- I guess that most resources have been allocated towards trying to strengthen the areas that were most hit.
- I would urge the CS and all his cyber soldiers not to misallocate the scarce resources, because after all the coffers they inherited were empty.
Image: COURTESY
Abraham Wald. Very few Kenyans have heard of this name or why he is important in the history Hall of Fame.
Well, let me tell you about him.
Wald was a Jewish Hungarian born in 1902 in a village called Kolozsvár. Being a very religious Jew, Wald did not attend school on Saturdays as was then required by the Hungarian school system. Instead, he was homeschooled by his parents until college. In 1982 he graduated in Mathematics from King Ferdinand University and in 1931 he was conferred a PhD in mathematics.
Despite his brilliance, Wald could not find employment in the university because of discrimination against his faith. Later in 1938 when Nazi Germany annexed Austria, the discrimination against Jews intensified and Wald immigrated to the US at the invitation of the Cowles Commission for Research in Economics, where he became a member of the Statistical Research Group at Columbia University.
While in the US, he applied his statistical skills to various wartime problems. One of his analyses included examining the distribution of damage to aircraft returning after flying missions during World War II. His analysis informed the makers of the aircraft on how to minimise aircraft bomber losses to enemy fire. In his analysis, he mapped out the bullet holes in the returning aircraft.
These analyses represented areas where an aircraft bomber could take damage from enemy fire, and still fly well enough to return safely to base. Hence Wald recommended that they reinforce areas where the returning aircraft were unscathed. This inferred that planes hit in those areas were the ones most likely to be lost. His seminal work is known as survivorship bias.
This week country has been awash with news of being hacked by hackers who identified themselves as Anonymous Sudan. No less than the ICT Cabinet Secretary, Eliud Owalo, admitted that the government’s online services were affected by a cyber-attack.
Owalo, however, was quick to reassure the nation that no data was compromised during the attack, because the nature of the attack entailed an unsuccessful attempt to overload the system through extraordinary requests with the intention of clogging it. He hastened to add that the government was on top of things in securing the platforms.
In his reassurances he reminded us that cyber-attacks were not uncommon, and that they are ubiquitous in today’s era of technology. He went further to reassure us that the government was not only instituting remedial measures to deal with the current hack but was also putting in place measures to prevent future attacks.
Traditionally, warfare was executed within defined periods of time, identifiable terrain on land, sea and in the air, with tangible tools of war that included aircraft bombers, tanks and the rifles, which were within geographic boundaries, and there was a clear fine line between civilians and the military. And when the objectives of war were achieved or abandoned, the troops returned home to their women and children.
These wars were governed by the Geneva Convention. But today there is a whole new domain of warfare without geographical boundaries, fought with intangible weapons, with blurred lines between civilians and the military, and are beyond the reach of the Geneva Convention.
If Wald was alive today, he would inform Owalo that it is futile and a misallocation of resources to put in place measures to prevent future attacks. Because as the CS rightfully stated, cyber attacks are ubiquitous. So there can be no measures to prevent future attacks. This is because the world has evolved from traditional battlefields to digital battlefields.
In economic-speak, misallocation of resources denotes a situation where capital and labour are poorly or erroneously distributed. Resources are not put to their best, most effective or efficient use to produce a greater or better outcome.
Contrary to popular belief and social media opinions, it is a blessing in disguise that Kenya was hacked and at such a large scale, because similar to the damaged aircraft in World War II that managed to fly back to base despite taking on enemy fire, the nation has survived the hack.
I hazard a guess that most resources have been allocated towards trying to strengthen the areas that were most hit which led, according to the CS, in making the systems operate sub-optimally. But borrowing from Wald’s brilliance, I would urge the CS and all his cyber soldiers not to misallocate the scarce resources, because after all the coffers they inherited were empty.
They should not invest in ringfencing these vulnerable areas. Instead, I invite him, like Wald did, to focus his cyber soldiers energies and knowledge in reinforcing those areas that the hackers were unable to penetrate because these are what will make the systems impenetrable and fly the ship home. They need to apply the survivorship bias.
Finally, my unsolicited advice is to the CS. Panic spreads faster than poison. One of the promises of this government is that they will have a one-stop shop for about 5,000 government services. Now that we have agreed that the cyber-warfare will not stop, it will not be enough to reinforce the areas that survived the attack nor the futile attempt at securing the platforms against future attacks.
Beyond your brilliant cyber soldiers, what your docket needs is a ‘poison’ consultation centre with a human face and voice. And that cannot be you, bwana CS.
Allow me to illustrate.
In 1997, there was a study conducted to determine if callers' panic levels correlated with the expected toxicity of their exposure to poison. The panic level of each caller was assessed and scored on a rating scale and compared to the toxicity of the substance they had said they were exposed to.
The results showed that most callers were more panicked than they needed to be. Had the poison centre not been available to provide immediate consultation, the callers may have over reacted and gone straight to health facilities, further congesting an already overwhelmed system. This study suggests that in the absence of a well utilised ‘poison’ control service, excessive and unnecessary panic contributes to the intention of the aggressors.
That reassuring poison consultation centre with a human face and voice in your docket, cannot be you bwana CS. Because war is too important to be left only to generals.