Super fast, super cheap but also super dangerous

After watching the James Cameron’s 3D movie blockbuster Avatar, I have come to agree with Nick Summers’ recent assertion in a newsweek.com piece that the advent of 3D TV is necessary if TV as we know it in the box is to stay alive.

Everyone knows that over the past decade or so, a digital tidal wave has replaced postal mail with e-mail, landlines with cell phones, and home newspaper delivery with news Web sites.

Basically, anyone born after 1980 wants fewer pipes coming into their homes and is immensely picky about the media they consume.

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

The internet is now properly with us in Kenya – at least since mid last year, 21 years younger and bigger than ever.

This new interconnected world offers a great promise to the advancement of humanity.

But many in our world remain oblivious to the perils of cruising the limitless cyber highways without the requisite understanding or protection.

In May last year, while appointing his head of Cyber Security, President Barack Obama said that cyber threats had become “one of the most serious economic and military dangers the nation faces.”

To emphasise the importance of ICT to the most powerful economy on earth, the new head of cyber security is in a position so high in the Obama administration and reports to the National Security Council and the National Economic Council respectively.

President Obama also called for a new education campaign that keeps the pace with technology, highlighted the need for a cyber-savvy work force and the raising of public awareness of the challenges and threats related to cyber security.

As East Africa joins the rest of the world online, we as Kenyans need to give equal attention to our 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 for their friends how clever they were.

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 others.

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 every day - email, websites (especially web 2.0 sites which can be manipulated by the end user e.g. blogs, social media sites like Facebook and MySpace, RSS feeds) - to infect or to get onto your computer and steal confidential information.

Phishing (an attempt via email to get a user to visit a fraudulent website to steal that user’s information via a web form) is an example of this.

Right now, 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 realized.

Experts predict these elements won’t exist in a year’s time.

In fact at this point, many reading this in Kenya would probably consider a decent antivirus or PC protection suite an unnecessary expense that 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 for 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.

Nevertheless just like their criminal counterparts, many online security companies and organizations are working tirelessly to ensure they are a step ahead of the bad guys by developing products and packages that give the customer overall digital protection, performance, and an easy to use interface and not simply antivirus like half a decade ago.

Nowadays, top suites are sure to include as much value added cover for the end user like personal identity protection and management, backup and in some instances maintenance of your PC’s health even when not connected.

As with everything else we embrace, 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.

Mwenesi is a Contract Manager with Symantec Corporation. mwenesi_musalia@symantec.com