that the security agency he heads raided MTN servers in Mutundwe last week.

On Friday, news was broken of a raid by security agencies into the servers following what was termed as a kidnap of MTN employees from its headquarters before leading them to one of its servers housed at Mutundwe plot 51, Wasswa Road in Kampala.

On Monday, Col.Kaka said the raid was inevitable because they are carrying out a crucial investigation about the company and many others.

“It’s true we did it because there were things we are investigating like we do to other companies,”Col.Kaka told journalists on Monday at ISO headquarters in Nakasero.

Last week, MTN complained to government over what was termed as a trespass into its data center and disconnection of its servers following the kidnap of one Moses Keefah Musasizi, the manager in charge of data facilities at Huawei Uganda who is also responsible for physical access to the MTN IT Data Centre.

According to MTN’s complaint copied to various ministers, ISO Director and CMI director among others, Musasizi was kidnapped at 5:00 pm before being kept at ISO headquarters and later taken to their Data Centre at Mutundwe and forced to provide accesses to the facility.

However, when asked to explain more about the raid, the ISO boss said everything they did was in line with the constitution.

“There is nothing strange about what we did. We are allowed to go to any corner of the country to investigate anything .We went there to investigate something and it was not done illegally.”

He added, “Like government entities have problems, even the private companies too are infiltrated and we can’t just sit back.”

He cited an example of Uganda Telecom which he said had also been raided by security agencies led by ISO after detecting fraud and embezzlement of funds.

The ISO boss however bragged that their operatives were able to record their own videos of the raid adding that they never tampered with anything from the MTN servers.

“We were very systematic and have our own footage of what happened. It was a surgical operation.”

This comes on the backdrop of Charles Mbiire, the MTN Chairman Board of Directors saying that nothing was destroyed during the raid.

“There were several attempts by the intruders to log into MTN Uganda’s servers over a period of two hours but the efforts were unsuccessful because of our robust information security systems and no data was accessed or compromised,” Mbiire said told journalists on Monday at their offices in Kampala on Monday afternoon.