Kenya's telecommunications regulator The Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) officially announced the establishment of a new desk to handle cybercrime in the country. It comes after the CCK and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva inked the deal on February 16, but finally worked out the details to begin implementation of the project. “The Kenya National Computer Incident Response Team Co-ordination Center will be in charge of advising and coordinating responses to internet security incidents,” the CCK said in a press release. The CCK and ITU in a joint statement said the project is worth some 36 million Kenyan shillings and will bring together ministries in the country under one umbrella to tackle computer and Internet security. The regulator said that by maintaining separate offices in each ministry enabled the government to exposure to cyber crime. The CCK also reported that in the past year, over 2,000 websites in the country have been hacked, which was the main reasoning behind inking the new deal for the new office. CCK director general Francis Wangusi said the commission “will put in place an enabling online environment for individual internet users, government organizations and private businesses. “The CCK will meet 70 percent of the project cost and work closely with the ITU to implement it,” Wangusi continued. “The ITU will train staff to manage the project and oversee the overall implementation, after which the UN agency will hand it over to the CCK,” he added. The Kenyan telecoms regulator said that the full implementation of the project should be completed within 6 months and the CCK will work closely with the lcoal Computer Incident Response Teams (CIRT) to provide the best information on computer security to the new office. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/smJ9T Tags: Cybercrime, IT, Kenya, Telecom Section: East Africa, Latest News, Tech
