The Communications Authority has called on internet service providers to make security an important feature of their service.
Communication Authority Acting Controller, Richard Mwanza, said this is to protect customers from the risk of viruses and other attacks that might lead to loss of important personal and confidential data.
Mr. Mwanza said this in Lusaka yesterday at the opening of the internet provider’s security meeting in the wake of the recent hacking of ZAMNET web server on 27th December last year.
He said Service Providers need to protect the customers from fraud and thefts that may arise as a result of sharing personal information online.
He said the recent hacking of ZAMNET web server shows how vulnerable Zambia is to be targeted by cyber criminals adding that this should not be taken lightly.
Mr. Mwanza said ZAMNET customers lost business whose cost cannot be quantified adding that this has also eroded the confidence in people who trusted in ICT’s.
He has also called on the Internet Service Providers to put in place mitigation procedures that should ensure business continuity in the case of any eventuality.
Mr. Mwanza further called for a disaster recovery plan and procedures which should be a requirement for licensing and renewal.
He disclosed that the communication authority will soon review the license condition of all Internet Providers to ensure that customer’s security needs are addressed.
The communication authority has since formed a task force that will mitigate and prevent customers from being exploited.
Director in the Ministry of Transport and Communication, Victor Mbumwae, has called on all stakeholders to promote and fight cyber crime due to its negative effects.
Mr. Mbumwae said there is need to fight cyber crime adding that doing so would shame critics the ICTs.
He said this will also help safe guard the country from unwarranted attacks and exposure of information.
Meanwhile, ZAMNET Technical Director, Raphael Maseko, said the recent hacking of its web server did not expose private information.
Mr. Maseko has however assured its consumers and the general public that their information is secure.
He said ZAMNET is currently conducting investigations into the cause and the extent of the problem.
ZANIS
Wele! No shani?
I have failed to comment kwati tafilepanga sense kuli ine
Given the extent to which computers have become a part of modern life, it is inevitable that some people have seen the wired world as an opportunity to make money or cause mischief.
no comment!!
This has been long overdue, a lot of people are using the net for illegal activities like ponography, identity theft and human trafficking.
??????
yashani guys!!!
hope we use net for better matterss..
First Lady pliz stop distributing ur PORNO’s
No comment!!!
Anonymous
Can we continue our debate here?
imposible!they can only reduce the risks of the viruses
what the…. ???? anyway no comment [-(
Thanx to the turkish huckers! Zambia has now woken up. The idea CAZ has brought up is wellcome (The Idea of making ‘disaster recovery plan and procedures’ a prerequisit for licencing)!
The only problem with ICT in Zambia is that, ICT companies’ bosses employs their relatives who tend to grasp technological principles through ‘experince’. Practical example – Zamtel. As a result most of our brothers working in the ICT sector in zambia are not qualified to handle the ICT challenges. country men and women who have worked with Zamtel before, will agree with me that most of the enginners the company has were just promoted to that title, i.e., they dont have academical papers. There were…..
They were first employed as learner technicians, promoted to technicianship, promoted to …. and so on. As a result, the work force which is currrently on the ground ( In most ICT companies in zambia) is incapable of delivering good proffessional skills to the nation, due to the incompetence of the ‘promoted engineers’. A good example would be Cel Z. I think, the cel z network should hav been among the best networks in africa! Im looking at the resources zamtel has. It was first initiated on the market in the early 1990s with an american technology – AMPS ( advanced mobile phone sysstem). making it one of the earliest networks in our country. This would have made cell z to be an idol….
dunga you are useless
ive been an I.T person almost all my life…nothing is confidential on the net…not even passwords can protect you…
#14. i concur with you.period!
**==**==**== “The communication authority has formed a task force to protect the service provider”
awe ama TASK FORCE yapakisa,so it will be heavily funded and monies will be misappropriated!!! & again another task force, bwafya….
#12, You’re so on point!Coppernet was hacked by the Turkish hackers some time last year and were offline for a while. I would have thought they might have had a disaster recovery plan, but nothing!There is so much potential for IT growth in Zed, just give the jobs to the right people!
This would have made cell Z to be an idol for the new networks like the then celtel and telecel in terms of standards. Some of the resources celz has at its disposal are the zamtel owned:
1) PSTN ( public switched telephone network, or land lines). with the PSTN, zamtel can reach all the four coners of our country. this network can be used to embed celZ signals for remote area coverage rather than implementing unnessecary projects ( Instalation of new BTSs) yieding gruesome costs.
2) Mwembeshi Earth station: Mwembeshi earth station has the capacity to has two antenas…….
1)Mwembeshi II, Which is digital is able to have direct communication ( in all types of services) with the whole of Africa, the whole of Europe, North and South-America.
2)Mwembeshi I is able to have direct communication ( in all types of services with the whole of Africa, the Whole of Europe, Asia and the Far East. Unfortunately the earth staion is under utilised(Less than 50% of its capacity is used).
CelZ’s failures can be atributed to the family trees we have in zambian companies. Our colleagues dont understand the principles of communications. They work like operators not engineers. they only know how to monitor equipment.Of course they learnt the skill from their ancestors.
#13(soviet Engineer). I have to applaude you for that observation on zamtel(cell Z). Cell z has the most bloated workforce in zambia that needs immediate restructuring lest zamtel collapses like lehmann brothers. You will be shocked that one fault problem let say in Ibex will be serviced by six to ten so called ‘engineers’.Sheer incompetence and plunder of our resources. I cant support the privatisation of zamtel but restructring is inevitable.
Greetings all. this is a seriuos topic, can i make an analogy to a human body.
we need also to put measures to ensure the human body is protected as well
Yes, little knowledge is dangerous. Silence is the best mode for the uninformed. Ask my big man Sata, (who calls himself president, president, my foot, president of what?), to contribute on this article. I will welcome his comments and engage him. I am also inviting FTJ to debate issues on this subject instead of buying suits and appearing like a very wealthy kasai. Bring him on as well. After all, he claims to be a doctor who carries thick books like ABBOTT and all those books we used to carry when we were in form 3. Huge Complex ka mudala kalya.
#23, why do you like Chiluba and Sata so much? Did you ever have issues together? Tell us or we shall think you envy them. Walikwata complex naiwe bushe?
Talking about internet security, i agree with one of the blogers that there is no security on the net. But there are principles, when followed, helps mitigate the impact hackers have on peoples’ networks. you will agree with me that the best network administrator you can ever have is a good hacker(trained). therefore, when training network admins, methods hackers use to attack networks are explored ( IP spoofing, SQl injection, social engineering, taking advantage of poorly done html frames, and so on).Network admins (also) are equiped with software for monitoring network intruders.With these powrful tools in ones hands, network security can be improved.
ICT is non-existent pa Zed! Period! There is no data centre, no tech support, no monitoring tools.. the list goes on! First address the skills shortage then look at policy and procedure. Policies and procedures do not teach someone how to respond to a cyber attack.. because they come in many forms which can only be recognised by someone who kows what they are doing.
Zamtel has two data centres, 1 located at zamtel staff trainning college ( though it has been long since i was in Z. therefore, i wuldnt know its condition at present and how it is being utilised) and onother one in lusaka
Guys i cant believe what is happening on the thread.. Zambians in diaspora….
Am out for fresh air
what I mean by data centre is one which can host IT infrastructure for customers – such as Telehouse, InterXion etc. It is common for companies have their own data centres – such as Mutondo was for ZCCM etc.
Iyi sinkhani yathu mwe. Vizungu va IT, teti ukwanishe. Data shanshani, Monitoring fimo fimo, katwishi uko cyber….mwabikapo na spoofing fimo fimo…awee.. I give up. Nikhani yanu iyi.
When the Zamnet site was hacked, we too were affected. Up to now, we have not yet been restored. Elo there is a blogger here, though I have not seen him/(her) anywhere today, whose name appears on this hacked site.
I think we also need all orgs that are using IT to conduct their business or transmit their clients information across the Internet to train their staff. Yes, in some cases, th people eployed have no proper papers, but in most cases, its because these orgs aint willing to train their staff. How does someone come up with procedures and business coninuity plan if they don’t appreciate the issue of hacking. Most orgs only want to employ and use people without equipping them wih necessary skills to meet new challenges. i am not going to laugh or pour scorn at ZAMNET or ZAMTEL, probably the gusy managing the infrastracture there have never ever been sent for a refresher on new technologies.
I think we also need all orgs that are using IT to conduct their business or transmit their clients information across the Internet to train their staff. Yes, in some cases, the people employed have no proper papers, but in most cases, its because these orgs aint willing to train their staff. How does someone come up with procedures and business coninuity plans if they don’t appreciate the issue of hacking. Most orgs only want to employ and use people without equipping them wih necessary skills to meet new challenges. I aint gonna laugh or pour scorn at ZAMNET or ZAMTEL, probably the guys managing the infrastracture there have never ever been sent for a refresher on new technologies
Hi all,
Security is very important, and when planning for any system, be it system development or installation, this should be considered and with high priority. Threats maybe Internal(Including within a particular organization or external hackers, looters, cadres etc. However, when Zamnet was hacked, one of my friends from china informed me and i tried to check, it was embarrassing, even times of Zambia and Daily was affected. But then each company has its own Web/Server/Database/Network Administrators who are responsible for implementing security. For me i think the administrators of these systems are not competent with security issues. Coppernet was also hacked last year by the same chaps
They had even put an Iranian flag on the site.
Simple measures to prevent this.
Train staff in security matters, and how to handle threats,
Protect yourselves by putting firewalls and using seriously long password, like my passwords are normally minimum 10 characters.
As for viruses, People should take time to appreciate how a computer works and processes your computer runs, then read about different types of viruses/trojans/spyware etc. When you do that, you will easily tell when you computer in not performing normally and what you should do. Use the internet to investigate your computer problems. Close for unnecessary ports that are not supporting any of the programs you have installed, disable ftp if you are not using it, and visit good sites with a reasonably good anti virus. Then you are safe. If you are in Linux/Unix/Mac, no need to worry. In Windows, make sure if you get threats update your antivirus disconnect from the net and scan in safe mode
Reading this article make me wonder if Mr. Mwanza really knows what he was talking about. He he ever looked at the quality of websites hosted by ZAMNET. All those sites are just brochures and the sites are not even active. So the loss of business Mr. Mwanza is talking about is all googled stuff and this man has no clue about the reality of Internet websites in Zambia. That is why the owners of the sites have not even made noise about the hacking. Zambians don’t rely on the INTERNET to do their business. Websites are still brochures. The only acceptable INTERNET application in Zambia is e-mails. And ZAMNET is responsible for the stunted websites usage in Zambia and to them it is….
#ctd from 37..and I say this because they treat websites as insignificant and they have never really delivered the true website experience that a business can have. Just look at their website. Some Joomla CMS trash gone wrong and they seem not to see that and car. It has amateurism written all over it and am sure the hacker knew people behind this amateurish work have a server full of holes. ZAMNET is just too thin spread and lacks the qualified people. This Mr Maseko man is a very smart man, but unfortunately he is the only one at ZAMNET and his hands are full.
CAZ should separate the connectivity business from the websites/applications business. Let other people handle the applicati..
#ctd 38 CAZ should let other people specialised in the application side of the network stack handle domain registration, hosting and things like that. ZAMNET should just focus on the connectivity aspect, which I think they are good at because we zambia rarely has connectivity outage in terms of internet.
Most of these security issues are at the application layer and you need players with that specialty and CAZ need to ensure that this happens if they are to see true websites take up by the business community and see true secure websites ..not these hacked by primary school kids. Zambia is very behind in the web 2.0 space and ISPs have no capacity to deliver this.
ctd 39..ISPs have no capacity to deal with this. I wonder why the post newspaper changed from post.co.zm to postzambia.com. Other people can fill us in on this. I missed on on that. I would infact argue that the only active site in Zambia is LT and the few newspapers, the rest are just brochures and if they died nobody would care in Zambia. Govt site were last updated in 1998. And don’t blame them. Blame ISPs for giving people technology that is hard to use.
Ya ba I have said a lot because I know this industry can do better in Zambia than what we see now
THE END
Well said iri i can feel your frustration.Getting to the article Mwanza does not seem to appreciate the fact that zambia has no ICT policy at the moment it has been created but yet to implemented(i stand to be corrected).furthermore there is no law pertaining to ICT related problems and crimes not to mention resources to deal with these issues.Mwanza and his counterpart must push for the implementation of the policy and enactment of laws because once laws are in place it will be CAZ’s duty to ensure that ISP adhere to the law.
Good bye bloggers. :)>-
It can never happen now! Not in Zambia, it doest even exist to start with because very few people have access to internet and you are talking of cyber crime. Fyakukopele- kopela, Alah!!!! Chimutu!
Even at UNZA, the computer system is not computerised.LOL. Application of ICT is a huge challenge to 77- 85% of all those GRZ chaps in all depts of governement.
we aint got the equipment to fight cyber crime…lol:d:d:d:d:((:((:d/
I feel sad that people come on this blog to insult the well qualified I.T persons working in the Zambian corporate world.What people should understand is that we have so many qualified people in Zambia but the problem is complacency(workiers thinking things will sort themselves out),it doesn’t work that way,once you qualify & start working,you must strive to be up to date in your field that is why even software is continuosly updated,it’s the same thing with Accountants etc,you need to be aware of changes in Accounting rules in order to stay ahead in business.Information technology is actually just growing in Zed so all these are lessons before things get to acceptable standards.
lets be proactive not always being reactive ZED pipo!! kashi what is wrong? :((:((:((
too late, internet is alreeady prone to all activities
Welcome the NASTY world of INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ba Zambia. Hacking, viruses, spam, fraud, ID theft is all a part of this world today. To the so called ICT’s, I suggest you seriously consider hiring competent IT professionals to help safe gaurd your networsk/servers. I can offer my services to you but ofcourse, it will cost you. But look at it this way, am dealing with corporate America and have the knowlegde and skills to make this work in Zed. Matter fact, I know it can work again, are you willing to pay me what am worth? Until you look at the “bright” side of things, you’re one cyber attack away from experiencing a total nightmare. I mean seriously…no data recovery? Wow!:-?
Excellent blog right here! Also your website lots up very fast! What host are you the use of? Can I get your associate hyperlink on your host? I wish my site loaded up as fast as yours lol