The government has rollout countrywide cyber security campaign to raise public awareness about crimes committed using the Internet.The drive is being conducted by the Rwanda Development Board (RDB) and the Ministry of Youth and ICT.“We want Rwandans to know all the cyber security threats so that they find ways to protect themselves,” said Charles Mugisha, the RDB acting head of cyber security.Mugisha said though the level of cyber crimes was still low in Rwanda, there were many security risks Internet users faced, including fraud. He said the campaign would mostly target public institutions and schools.“The programme is intended to educate Rwandans how they can protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of systems and data while on the Internet, and their role in protecting national information assets,” he explained.Over Rwf5.7b was allocated to national cyber security programmes in the 2013/14 financial year budget under the governance and sovereignty cluster. Mugisha said the awareness was important because critical services like e-banking, e-government, e-health, e-education, e-commerce and e-agriculture were all supported by ICT.“A serious cyber security incident could severely impact all sectors of the economy. That’s why we need to educate citizens to reduce the likelihood of such security breach,” he noted.
