Professor Seymour (Sy) Goodman delivered the lecture "New Light for the Dark Continent: the Internet, Mobile Telephony and Security in Africa" at the Symposium of the Marconi Society, Columbia University, New York, April 16, 2009. Professor Goodman addressed the issue of cell phones thriving in Africa and the potential security concerns.

A growing reliance in Africa on cell phones may come at a cost because African nations generally have poor cyber security in place, says Seymour Goodman, a professor of computing and international affairs and co-director of the Georgia Tech Information Security Center.

The African continent may not be the first place people think of when technology is involved, but many of the countries there have come to depend on mobile phones as their primary means of communication (even more so than landline telephones or computers), and this dependence will only grow in the near future. This reliance on handheld gadgets may come at a cost though, given that they generally have poor cyber security in place, says Seymour Goodman, a Georgia Institute of Technology international affairs and computing professor and co-director of the school's Information Security Center. Cell phones have flourished in Africa because many of the countries there have few landlines, and computers are still expensive, Goodman said at a Marconi Society symposium here yesterday. He noted that about 300 million of the world's nearly 3.5 billion cell phones are in Africa (which has a population of roughly one billion). "The people of Africa will appreciate that a $300 iPhone will do a lot more for their family than a $100 laptop," he added.

Source: Scientific American

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