Imagine a country where:
— few people can afford computers and any kind of computer security software is usually beyond their means
— 80 percent of computers are infected with malware
— many desperately needed machines are disabled with viruses and in storage
— Internet connections, which are only dial-up, are so slow that AV updates take all day to download and one web page takes 10 minutes to load
— most installed operating systems are pirated, never updated and completely vulnerable
It sounds like the setting of a dystopian novel written in Czech about 1920. It isn’t. It’s Ethiopia — today.
The Guardian of the UK has run a story about the grim world of computing in one country in Africa where most people and organizations are powerless to defend themselves against malware. (Read it here.)
Tom Kelchner