Over the past decade, Tanzania has seen a tremendous boom in connectivity and online participation that is beginning to transform the way that citizens across the region communicate, express themselves and establish communities.
In a similar manner, the growth of internet access in the region is beginning to empower Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) to engage with the public, share information, and advocate for citizens’ rights in sometimes challenging and closed political and digital environments.
The annual internet subscription presented in Chart 3.2 above extracted from the TCRA first quarter report, shows and average growth rate of 17% per year in the past five year. In 2018 there were 23,808,942 subscriptions and increased to 33,090,834 subscriptions at the end of March 2023.
Despite these efforts, Tanzania still faces significant challenges in its digital security landscape. Cybercrime, including phishing scams, online fraud, and malware attacks, remains a significant threat to HRDs.
Even though the internet offers opportunities for CSOs to advocates, it also offers the possibility for unethical actors to interfere with their work, surveil them, hack them and censor their voices, as well as impose a number of threats that they don’t have the capacity to deal with. In addition, many organizations in Tanzania still lack the necessary technical expertise and resources to implement robust cybersecurity measures.
While Tanzania has made progress in improving its digital security landscape, there is still much work to be done by Digital Security stakeholders to ensure that the HRDs community is adequately protected from cyber threats.
A Few numbers of Donors/development partners’ projects like GIF and so on, have heard the cry for help from the HRDs in Tanzania on Digital Security area and took initiatives of conducting projects that implements activities such as Digital security assessments, in-kind donations, emergency support, accompaniments and capacity building to some of the HRDs across the country in the past half a decade but still came to realize more and continuous efforts are needed in order to upgrade the digital security capacities of these HRDs to deal with the threats they encounter every day in their work environment
Most of their Vulnerabilities comes from five major areas:
Ø Poor Computer Hygiene
o Password Management
o Updates
o Licensed software
o Lack of Malware
o Old and worn-out working tools
Ø Lack of proper and secure Information Management
o Data Categorization & Information Mapping
o Data Back Up
o Encryption
o Website Security
o Emails & Social Media Accounts Security
o Secure Wiping of Information
o Secure Information Collection
Ø Lack of security in their online activities and in their LAN Infrastructures.
o Lack of expertise to manage their Networks and tools to circumvent Surveillance and Censorship.
o Denied Full Access of the Network to IT Officers by the ISP.
o Rarely Change Access Points wireless (strong) password.
o Lack of Network Firewall (Intrusion prevention and detection systems)
Ø Lack of Digital Safety Policy.
o This includes lack of procedures, and guidelines that cover all aspects of digital security, such as access control, data protection, incident response, and disaster recovery.
Ø Poor Capacity in Digital Security (Consciousness and Competitiveness)
o Most of the organizations were falling between
§ Conscious Incompetent – Know the existence of digital threats but cant protect themselves such as the urban based CSOs.
§ Unconscious Incompetent – Not aware of numerous digital threats and as well cant protect themselves against, such as rural and grass root CSOs.
