Police stations to host cyber cr*me desks
Every police station will have a cybercrime office where Kenyans can walk in and report cybercrimes once the proposed Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Regulations, 2024 are approved by the National Assembly.
Chairman of the task force that prepared the regulations, Mark Matunga said that there is a need for them to make it easy for Kenyans to report cybercrime whenever they occur within their locality.
He said: “We want to ensure that in every police station, there will be a cybercrime office so that any family members can report to them directly instead of coming to Nairobi.”
Appearing before the departmental committee on Administration and Internal Security chaired by Narok West MP Gabriel Tongoyo, Matunga who had accompanied Interior Principal Secretary Raymond Omollo said there is a need for the said regulations to be -passed to protect Kenyans from further cyber-attacks.
Consultations
Omollo said that adequate stakeholder consultations had been done including the team drafting the regulations visiting countries such as the US, Israel, and Estonia which are believed to have strong systems in place before the said regulations were drafted.
He said: “These regulations emanated from various stakeholder engagements on cyber security and we need to have them operationalised as soon as possible.”
The regulations that are awaiting publication, propose the formation of a National Cybersecurity Operations Centre that shall be the national focal point for monitoring, detection, prevention, response, investigation, and attribution of cyber threats, computers, and cybercrimes in Kenya.
The Centre shall have visibility of threats and incidents that occur in Sector Cybersecurity Operations Centres and Critical Information Infrastructure Cybersecurity Operations Centres, have the capability to perform the functions of a Sector Cybersecurity Operations Centre and Critical Information Infrastructure Cybersecurity Operations Centre as well as co-ordinate response to cybersecurity incidents.
