Security In Technology

Long time ago, in the ages of our ancestors, if you wanted to go to war with another person or country, you would have to pick up a machete or to out and face the enemy.
The point I am trying you bring across is that long ago attack was physical, where the only way someone could hurt you was by killing you.
Then people started realizing that death is not the only way to hurt you, that information is powerful.
They started looking for ways to pass the information across large areas. Communication has come a long way since the time a messenger had to run for a day to deliver a message and another day to bring back the answer through technology.
Technology has made the world smaller, so much that I can send a message across an ocean or sea and receive a reply in less than a second.
That is the best part, the worst part is that through technology nothing is secure. Everything can be hacked making security a very big concern as technology is integrated in our daily life.
As we established earlier information or data is important and now that it is all saved in a system that anyone can have access to is not very comforting. Everything we put online is backed up in a system or server or cloud that can be hacked, from our taxes to our emails.
We have heard of people stealing millions from the Kenya Revenue Authority or people being blackmailed because someone hacked into their emails and stole their private information.
We have also heard of cooperation’s being brought down because someone got their hands on designs that were to be developed or a country's democracy being compromised because someone hacked into the electoral body to add votes.
The government of Kenya is trying to help revolutionize most of its systems and levels of technology in the ministries and agencies by introducing the PDTP program. They hire the best in the ICT field from the universities and encourage creativity and innovations. They train them to be the best and then deploy them to the different ministries to create new systems or test already existing systems.
Through the program they have manage to bring technology to the people by working on projects like IFMIS, damu sasa, ejijipay, ecitizen among many others. By hiring young enthusiastic people to drive technology and innovation with one of the focus being cyber, networks, database and cloud security, there is hope for us yet as a country.
This will ensure that our data stored by the government and the money we give them to make our life better will be actually used for the citizens.
Technology is growing so fast and changing every day, so something that works today might not work tomorrow. Something that is safe today can be hacked tomorrow. This is scary considering that we have given technology so much access into our life.
So be safe.
Use technology in the right way because the technological revolution is here and we cannot stop it.
We can only embrace it tentatively.
Data is a tool that can be used against you.
Meanwhile I just want to mention that technology is good, in fact very good but we have to be careful what we put out there.
Nothing can be deleted from the internet, do not trust technology too much you forget the boundaries.