Cyber Security Preparedness Assessment Toolkit Presented

Abstract

The internet is becoming an important thing in people’s daily life and has grown at an explosive rate. According to GlobalWebIndex (2018), internet users (population) around the world are over 4 billion, which corresponds to almost 53% of the world’s population. In the developing countries, people who use internet is around 31% of the population, compared with 77% in the developed countries. Nonetheless, in Kenya, Internet usage is at 52%, well above the ITU average for developing countries. This can be explained by high mobile penetration in Kenya which stands at 90.4% according to the Communication Authority of Kenya (CA). The Internet usage purposes bring both advantages and disadvantages for people and their community. In this research we focus on the downside which includes illegal content, online fraud, identity theft, espionage, sabotage, cyber terrorism, and cyber stalking. While many organizations would not wish to have their information exposed to unauthorized audiences, they also face the challenge that they cannot do meaningful business today without automation of their services. This therefore underscores the position of ensuring that while they go online, they are also guaranteed that their data is secure, which leads to the fact that organizations should take the concept of cyber security seriously. To deal with this predicament, advisory organizations are promoting a more proactive and adaptive approach. This has necessitated recommendation of various frameworks such as National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies (COBIT) that can help organizations navigate through the complex landscape of cyber security with a shift toward continuous monitoring and real-time assessments. The challenge then comes on how organizations can apply these standards in a cost-effective manner that allows them to be guaranteed of being cyber security ready.