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Have I Been Pwned (@haveibeenpwned) | Twitter

They say all publicity is good publicity. Recently, Jamaica was on the front page of the world news on multiple occasions, this time it was for the wrong reason. Due to few security vulnerabilities with their COVID app, we were the talk of the town. I won’t go into the politics of how the Jamaican Government handled the matter, as the Tech Crunch did an excellent job documenting the sequence of events. Feel free to catch up here, here and here for details of how the country messed up not once, twice but three times. The public relations team muddied the water even more. Feel free to also find informal write up from Zack on Twitter. I do hope you get the picture of how serious this issue has been and the ramification to the Jamaican economy at large.

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But the purpose of this article is to share a security tool and how the Jamaican Government may be able to use and beef up the security apparatus. It is called  HaveIBeenPwned. Troy, the creator, is already in partnership with the Jamaican government.

Use HaveIBeenPwned Tool

As an Open Source advocate and a user & of this tool, here are a few tips of how Jamaica can maximize the power and potential of this tool:

  • Ensure this tool is accessible to all government agencies via API. Integrating this tool into existing systems will improve security across all sectors of government.
  • The HaveIBeenPwned project will be fully open source based on recent publications. Considering the recent push by the Government to use more open source technology, I believe the timing is perfect.
  • This is a portal tool capable of running internally with little to no maintenance required.
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Before this breach, the citizens of Jamaica had concerned regarding NIDs and the government’s ability to protect their data. These mishaps added more doubt to the process. I believe this tool could help restore some level of confidence in the system.

Remember mistakes will happen, but it is what you do after that counts. I believe implementing this tool is a good step in the right direction.

 

Jamaica you’ve been pwned thrice, please protect our critical institutions with Open Source tools.

Take care until next time.

 

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