You go to a shop, purchase an item and want to pay with M-PESA. You look around to find the notice with the till number and take turns looking up and down to enter the number on your phone. More often going over the number one more time or twice if you got it wrong initially. We’ve all been there, especially when you are in a haste.
How will you like a situation where you can just launch the Safaricom, KCB, Equity, I&M or your bank or Sacco’s app and using your camera it gets you that information? You only enter the amount you are paying, your pin number, et voilà you are set to go.
Unfortunately, Safaricom doesn’t have that feature in their app yet. The app, however, allows customers who prefer to use the voucher card to scan the 16 digits and it will automatically pick the digits.
That might change soon with this genius innovation from Jama Mohamed. A Business Information and Technology student graduate of Strathmore University.
Jama created an android detection library that uses Microsoft Azure Computer Vision service Read API to detect M-PESA business account numbers from images.
With this, it will be easier, faster and more accurate than typing an M-PESA paybill and till number. It is also able to know the exact category the image falls under, so no mix match there.
The software engineer’s open source project opens the door for financial service organizations in Kenya using the M-PESA API to add this plug and play android library to their app. Making it easier for customers using their app to use this functionality for payments.
Computer vision innovation
Jama shares the idea for the project came after having to confirm about five times for something he was purchasing.
I was purchasing something from the web that had M-PESA paybill as a payment option. The account number was a long randomly generated string that I basically had to confirm like five times.
And that’s where the idea came from, just to take some form of picture and use machine learning to extract information that was important.
The idea was to get these details a little faster than just typing them all the time since some businesses don’t have QR codes.
Hopefully, Kenyan financial organizations will add Jama Mohamed’s library to their app. Or work with him to create a unique one. So that next time you open your Standard Chartered, KCB, Equity, Ecobank, etc. or Safaricom app to pay for a purchase you just use your camera.
Jama welcomes contributions from other developers to improve the library. Check out the library on GitHub.
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The hackathon organized by BeMyApp sought to unearth new innovations in remote work during this Covid-19 pandemic era. Inviting ideas from individuals and organizations across the Middle East and Africa region.
Easy Gas, an IoT solution emerged winners of the hackathon. Winning the 4000 USD first place price. Their IoT solution monitors gas levels, detects leakages and connects owners to vendors for refills and fixes.
HR SAM Remote Interview Specialist and Wazabi projects tied in second and third place. Projects Speechio and Cubicle came in fourth and fifth place respectively.
Business Group Manager Microsoft Azure Middle East and Africa, Julien Bertin announced the winners of the hackathon virtually. “Congratulations to the winning team and all the hackathon participants,” Julien shares. He notes it was a very difficult selection for the judges.
Remote productivity is a huge challenge and opportunity for the world these days. Developers are essential to build the right solutions to cater to our new reality. Thank you for contributing your energy and creativity to help a better work environment for developers. We are looking forward to seeing you in our next event.
If you have been planning to skill up on Microsoft’s cloud technology, Azure, here is an opportunity. No matter your level, GreyCampus is offering you their Azure courseware for free during this time of Covid-19.
The courses span; Azure Fundamentals, Microsoft 365 Fundamentals, Azure Administrator, Azure, Architect and Azure Developer.
While social distancing becomes the need of the hour, it calls for self-care, overall well-being and above all staying positive. During these times, we, at GreyCampus, believe learning is the gateway to growth, engagement and success. We have taken an initiative to serve our patrons and community through a wide array of Microsoft official courseware being offered free of charge for a limited period.
The Azure courseware valued at between $800 to $2500 are free till August 2020. To access the courses, visit GreyCampus via this link and register. After registration you will recieve a license code to the registered email address with 24 hours. With the code, you can now start learning.
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Cloud security is a fundamentally new landscape for many companies. While many of the security principles remain the same as on-premises, the implementation is often very different. This overview provides a snapshot of five best practices for cloud security: identity and access control, security posture management, apps and data security, threat protection and network security.
1. Strengthen access control
Traditional security practices are not enough to defend against modern security attacks. Therefore, the modern security practice is to “assume breach”: protect as though the attacker has breached the network perimeter. Today, users work from many locations with multiple devices and apps. The only constant is user identity, which is why it is the new security control plane.
Institute multifactor authentication
Provide another layer of security by requiring two or more of the following authentication methods: • Something you know (typically a password) • Something you have (a trusted device that is not easily duplicated, like a phone) • Something you are (biometrics)
Take advantage of conditional access
Master the balance between security and productivity by factoring how a resource is accessed into an access control decision. Implement automated access control decisions for accessing your cloud apps that are based on conditions.
Operate in a zerotrust model
Verify the identity of everything and anything trying to authenticate or connect before granting access.
2. Improve security posture
With more and more recommendations and security vulnerabilities identified, it is harder to triage and prioritise response. Make sure that you have the tools you need to assess your current environments and assets and identify potential security issues.
Improve your current posture
Use a tool like Secure Score in Azure Security Centre to understand and improve your security posture by implementing best practices.
Educate stakeholders
Share progress on your secure score with stakeholders to demonstrate the value that you are providing to the organisation as you improve organizational security.
Collaborate with your DevOps team on policies
Modernise your security information and event management (SIEM) To get out of reactive mode, you must work with your DevOps teams in advance to apply key security policies at the beginning of the engineering cycle as secure DevOps.
3. Secure apps and data
Protect data, apps and infrastructure through a layered, defence-in-depth strategy across identity, data, hosts and networks.
Encryption
Encrypt data at rest and in transit. Consider encrypting data at use with confidential computing technologies.
Follow security best practices
Ensure your open source dependencies do not have vulnerabilities. Additionally, train your developers in security best practices such as Security Development Lifecycle (SDL)
Share the responsibility
When a company operates primarily on-premises, it owns the whole stack and is responsible for its own security. Depending on how you use the cloud, your responsibilities change, with some responsibilities moving to your cloud provider. IaaS: for applications running in virtual machines, more of the burden is on the customer to ensure that both the application and OS are secure. PaaS: as you move to cloud-native PaaS, cloud providers like Microsoft will take more of the security responsibility at the OS level itself. SaaS: at the SaaS level, more responsibility shifts away from the customer. See the shared responsibility model.
4. Mitigate threats
Operational security posture – protect, detect and respond – should be informed by unparalleled security intelligence to identify rapidly evolving threats early so you can respond quickly.
Enable detection for all resource types
Ensure threat detection is enabled for virtual machines, databases, storage and IoT. Azure Security Centre has builtin threat detection that supports all Azure resource types.
Integrate threat intelligence
Use a cloud provider that integrates threat intelligence, providing the necessary context, relevance and prioritization for you to make faster, better and more proactive decisions.
Modernise your security information and event management (SIEM)
Consider a cloud-native SIEM that scales with your needs, uses AI to reduce noise and requires no infrastructure.
5. Protect the network
We’re in a time of transformation for network security. As the landscape changes, your security solutions must meet the challenges of the evolving threat landscape and make it more difficult for attackers to exploit networks.
Keep strong firewall protection
Setting up your firewall is still important, even with identity and access management. Controls need to be in place to protect the perimeter, detect hostile activity and build your response. A web application firewall (WAF) protects web apps from common exploits like SQL injection and cross-site scripting.
Enable Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Protection
Protect web assets and networks from malicious traffic targeting application and network layers, to maintain availability and performance, while containing operating costs.
Create a microsegmented network
A flat network makes it easier for attackers to move laterally. Familiarise yourself with concepts like virtual networking, subnet provisioning and IP addressing. Use micro-segmentation, and embrace a whole new concept of micro perimeters to support zero trust networking.
As more business move their operations to the cloud here is what to know about the hybrid cloud.
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Master Cohorts in conjunction with Microsoft and Decoded Africa present a free online data science on Azure masterclass. Scheduled to take place on the 25th of April at11am EAT. Join the event and learn how you can leverage Microsoft Azure as a Data Scientist.
Master Cohorts shares the master data science classes is an initiative to use different resources together as a community to learn Data Science. It also provides a platform to learn, mentor, socialize and collaborate.
The program will touch on all levels. From beginner to deep dives. The event outline includes:
– Introductions. – About Decoded by Max Musau – Day in the life of a Data Scientist by John Mugendi and – Azure for Data Science
Click to register and participate in the Data science on Azure masterclass.
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