ICT Cabinet Secretary Eliud Owalo has admitted that the government’s online services have been affected by a cyber-attack by people who have identified themselves as Anonymous Sudan.
The CS said no data was lost during the attack and that the government was working around the clock to resolve the problem and secure the website.
When the CS appeared for an interview on SpiceFM on Thursday, July 27, morning, he said that the cyber-attack was not a strange issue as it is prevalent across the globe in this era of technology.
“What we need to put in place is an elaborate risk mitigation framework which we are ready for anyway. There was an attack, and we are addressing it,” Mr Owalo said.
The CS said that the government is not only coming up with remedial measures to address the current situation but putting measures that will be sustainable in place.
Majority of Kenyans have been complaining on social media platforms for the last four days over unavailable government services through the digital portal.
Whenever they attempt to log into the website, they encounter an error and that means that they will not be able to access thousands of government services.
The CS said that the attackers started by making the system to work at a slower rate, a move that he said is being addressed.
“They tried jamming the system by making more than ordinary into the system…no data has been accessed, and no data has been lost.”
While assuring Kenyans that their data are safe, the CS added that the government has been anticipating for such attacks, hence, the reason why the government operationalises the office of the data commission.
Also, the CS assured Kenyans that there was no need to raise an alarm over the current cyber-attack, asking them not to panic.
“There is no cause for alarm, we have adequate capacity to address issues of cyber insecurity…I don’t want to say we are perfect because we should also be honest, we are enhancing our level of capacity within government to be able to mitigate against cyber insecurity.”
ICT CS said that the portal would return to normal before the end of the day.
Through social media, Anonymous Sudan claimed that they were targeting more government digital services.
“We downed their sh**ty site for 3 days and counting. We hope Kenyans now know who the Sudanese are, and the next will be worse, we are preparing something very big,” that is the post they issued on Telegram channel.