By John Mhazo

Parliament should expedite the passing of the Cyber Security and Data Protection Bill into law a top Government official has said.

Munesu Munodawafa, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Environment, Climate, Tourism and Hospitality Industry, yesterday implored parliamentarians to expedite the passing of the Cyber Security and Data Protection Bill into law after unethical hackers posted pornographic material during a virtual meeting, hosted by the Meteorological Services Department (MSD), on the National Climate Outlook Forum which discussed the 2020/21 agricultural season weather pattern.  

“Government seriously needs to expedite passage of the Cyber Security Bill. We need to create secure virtual platforms where Government business is conducted,” he said.

However, the Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, Ziyambi Ziyambi said parliament is seized with the matter and would expedite the passing of the Bill into law soon.

“People are using foreign numbers to attack the Government…they know they are perpetuating falsehoods…we just need to speed up our Cyber laws and we will be able to deal with them after passing the bills,” cautioned Ziyambi.

The Covid-19 pandemic has witnessed a number of public and private organisations holding online meetings via Zoom applications and Webinars.

The passing of the Bill into law would protect a number of organisations against the threat of unethical hackers.

Last year in June, the Harare Institute of Technology (HIT) was hacked by individuals who leaked student credentials and demanded US$999 before further raising the amount to ridiculous figures.

In a similar incident on the international platform, on 20 August 2020, New Zealand experienced a similar hacking incident when their Stock Exchange suffered a Cyber-attack affecting the New Zealand stock exchange websites and market announcement platforms.  The hackers did this through an attack called a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), by overloading traffic on the Internet sites on their Stock Exchange.

Meanwhile, media and freedom of expression organizations such as Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) in Zimbabwe, Media Alliance of Zimbabwe and Zimbabwe Union of Journalists (ZUJ) have been making frantic efforts to stop Government from passing the Bill into law, alleging that Government intends to use the law to stifle individual rights and freedoms.