Customers use computers at an internet cafe in Changzhi, China. Trained personnel are most sought in the battle against information theft, corporate espionage and digital fraud.
What you need to know:
The skills
A C|HFI v8 professional will be able to understand:
The process of investigating cybercrime, laws involved, and the details in obtaining a search warrant.
Different types of digital evidence, rules of evidence, digital evidence examination process, and electronic crime and digital evidence consideration by crime category.
Roles of first responder, first responder tool kit, securing and evaluating electronic crime scene, conducting preliminary interviews, documenting electronic crime scene, collecting and preserving electronic evidence, packaging and transporting electronic evidence and reporting the crime scene.
How to recover deleted files and deleted partitions in Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.
Password cracking concepts, tools, types of password attacks .
A leading US certification body and a local training firm have partnered to offer specialised training on Internet security as the number and sophistication of cyber attacks increase.
The EC-Council has partnered with the Kenyan firm, Techno Brain, to offer IT-related courses locally in a partnership that is set to reduce expenses for the Government and firms that would otherwise have had to send their employees for training at a steeper cost.
Some of the preferred destinations are the US and India.
Information security training ranges from short courses focused on recognising different types of attacks such as spam email, while larger scale certifications give personnel the capability to respond to any type of threat.
Among the courses to be offered locally are Computer Hacking Forensics Investigator (C|HFI) Certification Programme, infrastructure library management and Internet server management.
Charges for the 40-hour lessons range between Sh99,720 ($1200) and Sh124,650 ($1500) per individual.
EC-Council will provide certification and training of the tutors while Techno Brain will co-ordinate the training by sourcing for clients.
The demand for security analysts and administrators is fuelled by the increased automation of services, especially by financial institutions and telecom firms.
Cyber crime includes receiving unsolicited material, commonly referred to as spam mails, hacking, extortion, espionage, viruses and using some software to get critical information from an individual, an organisation or government computer system.
Vijay Balabhadra, the general manager of Techno Brain, said the courses target key government officials in charge of security from the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) and financial institutions.
“Government and corporate firms usually fly out their employees to India for training, but with the partnership they can take the courses here and get their certification,” said Mr Balabhadra.
Ken Kasina, an information security consultant, says although a number of learning institutions offer Internet security courses, most of them tend to dwell on theory which does not add much value.
“The reason corporate organisations and even the Government take their staff to countries such as the US for training is that institutions there have adopted a more practical mode,” said Mr Kasina.
He said information security analysts’ training should be a continuous process due to fast-changing technology, with hackers constantly improving their methods.
An entry level information security analyst in the country is paid between Sh80,000 and 150,000 a month while a consultant in the same field earns Sh500,000 for an assignment or more, depending on the workload.
Cybersecurity in Kenya is a growth industry, with rapidly increasing demand for qualified professionals.
But low remuneration has seen the Government lose key IT experts to the private sector, which is a threat to its ambitious digital projects.
Information Permanent Secretary Bitange Ndemo said the Government had lost eight officers it had trained to tackle cyber crime due to uncompetitive salaries.
“The greatest challenge we are witnessing is the ability to retain IT officers capable of tackling cyber crime due to low remuneration that has seen us lose a number to the private sector,” said Dr Ndemo.
Last week the telecommunications regulator, the Communication Commission of Kenya, signed a Sh36.2 million project with a United Nations Agency —ITU— to create a desk that will handle all cyber security issues in the country and also help build human capacity.
This comes at a time when four financial institutions have lost more than Sh82 million in internal frauds and close to 2,000 websites hacked in the past one year. Balamurugan Rajagopal , a principal consultant and managing director at Simos Consultancy Services, stressed the need for cyber security investigation training. “The biggest challenge we have in the country is shortage of people both in government and the private sector who can investigate computer-related crimes mainly because of the prohibitive fees charged for the training,” said Mr Rajagopal.
To bring down the cost, EC-Council and Techno Brain has rolled out an academic programme in various universities including the Kenya College of Accountancy, Kenyatta University and KEMU.
The Computer Hacking Forensics Investigator (C|HFI) Certification Programme is designed to equip security professionals with skills to identify an intruder’s footprints and to gather sufficient evidence to support a prosecution.
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