Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 29 | Page 7

NEWS New CRI gives insight to the risk of breaches facing companies T rend Micro and Ponemon have produced a new Cyber Risk Index (CRI) which gives insight to the risk of breaches for a number of different sized companies. To collate this material, Trend Micro and Ponemon surveyed over 1,000 IT professionals in the United States. When it comes to security, it’s important to know where to begin to make changes – and the CRI gives them the opportunity to do that.” To create the report, the CRI was calculated by reviewing a company’s Cyber Preparedness Index and Cyber Threat Index, which revealed that larger businesses are at a higher risk of a breach. “Small and medium sized businesses tend to not be of as much interest to the cybercriminal as many hackers are going after the bigger fish in the pond,” said Indi Siriniwasa, Vice President of Trend Micro, Sub-Saharan Africa. “Larger enterprises are targeted more often, even though they may be the ones with a bigger budget for security. “Trend Micro on Ponemon are planning these surveys every six months and we are keen to see what changes will be taking place as time goes on. “Hopefully, there will be a steady improvement across the board. Threats are ever present, and they target businesses of every size. ///////////////// Kenya President calls for more private sector participation in infrastructure development K enya President Uhuru Kenyatta has urged African Governments to create an enabling environment to enable the private sector to participate more in the development of critical infrastructure in Africa. The President said he was convinced that public private partnerships supported by robust national institutions to ensure accountability and transparency holds the key to closing the prevailing infrastructure gap on the continent. water and transport services to enable companies to produce competitively for both domestic and international markets. The Head of State pointed out that Africa must work to address the insufficient stock of functional and quality infrastructure in energy, “High quality infrastructure reduces transactional and other costs; enabling efficient use of labour and capital, but more importantly, enhancing connectivity between production points and market points,” said President Kenyatta. He said good infrastructure is the backbone upon which African nations will achieve economic growth that will, in turn, create the much-needed jobs for the youth as well as generate wealth to deal with the challenge of poverty. The President was speaking when he officially closed the inaugural AfroChampions Boma forum on African Infrastructure Financing and Delivery organised by the AfroChampions Initiative. The initiative is a set of innovative public-private partnerships and flagship programmes designed to galvanise African resources and institutions to support the emergence and success of African private sector in the regional and global spheres. www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 7