Services through e-Citizen Resume Following a 4-Day Downtime

NAIROBI Kenya July 27 -The services through the e-Citizen platform (ecitizen.go.ke) resumed Thursday evening following a downtime since Sunday, July 23, 2023.

Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki said the Cybersecurity Response Team has since established that the momentary disruption was caused by an attempted cyberattack on the platform through Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) technique.

The technique involves flooding the target system with massive traffic from multiple sources simultaneously.

“Consequently, the platform was overloaded and rendered unavailable to genuine users thereby causing interference of the services,” the Ministry said.

The ministry however said no data was accessed or lost during the incident, owing to the comprehensive data protection measures put in place by the responsible agencies.

“The attack not only indicates that we are surrounded by malicious actors, both locally and internationally, but also vindicates the government’s relentless pursuit of stronger cybersecurity measures to safeguard our Critical Information Infrastructure and data from such threats,” the ministry added.

Kindiki further said the technical teams were progressively reviewing the existing protective security controls in a deliberate effort to remain several steps ahead of agents of crime, whose intention is to detract us from the milestones we have made in the digital space.

Further, all members of the public, businesses, government institutions, and private entities are advised to enhance their cybersecurity preparedness and prioritize cybersecurity as part of the collective responsibility to ensure a safe cyber environment in the country.