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HIT Co-Hosts National Cybersecurity

The Harare Institute of Technology's Department of Information Security and Assurance co-hosted the National Cybersecurity Conference held in Harare from 10 – 11 April 2018, under the theme "Cybersecurity- a shared responsibility".

HIT Co-Hosts National CybersecurityThe National Cybersecurity Conference was organised by Ministry of Information Communication Technologies and Cyber Security in partnership with the Harare Institute of Technology, ZICT, Zimbabwe Institute of Engineers (ZIE), and Zimpapers.

The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of ICT and Cyber Security, Dr. Sam Kundishora gave the keynote address which set the tone for the conference. Dr. Kundishora highlighted that the conference was aimed at engaging all stakeholders in society, government, corporates and academia with the objective of spreading awareness on issues related to cybersecurity. "The main objective of this conference is to come up with a National Cybersecurity Strategy which is meant to operationalize the National Cybersecurity Policy.

Dr Kundishora said Government intends to strengthen national infrastructural security as this was vital to the security of the nation adding that government should coordinate its efforts with neighbouring countries, as cyber security threats were not limited to national borders.

"The Government's vision in terms of cyber security is to make sure that Zimbabwe is secure, particularly the national information and communication infrastructure.The information and the data must be secure for the safety of the citizens. This can only be done through the creation of a resilient communications infrastructure which can protect the cyber security, and it must also be done through a secure critical information services against the cyber attacks. SADC had since developed the basic framework on cyber security, which the country needs to domesticate." said Dr Kundishora.

This strategy should give guidelines on the creation of bodies which should address critical issues related to cybersecurity and to also enable collaboration among all stakeholders in Zimbabwe to ensure the nation is "cyber-ready" for any attacks on digital platforms," said Dr Kundishora.

Local and international cybersecurity experts from renowned organizations such as Bitcrack, Grant Thornton, Zimbabwe Republic Police, Kaspersky South Africa, Computer Society of Zimbabwe and NEC-Africa gave some presentations during the conference.

Chairman of the Department of Information Security and Assurance, Engineer Robert Shoniwa, who is also the Cybersecurity representative for ZICT, gave a presentation on "Theoretical and Contextual Aspects of Cyber security" that helped contextualize the goal of the conference. He also highlighted the need for a national strategy to handle Cybersecurity in Zimbabwe. Eng. Shoniwa emphasized the need for Cybersecurity capacity building, research and development not only for specialists in the ICT sector, but for all industries that use ICT systems including manufacturing, mining and others.

There were also panel discussions and HIT participated in some of these discussions comprised of Cybersecurity experts from organizations such as Grant Thornton, Potraz, Econet, Standards Association of Zimbabwe (SAZ), the Zimbabwe Republic Police, the Ministry of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of ICT and Cybersecurity, Kaspersky South Africa, Bitcrack, NEC-Africa, Computer Society of Zimbabwe, Save The Children and TelOne among others. The panel discussions were centred on the various ways society, government and corporates are affected by Cybersecurity and what needs to be done.

Mr Innocent Mapanga, Chairman of the Computer Science department, participated in the panel debating Cybersecurity in the telecoms industry while Kudzai Kangwende, an Information Security and Assurance student also participated on the panel focusing on the need for Cybersecurity capacity building, research and development. HIT students also acted as rapporteurs, in drafting the initial  Cybersecurity strategy document.

This highly successful conference went a very long way in cementing HIT's reputation as the premier University spearheading industry-academia relations in the local ICT and Cybersecurity sector through the participation of its academic members of staff in crafting national policy and strategy, as well the participation of its students in the crafting of the Zimbabwe Cybersecurity Strategy.