14 Sep 2022

Data protection has become more essential than ever as Botswana transforms into a digital economy, says Mr Cecil Masiga.

The Ministry of Communications Knowledge and Technology deputy permanent secretary told the 6th annual African cybercrime conference in Gaborone yesterday that cyber security was vital for the envisaged economic diversification and growth.

Mr Masiga called for  enhancement of  the local cyber security industry, implementation of cyber security workforce development strategy and building capacity to prevent and deal with cyber crimes.

In addition, he said there was constant need to educate the public on cyber-crime and promote cyber security research and development.

He said cost of cyber-crimes was estimated to be around P300 million in 2018 and that current laws were inadequate to deal with cyber-crime and attacks.

eGovernment coordinator, Mr Pontsho Pusoetsile said the use of ICT as a tool for attaining a knowledge based society was implicit in both the National Strategic Master Plan and Vision 2036 aimed at transforming the country from upper middle class to a high income economy.

He said organisations therefore needed to upscale protective measures against cyber criminals, who were also improving their arsenal of attacks.

Mr Pusoetsile said cyber criminals targeted mostly personal information, which could be used for various nefarious activities.

The public should therefore keep abreast of the latest tools and technologies that criminals used to breach networks and devices, he advised.

Mr Pusoesele disclosed that a number of organisations in Botswana had already taken initiatives to protect data in their possession.

The country had also come up with the Data Protection Act, which when fully implemented, would   assist  organisations to invest in relevant technological infrastructure for protecting data, he noted.

Further, Mr Pusoetsile said the legislation would help organisations to have a clear policy for guiding data collection, use and retention of personal information.

Quoting the African cyber report, he said by January 2018, Botswana had 1.48 million Internet users, 1.2 million social media users and 4.05 million mobile phone connections.

African Cyber Security chief executive officer, Mr Chris Johnson said a lot of money had been lost through cyber crime locally and globally.

Stressing the need for institutions to protect data, he said cyber security was the enabler of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.  Ends