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Cyber Security

SA Government embarks on a

Cyber Security awareness drive

The government is embarking on a cybersecurity im- “The prescripts set out in the Directive must be ap-
provement campaign to increase cybersecurity resil- plied to all national and provincial departments, gov-
ience and awareness of cyber threats in the Public ernment components, and employees employed in
Service to make all public servants safer and more terms of the Public Service Act.
secure online. Public Service and Administration Di-
rector-General, Ms Yoliswa Makhasi, said an aware- “This Directive only applies to members of the public
ness drive would make cybersecurity everyone’s re- services, educators, or members of the Intelligence
sponsibility in the public service. only in as far as the provisions of this Directive are not
contrary to the laws governing their employment,”
This follows a circular issued by the DPSA about the said DG Makhasi.
Public Service Information Security Directive to all The department will support the implementation of
heads of provincial and national departments. The the Directive through a continuous awareness cam-
purpose of the circular is to provide direction in the paign to drive awareness of common social engineer-
public service regarding establishing departmental ing techniques such as phishing, vishing and smish-
information security governance, practice, and pro- ing, pretexting, baiting, psychology of influence and
cedures to protect information and technology as- recognizing suspicious and spoofed domains, and
sets. identifying secure connections (HTTP & HTTPS) login
information on untrusted or spoofed sites.
“Through this Directive, we want to make it clear that
in the Public Service, cybersecurity is a shared re- Implementation of the Directive
sponsibility to keep Government data and systems According to DG Makhasi, the Head of Department
safe. (HoD) must ensure that the department has an infor-
mation security policy aligned with the provisions in

28 SERVICE DELIVERY REVIEW | Volume 15 • No. 1 of 2022