12 May 2016

The envisaged first ever International Conference on the Internet, Cyber Security and Information Systems (ICICIS) billed for next week at GICC in Gaborone is a major step in addressing the threat posed by use of the internet in the African continent.

Addressing a preparatory press conference on May 11 for this forum, which is hosted by the University of Botswana (UB) in conjunction with the University of Johannesburg (UJ) in South Africa, UB’s Dr Tshiamo Motshegwa from the Department of Computer Sciences said the conference will deliberate on cyber security issues which has of late become critical for the safety of internet users.

He said this conference, which will attract the attendance of speakers from across the African continent including the United States Of America’s Department of Justice law enforcement and legal experts, will critically discuss problems posed by internet based information systems and share experiences and best practices.         

The delegates will among others share issues on policy, strategy and regulatory framework addressing cybercrime; on areas such as critical infrastructure including the backbone, services and protection structures such as Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) and deployment of cyber-infrastructures and open data sharing research and innovation. 

The conference will also share experiences and best practices on addressing cyber security capacity building as well as stimulate discussions and interactions regionally and internationally around these areas.

Meanwhile Dr Motshegwa said the conference series, which will take three days starting on Wednesday, will cover topics such as cybercrime; cyber-security; E-commerce; E-finance; E-governance; international internet law; legal informatics, jurimetrics; privacy, personal data, surveillance; digital libraries; High Performance Computing, social networks and document based forensics among others.   

In the meantime Dr Motshegwa said the conference will also have three parallel workshops; two panel discussions and the launch of Computer Society of Botswana.  The parallel workshops will deal with capacity building on cybercrime; governance and policy; 

High Performance Computing, Data Cyber Infrastructure and open data research while on panel discussions they will focus on critical infrastructures- technical and services as well as innovation and technology.   

“The common running thread for the workshop’s interactions and deliberations and outputs is to help feed into the development of a Model national Cyber-security Strategy that could be used as a template by countries most of which will be represented from the region and the continent to build on”, he said.

This conference which will draw participants from the SADC region as well as ECOWAS among others is intended to be an annual event for deliberations on these issues in the region and the continent and a platform to provide insight into initiatives, knowledge exchange and create a networking forum for interaction with key players in the field from around the world. ENDS