Framework for an African policy towards creating cyber security awareness

Abstract

Cyber security is a GLOBAL issue. The rest of the world needs Africa to be aware and ready. Furthermore, Africa can only be aware and ready if it is internally organised and collaborates effectively with the rest of the world. The African continent consists mostly of developing countries where the needs for cyber security awareness programmes are different from developed countries. Therefore, it makes perfect sense for the continent to cooperate with respect to cyber security joint initiatives and by sharing best practice and skilled resources for cyber security awareness and response. There is currently no continental coordination of cyber security. This paper proposes a high-level African Cyber Security Policy as well as an African Cyber Security Awareness Framework to guide cyber security agencies, standards and legislation as well as specific initiatives to promote cyber security awareness. This is achieved through the analysis of a few Cyber Security Policies from developed countries (USA, UK, Estonia, Korea), identification of African countries that have such policies in place, and identification of the agencies, forums, workgroups, conferences, organisations and other initiatives that are currently dealing with ICT and cyber security policy and awareness in Africa – including ITU, Interpol, AfriNIC, ISG-Africa and country-specific organisations such as Computer Security Incident Response Teams