Gaborone — The weakest security to the heart of e-government, the Internet, is the human firewall. This was said at a recent regional impact of Information Society Technologies (IST) Africa conference themed 'National and Sectoral Strategies for e-Government' last week. This was one in a series of four international conferences to be hosted in Botswana in collaboration with ministry of communications science and technology. The concern was raised as part of a greater threat against government websites, which are highly exposed to hackers, online attacks and website defacing.

'Of the five people that I called to get a password into a secured site, three of those gave it out,' related Beza Belayneh, IDM IT Consultant, adding that even high-risk security codes were revealed without interrogation.

But this problem also extends to general e-government systems, which provide information on the running of government and its departments. To step up ICT initiatives government is also faced with another challenge, which is to gain public and agency confidence. These challenges among others include the structuring of the IT legislation to protect both user identities and their privacy.

'Users frustrated once or twice eventually stop checking their e-mails. One out of three users discontinue checking into the Internet mainly due to spam, where six to seven minutes is wasted on selection of such mails throughout their inboxes,' he said.

He advised participants to be 'e-ready' for them to be able to garn knowledge that will safeguard confidential material posted in the Internet. Today, the Southern African region's net-enrolment ratio is less than 80 percent with a significant delay of enrolment into ICT skills. For those that do enrol there is a 68 percent rate of graduating, which in itself is a low survival rate. This adds to the substantial gap between the graduating numbers and those who acquire or actually master a minimum set of cognitive skills.

Africa lags behind and has a lot of catching up to do, said IST-Africa participant Robert Staines from Malta.

'The only advantage Africa has is not making the same mistakes as made by the rest of the developed world, particularly in e-government security,' he asserted.

He urged that to be able to effectively combat hacking, online attacks and website defacing e-security should be tightened at government level where sensitive information can easily fall into the wrong hands. E-government, born out of the Internet, unlike radio and the personal computer (PC), which took 38 and 16 years respectively to catch on with the rest of the world, took only four. One can only imagine then how immediate and urgent it is for Africa to electronically 'arm' herself, Staines observed.

The best solution, Belayneh said, is biometric security.

Mouritz Snyder, sales consultant at Condyn, a security solutions distributor that exhibited at the 2006 Information Technology Exhibition (ITEX '06) at Boipuso Hall, expressed concern. He said that if systems securities are moving towards biometrics systems then the human firewall is also put at risk.

'One would have to consider that as a human firewall, the iris or a finger print can be used as a code for any security. What people need to ask themselves is would they then be prepared to risk their own lives to secure data? If not they are they prepared to loss their body parts to criminals who would be more than willing to take life to gain those organic codes,' he said.