If you were browsing for appliances on an online shopping website, when you log on to say your Facebook account, you find adverts from the same retailer with the items that had peaked your interest.
Over and beyond the simple aspects of product and service delivery, this is the same model used by security agents and governments when it comes to tracking citizen behaviour and needs.
Kenya lags due to the lack of clear guidelines on cybersecurity.
Daily, we sit at our computers or mobile devices browsing for all that crosses our minds from shopping to tabloids and news sites. What always stands out is the fact that the adverts, especially on social media sites seem tailored to you.
If you were browsing for appliances on an online shopping website, when you log on to say your Facebook account, you find adverts from the same retailer with the items that had peaked your interest.
“Big Data analytics tracks behaviour and gives you products and adverts tailored to you. This includes directing you to special offers that are more relevant to you,” said Terry Greer-King, Cisco director for cyber security in UK, Ireland and Africa.
This is the Big Data phenomenon. In lay man terms, Big Data is the large volume of data collected online, which is then analysed to show trends and patterns of users to revolutionise product and service delivery as well as how security information is handled.
“The 21st century has been christened the ‘age of data’. Data is increasingly acknowledged as the raw material of a new industrial revolution, and one of the key drivers of the information society,” said Joe Mucheru, the ICT Cabinet Secretary during the just concluded annual ICT Week.
“In this ‘Big Data age’, new types of science and engineering facilities and sensors are generating streams of digital data from telescopes, video cameras, traffic monitors, magnetic resonance imaging machines, and biological and chemical sensors monitoring the environment,” he added.
Over and beyond the simple aspects of product and service delivery, this is the same model used by security agents and governments when it comes to tracking citizen behaviour and needs.
“As a result, governments can draw conclusions and create policies and services that are in sync with the needs and circumstances of citizens. This way we can help those we serve to live better, more securely, more healthily and more prosperous lives,” said Mr Mucheru.
IBM in March, during its annual Interconnect conference, was pushing the Big Data agenda. “Each day, we create 4.5 quintillion bytes of data from a variety of sources—from climate information to posts on social media sites, purchase transaction records and medical images,” said IBM. This being an indicator of the resource available for use by governments and businesses to make them more proactive than reactive to the needs of citizens and customers respectively.
Media and data-intensive companies plugged into the big data phenomenon to deliver targeted information to users while keeping track of what sells and what users are looking for, that would not be readily available from face to face conversations.
“Some of the quick gains that may be realised by leveraging on big data include, the use of mobile network big data for real-time measurement, future predictions and planning in areas such as health, agriculture, and education, among others,” said Francis Wangusi, director general of the Communications Authority of Kenya.
According to Mr Wangusi, Kenya can leverage on big data to complement official statistics, which, will in turn enable the government and development agencies to better serve Kenyans in the era of knowledge societies.
“Data entrepreneurs are mining public sector data to create applications and services to make our lives more convenient. Government needs to follow suit and harness the enormous quantities of data at its disposal to pave the way for public service modernisation,” added Mr Mucheru.
Google and Facebook have been leveraging on the sheer volume of data handled on their pages to break down and analyse and sell to corporate and governments.
The Big Data can be used to anticipate and neutralise security threats as well grow business. This combines with the use of artificial intelligence provides the environment in which the systems themselves can become self-intuitive.
Android users will notice that the device is intuitive to needs from generating predictive texts, giving you traffic updates to specific destinations at specific times based on your travel habits and even generates news alerts based on subjects of interest.
Big Data, Greer-King says, is more of Big Brother modelling you rather than watching you.
But with the rise of Big Data, the question of security preparedness of the country comes into question.
This month, headlines have been about malware and ransomware that has paralysed businesses and individual accounts.
The malware is delivered to seemingly genuine links to users via email or adverts, which, once activated, infect the devices.
Cybercriminals have upped the ante by using language and words in common conversations to avoid early detection. In some countries, when organisations are hacked, the law requires them to publicly declare the incident.
Kenya lags due to the lack of clear guidelines on cybersecurity. According to Mr Mucheru, data protection is an issue for both paper and computer-based data. In this regard, it is imperative to create secure IT infrastructure to address theft and hacking menace that is of particular concern with electronic data.
The Cyber Security and Protection Bill is yet to be passed in Parliament, though it was approved by the Cabinet last month. The legislation on Access to Information and Data Protection is yet to be presented to the National Assembly.
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