The Department of Telecommunications and Postal Services aims to strengthen SA's IT security blueprint and clarify policies by establishing a "cyber security hub".
Delivering his budget vote speech this week, minister Siyabonga Cwele said the hub's function will be "to promote best practice, compliance with standards, procedures and develop related cyber security policies that affect the public and private sectors", although no details were outlined. Cwele added the hub would be established by the end of this year.
The protection of government's systems were, for a long time, shrouded in ambiguity and the previous Department of Communications released a draft National Cybersecurity Policy Framework (NCPF) in 2011, aiming to create "a secure, dependable, reliable and trustworthy cyber environment that facilitates the protection of critical information infrastructure".
The NCPF highlighted its role as articulating government's strategic IT security priorities, and previous communications minister Yunus Carrim inaugurated a National Cybersecurity Advisory Council last year, in an effort to establish public-private cyber security co-operation.
ICT veteran Adrian Schofield says a detailed, overarching cyber security policy is long overdue, but national government could look at existing frameworks such as the Minimum Information Security Standards document, which was approved by Cabinet in 1996 and lays out the manner in which information is handled.
More work is necessary, says Schofield, to ensure the security of government and citizen data from unauthorised access.
Catching up
Craig Rosewarne, MD of Wolfpack Information Risk, notes government could have reacted quicker to establishing its cyber security policy. "There is a lot of catching up to do. However, there are a lot of initiatives under way to look at this on a senior, strategic level, because they are realising that this is a real threat."
Rosewarne adds government has a computer security incident response team to protect its interests, while the hub proposed by Cwele would probably ensure this expands to cater for the public.
Cwele said, during his speech, the DTPS will work to restore SA's global ICT competitiveness, while the cyber security hub aims for an environment in which businesses and citizens have faith in government's technology infrastructure.
Share