ICT and Digital Economy CS Eliud Owalo has officially confirmed the occurrence of a hack on the government services platform eCitizen. During his statement on Thursday, Owalo assured the public that the government is actively taking measures to halt the ongoing attack. Efforts are underway to address the situation and safeguard the integrity and security of the eCitizen platform. He said while at it, the state is looking at a long-term solution to future attacks.
"There was an attack and we are addressing that. We are not just coming up with remedial measures to address the current situation," Owalo said.
"We are ensuring that around this digitalization space, we will build an elaborate risk mitigation framework for purposes of sustainable digitalization."
During the attack, CS Eliud Owalo provided reassurance that no data was accessed or lost from the eCitizen platform. He explained that the hackers' actions were limited to slowing down the website by inundating it with unusual requests. Despite their attempts to disrupt the service, the security measures in place effectively prevented any unauthorized access to sensitive information, ensuring the safety of user data.
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"What they did is they tried jamming the system by making more than ordinary requests into the system," he said.
"It started by slowing down the system, but we were able to address it... No data has been accessed, no data has been lost."
The Cabinet Secretary further reaffirmed that the government's efforts to digitize services will not be hampered by such attacks.
He insisted that a long-term solution is what is needed.
"To me, that is not strange, because cyber attack is predominantly world over... What we need to put in place is an elaborate risk mitigation framework, which we are ready for," the CS said.
Kenyans had complained that they were unable to access government services through the portal, over the past few days.
Most Kenyans encountered errors when they tried to log in.
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