Meet the AfricaHackOn

In 28th of February in Nairobi was organized the first hacking conference in Kenya: AfricaHackOn. Hakin9 Magazine had a pleasure to be a media partner in this event - you can find some notes from Africahackon here:

Blackbox Penetration Testing

Bank IT Security in Kenya

Now, we are are glad to present a short interview with the organizers.
Who are you, founders of Africahackon?

This was an idea formed by Lewis Ng’ang’a and Bright Gameli Mawudor, later on infosec members from various sectors of the economy joined these are: Ibrahim Gathungu, Tyrus Kamau, Samuel Mwai, John Gichuki, Ruth Macharia, Christian Kisutsa, Eliud Mwangi, Fredrick Wahome, George Wahome, Paula Musuva, William Makatiani, Irene Njoroge, Samuel Kihahu, Munir Njiru, Nyoike Thuo.

What are the reasons of making AfricaHackOn?
The need to have information security experts share their knowledge, also it’s a platform to create awareness for students and corporates in the Information Technology industry.

How numerous is society of hackers and IT professionals in Kenya?
There are more of technology enthusiasts who do have meet ups once in while for discussion but never has there been an open kind for hackers or information security engineers.
Currently there is no estimate as most of the members are in underground forums. In the past year the number has immensely grown with groups being formed and having a large base of close to 700 members.

What is a situation of IT development in Kenya today? What is already done? What could be done more?
Mobile application development is one of the biggest growing areas in Kenya and that has greately contributed to boosting the state of IT in the country as a whole.
However, Security being a process there is more to be done to safeguard our systems, this varies from the Financial sector this to mention that banks are most affected either through hacking on internal fraud. The other is the private sector whereby organisations have sensitive data of their customers and are not safe guarded to a good level. The attack methodology is changing, organizations are getting hyper-sensitive and engaging third parties in their business which leaves a lot of openess to high level of threats

And what about new technologies in Kenya?
Since the introduction of the mobile money platform M-PESA, a lot of new technologies have sprung up around mobile technologies. Many developers are building on top of this cloud to make advances. Apart from the numerous applications being developed, the highlight of the day goes to the government implementing the Public Key Infrastructure and launching of the Cyber Security Master plan to help govern information security in the country.

For more infos, see the video (start at 3:24) and a shorter version