The Ugandan authorities are moving to curb cybercrime, the growth of which is put down to unemployment and the influx of a large pool of youth highly skilled in information technology.
The New Vision reports entities running critical IT systems will be required to create technical and administrative controls, such as usernames and passwords to access systems, and perform background checks during the recruitment of staff for critical IT jobs to avoid criminals being recruited in critical areas.
“We are targeting critical information infrastructure because they control systems which we are dependent on as a country for national security and for economic development,” director for information security at the National Information Technology Authority (NITA-U) Peter Kahiigi said.
“If for instance the computerised systems for power generation, transmission and distribution suffer cyberattacks, we will suffer blackouts. If banks and other utility companies are attacked, the citizens of Uganda will suffer.”
He said if entities failed to prevent breaches of information security controls they would be detected through compliance checks.
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