APPROPRIATE RESPONSE TO CYBERATTACKS SHOULD BE DEVELOPED.

Many countries have successfully implemented cyberlaws. Tanzania has cybercrime laws in places with the vision to protect its citizens who are becoming vulnerable of cyberattacks. Laws are to curb the growing cybercrime incidents. It is expected to start being implemented on September first this year (2015).

The law is expected to bring impact in our economic wellbeing – 54.4 Trillion stolen by cybercriminals each year can be saved when this law starts being used. Cyberbullying and other growing cybercrimes are also expected to be reduced effectively in a country once this law is started to be used.

The Cyber law itself is not enough, Capacity building, Awareness program and collaboration to meet target is essential to successfully mitigate these cyber risk in a nation. The three things should go together with the law in order to maximize efficiency to meet the target and to minimize those who commit cybercrimes unknowingly.

Addressing the attacks occurred is also mandatory, Citizens should be aware of the cyber incidence happening for them to take appropriate measure to secure themselves. Recently, Clickjacking hits Tanzania where social media specifically Facebook happened to be most heated. Unfriendly pictures keep on showing up to people’s profiles without their concerns.

There should be a way to address the matter to the citizens so that they will know how to deal with the incidents. In this case not clicking those pictures because by doing so, they will increase the impact of the attack and the spread will eventually be higher. 

  

Simultaneously, appropriate response framework to cyber incidence should be developed by the government in collaboration with private sectors which can advise governments on critical infrastructure, which is typically a high target for hackers and other matters. The government should also understand the costs associated with each response in the framework.

 In determining the appropriate response to cyber incident, policymakers need to consider three variables: the intelligence community's confidence in its attribution of responsibility, the impact of the incident, and the levers of national power at a state's disposal.

In most countries there are no clear established policy responses to cyberattacks – this cause most of these countries to fail determining and measure the impacts caused by cyberattacks resulting to the very high number of days to even discover the attacks. Currently, the average days till the discovery of cyberattack are 200 days. In addition, it can take weeks, if not months, for investigations to determine the extent of these cyberattacks and attribution remains a major challenge.

Masking the true origins of a cyber-incident is easy – Cybercriminals often use proxies or compromised computers in other jurisdictions to hide their tracks. For example, there is a number of cases where hackers managed to take down what is seen on TV and publish their own contents. It was seen in a Philip TV attacks in a recent years. There was no clear picture of who were behind the incidence as of today. Similarly, there are a big number of cases where criminal keep getting away with the crime just because of how they manage to cover their tracks.

In developing an appropriate response to a cyberattack, policymakers that rely on intelligence agencies' ability to find the responsible party is important. However, if the level of attribution is low then there will be limited choices.

Policymakers will also need to gauge the level of damage caused by a cyberattack, including physical damage to systems, impact to critical infrastructure, and the impact on services, national security and reputation.

 A nation can apply different responses depending on the severity of a cyber-incident, ranging from website defacement to loss of life. The range is plotted against the level of response from issuing media statements to using military force.

It should be kept in mind that response to cyber warfare where one government is responsible in a cyberattack to another country has an impact on a country's diplomatic relations, reputation, military and intelligence operations. These effects need to be understood before a response is chosen. The simplified framework provides a basic model for policymakers to respond to an incident before one occurs.