AJIC Issue 23, 2019
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All articles are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0.
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- ItemAJIC Issue 23, 2019 - Full Issue(LINK Centre, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg, 2019-06-28)
- ItemAJIC Issue 23, 2019 - Full Issue - Print-on-Demand Version(LINK Centre, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg, 2019-06-28)
- ItemAsymmetry in South Africa’s Regulation of Customer Data Protection: Unequal Treatment between Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) and Over-the-Top (OTT) Service Providers(LINK Centre, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg, 2019-06-28) Shanapinda, StanleyThis article examines the asymmetry that currently exists in South Africa in the regulatory treatment of customer data usage by mobile network operators (MNOs) and over-the-top (OTT) service providers. MNOs and OTTs must receive customer “consent”, in terms of the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPI Act) and its Regulations, before sharing the customer’s “personal information” with a third party. But MNOs have an additional requirement to meet, in terms of the Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-Related Information Act (RICA), which is not applicable to OTTs: a requirement whereby a customer must provide “written authorisation” to an MNO before the MNO can share “communication-related information which relates to the customer concerned” with a third party. In this article, I examine and analyse provisions of the POPI Act, POPI Act Regulations, RICA, other relevant legislation, court decisions, records of a Parliamentary hearing, the standard terms and conditions and privacy policies of two South African MNOs (Vodacom and MTN), and two international OTT service providers (Google and Facebook). Based on the analysis, I argue that the unequal regulatory treatment between the MNOs and OTTs, if allowed to persist, threatens to undermine the growth of key elements of South Africa’s digital economy.
- ItemConceptual Design of a Cybersecurity Resilience Maturity Measurement (CRMM) Framework(LINK Centre, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg, 2019-05-28) Mbanaso, Uche M.; Abrahams, Lucienne; Apene, Oghenevovwero ZionAfrican countries are at high risk with respect to cybersecurity breaches and are experiencing substantial financial losses. Amongst the top cybersecurity frameworks, many focus on guidelines with respect to detection, protection and response, but few offer formal frameworks for measuring actual cybersecurity resilience. This article presents the conceptual design for a cybersecurity resilience maturity measurement (CRMM) framework to be applied in organisations, notably for critical information infrastructure (CII), as part of cyber risk management treatment. The main thrusts of the framework are to establish, through assessment in terms of quantitative measures, which cybersecurity controls exist in an organisation, how effective and efficient these controls are with respect to cybersecurity resilience, and steps that need to be taken to improve resilience maturity. The CRMM framework we outline is conceptualised as being applicable both pre- and post-cyber attack. Drawing on the NIST cybersecurity framework (NIST CSF) and other relevant frameworks, the CRMM approach conceptualised in this article would be able to depict an organisation’s cybersecurity practices and gauge the organisation’s cybersecurity maturity at regular intervals. This CRMM approach is grounded in the idea that, by quantifying an organisation’s current practices against established baseline security controls and global best practices, the resulting status measurement can provide the appropriate basis for managing cyber risk in a consistent and proportionate fashion. The CRMM framework defines four cybersecurity resilience quadrants (CRQs), which depict four different degrees of organisational preparedness, in terms of both risk and resilience.
- ItemA Proposed “Agricultural Data Commons” in Support of Food Security(LINK Centre, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg, 2019-06-28) Baarbé, Jeremiah; Blom, Meghan; De Beer, JeremyThis article identifies a data governance model that could help reduce dataset access inequities currently experienced by smallholder farmers in both developed-world and developing-world settings. Agricultural data is globally recognised for its importance in addressing food insecurity, with such data generated and used by a value chain of contributors, collectors, and users. Guided by the modified institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework, our study considered the features of agricultural data as a “knowledge commons” resource. The study also looked at existing data collection modalities practiced by John Deere, Plantwise and Abalobi, and at the open data distribution modalities available under the Creative Commons and the Open Data Commons licensing frameworks. The study found that an “agricultural data commons” model could give greater agency to the smallholder farmers who contribute data. A model open data licence could be used by data collectors, supported by a certification mark and a dedicated public interest organisation. These features could engender an agricultural data commons that would be advantageous to the three key stakeholders in agricultural data: data contributors, who need engagement, privacy, control, and benefit-sharing; small and medium-sized-enterprise (SME) data collectors, who need sophisticated legal tools and an ability to brand their participation in opening data; and data users, who need open access.