Interior and National Administration Cabinet Secretary Prof Kithure Kindiki has invited the public to submit their comments on the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes (Critical Information Infrastructure and Cybercrime Management) Regulations,2023 and Regulatory Impact Statement.
In a notice on Tuesday, August 29, Interior PS Raymond Omollo said the call for submissions will run from August 29 to September 22.
Further, PS Omollo explained that the submissions can be hand delivered or sent via registered courier to the Ministry of Interior postal address within working hours or sent to the email address [email protected].
Additionally, the Draft Regulations, Comment Matrix and the Draft Regulatory Impact Statement can be downloaded from the nc4 website https://nc4.go.ke/cmca-2018-draft-regulations/.
Kindiki Goal with regulation
CS Kindiki developed the regulations with the following objectives;
- Provide a framework to monitor, detect and respond to cybersecurity threats in the cyberspace belonging to Kenya.
- Provide a framework for establishment and management of Cybersecurity Operation Centres.
- Provide for protection, preservation, and management of Critical Information Infrastructure.
- Provide for audit and inspection of National Critical Information Infrastructure.
- Provide recovery plans in the event of disaster, breach or loss of national critical information infrastructure or any part of it.
- Provide a framework for capacity building on prevention, detection and mitigation of computer and cybercrimes and matters connected to thereto.
- Promote coordination, collaboration and cooperation and shared responsibility amongst stakeholders in the cybersecurity sector including critical infrastructure protection.
- Provide mechanisms for cybercrime management, among others.
- Public Engagement Schedule
- Physical public engagement meetings will be held in the 8 regions across the country.
Further, all stakeholders and members of the public are encouraged to take part.
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The engagements will start from the Nyanza region (Siaya, Kisumu, Migori, Kisii, Homabay, Kisii and Nyamira) on September 12 at the Kisumu City Hall.
On the same date, the public engagements will be held for the North Coast at the Malindi Town Hall and the Upper Eastern at the Meru Kamundi Hall.
The North Coast includes Kilifi, Lamu and Tana River while upper eastern brings together Marsabit, Meru, Isiolo, Tharaka Nithi and Embu.
Bungoma County Hall will serve as the venue for the Western edition of the engagements.
This will be held on September 13 bringing together Kakamega, Bungoma, Busia and Vihiga.
On the same day, the Central region (Nyandarua, Nyeri,Kirinyanga, Muranga, Kiambu) will also host the engagements at the Nyeri YMVA Hall.
Moreover, on September 14, the engagements will be at the Eldoret Town Hall for the North Rift region (Turkana, West Pokot, Trans Zoia, Uasin Gishu, Elgeyo Marakwet, Nandi, Baringo, Samburu, Laikipia).
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Lower Eastern (Kitui,Machakos, Makueni) will also have the sessions on the same date at the Makueni Social Hall.
On the other hand, the South Rift region (Nakuru, Kajiado, Narok,Kericho, Bomet) will have tpublicforums on September 15.
The last session of the engagements will be held at the Wajir Town Hall on September 18.
This will cater for the Northeastern region including Wajir, Mandera and Garissa.
Note that all the public engagements will be held from 8:30 am to 12:30 pm.
Stakeholder Engagement
Additionally, the sectoral engagement will be held at the Nairobi Sarova Stanley Hotel.
The public will have their turn on September 18, from 8:30am to 12 pm and in the afternoon from 2pm to 4pm.
Further, ICT and Telecommunications will have engagements on September 9 from 8:30 am to noon.
On the same day, Energy Transports and Manufacturing Industry will have their chance from 2 pm to 4 pm.
Banking Insurance and Finance together with Electoral, Judicial, Health, Education, Food, Water and Land will have their opportunity to contribute on September 20.
In addition, Local and International Technology Organizations, and Professional Bodies and Associations will have engagements on September 21.
Lastly, the engagements for Defence Security and Public Safety, and Representatives of Special Interest Groups (Women, Youth and PWDs) will be held on September 22.
Cyberattack on Kenya
In July, Kenya suffered a serious cyberattack after hackers tried to infiltrate the eCitizen, a digital platform that allows the public to access government services remotely.
Following the attack, Kenyans were unable to access crucial services for hours, including passport processing.
However, Kindiki and his ICT counterpart Eliud Owalo assured Kenyans of the safety of their data.
“The attack on the e-Citizen platform involved an unsuccessful attempt to overload the system with extraordinary requests with the intention of clogging the system, but our technical teams blocked the source IP address from which the requests originated,” Owalo said in a statement.
At the time, Kindiki explained how the hackers attempted to disrupt the functionality of the platform.
“The momentary disruption was caused by an attempted cyber-attack on the platform through Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) technique, which involved flooding the target system with massive traffic from multiple sources simultaneously. The platform was overloaded and rendered unavailable to genuine users thereby causing interference of the services,” he said.
