Kenya launches SecureKE security centre at Konza for state systems

The Konza Technopolis Development Authority (TDA) and the State Department for ICT and the Digital Economy launched SecureKE, a sovereign security operations centre based at Konza Technopolis, at the Ole Sereni Hotel in Nairobi on 10 November 2026, the Kenya News Agency reported.

The centre gives government institutions and private organisations continuous monitoring, threat detection and coordinated incident response. Its stated purpose is to protect government systems, sensitive citizen data and critical digital infrastructure. It uses AI-enabled analytics and offers threat intelligence, proactive threat hunting, vulnerability management and security automation.

Business Daily reported on the same day that government institutions are enrolling in the service and private companies will pay an annual fee based on the assets they want monitored and protected, such as servers, firewalls and routers. Charges vary with the scale of the infrastructure supported. The shared model spares firms the cost of building and running their own security operations centres.

Eng. John Kipchumba Tanui, Principal Secretary for ICT and the Digital Economy, said cybersecurity had become a national security priority and an economic imperative. He urged Principal Secretaries, chief executive officers and heads of government institutions to prioritise it in institutional planning, governance and resource allocation. He said the initiative would be judged on better threat detection, shorter incident response times, fewer critical vulnerabilities and continuity of public services. "We must now invest in securing Kenya," he said.

John Paul Okwiri, chief executive of the TDA, said the centre would strengthen Kenya's digital sovereignty with locally anchored cybersecurity capabilities and promote local expertise through training, knowledge transfer and collaboration with technology partners. "As Kenya expands its digital economy and brings more public services online, the security of our digital infrastructure must remain a priority," he said, as quoted by Business Daily.

Tanui, citing data from the National Kenya Computer Incident Response Team Coordination Centre (KE-CIRT/CC), said about 4.56 billion cyber threat events were recorded between October and December 2025. He said Kenya had 58.5 million mobile data subscriptions by June 2025, according to the Communications Authority of Kenya, and put banking cyber-fraud losses at about KSh 1.9 billion in 2025.

Business Daily gave figures for a later period. Detected cyber threat incidents in Kenya rose to 2.7 billion between July and September 2026, a 14.45 per cent increase on the preceding quarter. The Communications Authority's latest report recorded more than 44.9 million brute-force attack attempts over the three months, an 85.41 per cent increase, and identified government institutions among the sectors most affected, alongside internet service providers and cloud companies. Attackers are targeting web applications, email systems, network devices and remote-access systems. The figures are detected threat events and attempts, not successful intrusions, compromised government databases or confirmed financial losses.

Banking cyber-fraud losses rose to KSh 1.9 billion in 2025 from KSh 1.59 billion in 2024. The Central Bank of Kenya said reported fraud cases rose to 385 from 353, and the amount exposed to fraud to KSh 2.03 billion from KSh 1.96 billion. Card-fraud losses more than doubled to KSh 645.2 million from KSh 263.3 million, and losses from internet scams rose to KSh 86.5 million from KSh 6.1 million, partly offsetting a decline in mobile banking fraud losses.

Konza is also home to a national data centre that hosts public-sector systems and provides cloud services.