Investigating the cybersecurity threat landscape is important as it increases situational awareness and defensive agility. Therefore, in this study the cybersecurity threat landscape for Botswana was ...investigated from the perspective of Information Technology (IT) and Cybersecurity professionals in Botswana. Since Botswana has no publicized empirical data on cyber threats, a cybersecurity incidences dataset from the United Kingdom (UK) was first analyzed to understand cybersecurity trends there. Insights obtained from the UK dataset were used as a baseline to design a questionnaire which was sent out to 31 participants from 20 organizations in Botswana. The findings obtained from the questionnaire were analyzed and compared to findings from the UK. This work showed that a coordinated response to cybersecurity and collection of information related to threats and mitigations can help improve situational awareness and defensive agility.
Botswana has identified development of legal frameworks as one of its cybersecurity strategies. One issue that government is dealing with when it comes to cybercrime legislation is the overuse of ...technology related terminology. Therefore, in this study the cybercrime act of Botswana was examined alongside that of South Africa and the United Kingdom (UK), to assess its use of technology jargon. The legislation from these countries was analyzed quantitatively using frequency of terms, and feature co-occurrence. The analysis performed in this study was done through the statistical and analytical lens of R. It was discovered in this study that the UK cybercrime law uses less technology specific terms compared to the Botswana and the South African cybercrime acts. Hence it is adaptable and remains relevant to the ever-evolving technological environment.
In the current technology driven era, the use of devices that connect to the internet has increased significantly. Consequently, there has been a significant increase in internet traffic. Some of the ...challenges that arise from the increased traffic include, but are not limited to, multiple clients on a single server (which can result in denial of service (DoS)), difficulty in network scalability, and poor service availability. One of the solutions proposed in literature, to mitigate these, is the use of multiple servers with a load balancer. Despite their common use, load balancers, have shown to have some disadvantages, like being vendor specific and non-programmable. To address these disadvantages and improve internet traffic, there has been a paradigm shift which resulted in the introduction of software defined networking (SDN). SDN allows for load balancers that are programmable and provides the flexibility for one to design and implement own load balancing strategies. In this survey, we highlight the key elements of SDN and OpenFlow technology and their effect on load balancing. We provide an overview of the various load balancing schemes in SDN. The overview is based on research challenges, existing solutions, and we give possible future research directions. A summary of emulators/mathematical tools commonly used in the design of intelligent load balancing SDN algorithms is provided. Finally, we outline the performance metrics used to evaluate the algorithms.
Movement restrictions introduced by the coronavirus pandemic have incentivized the rollout of online services globally. Additionally, more employees were telecommuting throughout the pandemic and ...remote work has become the new normal. This has provided nefarious actors with lucrative opportunities. Hence there has been an increase in online criminal and terrorism activities. The weaponization of the cyberspace is also a concerning trend in the ongoing geopolitical tensions. This is because states see the cyberspace as a tool for engaging in asymmetrical warfare. In Botswana, government services are being transitioned to online services through the digital transformation strategy. As a result, the cyber-attack surface area in Botswana has also increased. Botswana has establishments for mitigating the impact of cyber-attacks such as the Computer Incidents Response Team (CIRT) and the Digital Forensic Lab. However, there is a lack of publicly available empirical datasets on the occurrence of cyber threats in the country. Such a dataset is important for organizations, and individuals to benefit from the knowledge shared by the broader community on threats and their mitigations. This study therefore investigated the cybersecurity threat landscape for Botswana by analysing the threats, countermeasures and cybercrime legislation. Data triangulation and exploratory data analytics were the methods used for data collection and analysis in this study. The data sources were a United Kingdom (UK) cybersecurity incidents dataset, a questionnaire, online articles, and government documents and speeches. Findings in Botswana were also compared to South Africa and the UK. This dissertation concluded that the cyber threats in Botswana are similar to those identified in developed countries and regional countries. As such strengthening already existing cooperative measures with cybersecurity stakeholders will help improve the cybersecurity posture of Botswana. Other cybersecurity measures that have potential for growth are organizational and technical measures.
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