Google Kenya Country Manager, Charles Murito. [Photo/businessdailyafrica.com]
Jigsaw and Google have launched a suite of free tools titled Protect Your Election, to help guard against common types of digital attacks over Kenyan election period.
These tools can help protect news organizations, human rights groups, and election monitoring sites—organizations whose work is particularly critical before and during elections—from online threats like DDoS attacks, phishing and attempts to break into people’s private accounts.
One of those tools is Project Shield, which provides free DDoS protection to news sites, human rights groups, and election monitoring sites. It’s important to provide free protection to these organizations in particular, as they are the groups that provide voters with information they need to make informed decisions. The site is in both English and Swahili.
The new suite also offers digital defenses for individuals, including Password Alert—a Chrome extension that helps protect against phishing attacks by alerting you if a website is trying to steal your Google password. Another tool offered by Protect Your Election is 2-Step Verification, which provides an extra layer of defense to keep your account secure.
About 125,000 DDoS attacks happen every week and tens of millions of phishing attempts are recorded every few months. DDoS attacks have often targeted investigative journalists and election monitoring groups in various countries. During the last few years, we’ve seen a rise in digital attacks targeting government, political party websites, press and journalists around the world.
Commenting on the suite, Google Kenya Country Manager, Charles Murito said, ‘Everyone has a right to a full and credible story. The free Google tools are designed to safeguard publishers, news organizations, human rights groups and election monitoring sites from digital attacks during the election period.’
Today, making information accessible also means protecting it, which is why Jigsaw and Google created Protect Your Election.
By making it easier for organizations to defend themselves against these threats, journalists can publish freely and citizens can access the stories, the debates, and the policies when it’s most important to a nation—during a country’s elections—so that everyone can get the full story.