E. Enterprise services

2017 KENET Heads of Institutions Forum

Disaster Recovery/ Storage

Setting up a DR site is normally part of the Business Continuity Plan of an organization. External auditors, internal auditors, and information systems auditors often want to check that an institution has an operational DR site for risk mitigation. Insurance underwriters also want to know if there exists an operational DR site as this could lower insurance premiums. The business risks are not only due to a cyber-security attack but could be due to fire, flooding, rogue employees, and data center equipment failure.

To ensure business continuity for our member institutions, KENET provides server collocation space, virtual server hosting and backup storage at secure locations with guaranteed high uptime of 99.95%. These facilities allow member institutions to install and manage their DR site at a location outside the university premises. The service complements the primary data at the member institution in case of a disaster event that may occur at the member institution by ensuring that critical services are provided at the disaster recover location in one of KENET’s facilities.

https://www.kenet.or.ke/content/disaster-recovery

Cyber Security Awareness

Students, lecturers, researchers and other staff in institutions access a vast wealth of information online. With this in mind, KENET has developed the Cyber Security Awareness Campaign to educate the KENET Community on the importance of being safe online. It is important to educate the Internet users on the importance of being safe online, thus the KENET campaign aims at encouraging appropriate online behaviour that reduces risk and vulnerabilities. Lack of information on staying safe online can cost the institution a lot of money. KENET will highlight a cyber security topic each month that will be shared to the community via a newsletter.

CERT

Kenya Education Network CERT (KENET-CERT) is a Cybersecurity Emergency Response Team and Co-ordination Center operated by the National Research and Education Network of Kenya. KENET-CERT coordination center promotes awareness on cybersecurity incidences, as well as coordinates and assists member institutions in responding effectively to cyber security threats and incidences. KENET-CERT works closely with Kenya's National CIRT coordination center (CIRT/CC) as a sector CIRT for the academic institutions.

KENET promotes use of ICT in Teaching, Learning and Research in Higher Education Institutions in Kenya. KENET aims to interconnect all the Universities, Tertiary and Research Institutions in Kenya by setting up a cost effective and sustainable private network with high speed access to the global Internet. KENET also facilitates electronic communication among students and faculties in member institutions, share learning and teaching resources by collaboration in Research and Development of Educational content.

Cloud-based Virtual labs initiatives for systems administrators and faculty

IBM Cloud Lab

As part of the IBM Africa Skills Academy Program, the IBM Cloud Lab supports IBM's training and certification initiative for academia in Kenya. KENET member institutions benefit from the adoption of a cloud-enabled learning environment hosted and maintained by KENET.

The platform contains a series of IBM official training courses that accelerate the adoption of the latest technology in the curriculum. This means that students work on real-life industry scenarios to develop critical thinking skills.

Some of the courses conducted on the platform include; Mobile Application Developer, Business Intelligence Analytics, Application Security and Big Data.

Virtual Network training lab

The KENET network training lab is a virtual/online lab that is used by faculty within the KENET community to teach networking classes. The lab equipment consists of network switches (Cisco 3750), routers (Cisco 2901 routers) and virtualization servers valued at over $100,000. The equipment was donated by The Network Startup Resource Center (NSRC) who also assisted with the setup. See http://nsrc.org. The physical training lab is available online for use by the KENET community, both ICT staff and faculty for their networks training requirements.

KENET Virtual Lab

KENET operates a virtualized lab environment that can be used to complement lab exercises in systems administration supported by Linux or UNIX operating systems. It is also supports Windows-based virtualized computers. This virtualized lab can also be used to complement the physical labs at the member institutions especially for lab exercises that require specialized software like MATLAB, pSPICE, Adobe Photoshop among others. The virtualized lab is accessible remotely.

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E. Enterprise services

Cyber Security Awareness

CERT