As we join the world online, are we secure?

Most people know that over the last decade or so, a digital revolution has replaced postal mail with e-mail, landlines with cell phones, and home newspaper delivery with news Web sites.

Anyone born after 1980 wants fewer pipes coming into their homes, and want a fine-grained choice about the media they consume.

The more stuff we can get over the one pipe we do want — the Internet — the better.

Well, the Internet is properly in Kenya this year, 21 years young and bigger than ever.

As East Africa strides boldly to join the rest of the world online, do Kenyans need to give the same attention to the collective online agenda?

With the evolution of online activities comes the continued evolution of threats.

Historically, hackers and virus writers were kids trying to show off.

They would deface a Web site, or break through the security of a system.

They were curious and had a technical interest, they wanted to show off and leave their mark on things.

Now, their intent has changed. They are trying to spy.

They are trying to look at what you are doing, steal your personal/confidential information – credit card numbers, PINs, account numbers, things that are most important to you — and sell it to make money.

It is no longer about fame and showing off. It is about making money and harming the individual.

Instead of hacking into a computer, they are using socially engineered techniques.

They think about current events, the situations that they can get you to respond to — a natural disaster, tax season, billing invoices, holidays.

They use tools that we use daily — e-mails, websites (especially web 2.0 sites which can be manipulated by the end-user like blogs, social media sites like Facebook, MySpace, RSS feeds) — to infect or to get onto your computer and then steal confidential information. Phishing is an example of this.

Many Kenyan internet users have no difficulty filling out any kind of web form with their correct details because there are no perceived threats on the landscape as yet and the capacity to transact online is yet to be fully realised; elements which won’t exist in a year’s time, experts predict.

In fact, at this point, many reading this in Kenya would probably consider a decent antivirus or PC protection suite an unnecessary expense which will not do much but slow the machine down and are happy to use freeware or pirated or cracked software, blissfully ignorant of the importance of valid updates or threat signatures that come with installing genuine security products or the fact that most downloadable freeware will more often than not be spyware out to target your machine.

It won’t be long before the most enterprising nation in East Africa comes to grip with the magnanimity of what the internet can do both good and bad.

Musalia works with Symantec Corporation.