The Malawi Defence Force (MDF) in conjunction with Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (MACRA) has launched executive courses of the National Defence College.
Speaking in Lilongwe on Monday during the opening ceremony, Secretary for Defence Erica Maganga said the aim of the executive courses is to train security executive managers on issues of cyber security.
Maganga said there’s need to train security agencies if the country is to achieve pillars of the agenda 2063 on innovations.
“Today we are opening training to our executive managers on issues of cyber security. What we are saying is that Malawi as a peaceful country may not be affected much interms of physical was as compared to cyber security threats which are real as of today”
“So what we are saying as a country one of our 2063 agenda is innovations and because of cyber security there are threats that we can be affected to accomplish because innovations can easily be stolen by using the computer based systems thats why we involve executives in general so they should be well informed on issues of security” said Maganga
In his remarks, Malawi Defence Force Commander, General Paul Valentino Phiri said MDF has a huge role to play on cyber security issues.
“Our role is key towards cyber security, we have already organized ourselves as part of Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT). Most of the Cyber attacks that are happening have to be recorded and again because it is national security issues we need to take a leading role in safeguarding the national interest” said General Phiri
On behalf of MACRA, Heatherwick Njati, Secretary for information and Digitalization described the cyber security issues as a big challenge which needs collaborative efforts to be dealt with.
“In August we had Workshop with Academia who are very key interms of training but again our key stakeholders are security agencies so it was important to engage them and provide necessary training”
“We understand that cyber security is a quiet an emerging issue and it’s a big issue that we need to work together and share knowledge a d experiences so that we can make Malawi safe” said Banda
Meanwhile the Malawi Defence College of Malawi Defence Force has two programs the first one being the national program on national security and Development while the other is National Defence College Program.
In the Executive Programs MDF has lined up four courses which will run for the next 10 days and in it there’s cyber security and national security course, the counterterrorism course and then course in conflict Analysis and transformation.
According to MDF, after the first course, they will run another four months course before coming up with the main course in June which will take 49 weeks.
