Business Daily (Nairobi)

An Indonesian hacker has caught Kenya government tech gurus napping. In an unprecedented occurrence, an Indonesian hacker known as direxer has taken down 103 government of Kenya websites.

According to a Tuesday discussion on Kenya's online tech forum, Kictanet, the hacker is part of an online Indonesian security forum known as Forum Code Security and says he took down the websites following tutorials from the forum.

The news of the hacking was first exposed on the site code-security.net/archives/114, a forum on code security.

More than 11,000 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have benefited from an initiative by Google, Equity Bank and Safaricom to create own websites at no fee.

Designing a simple website costs between Sh15, 000 and Sh20, 000 excluding the cost of managing it. But under the initiative, the enterprises have access to a template for free and customised for their use.

The Office of the President will house a new department to monitor cyber security on all public platforms set up with the adoption of online services. Falling under the directorate of e-Government services, it comes when manual records are being upgraded into electronic forms, rasing the possibility of increased cyber crimes.

It will take charge of electronic security on government systems, including the telecoms infrastructure and data storage, migrating from an arrangement where individual ministries and departments were in charge of cyber policing.