Securing the Digital Nation: Leadership and Protection of Digital Public Infrastructure (The Security Leadership Series) - Softcover

Mwatee, Judah

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798160225104

Publisher: Independently published, 2026

Synopsis

A nation now runs on code. Who protects it?

Identity systems, payment rails, data exchanges, national registries, and citizen portals now carry the daily life of the country. When they fail, pensions stop, land changes hands without its owner knowing, families cannot get the documents they need, and public trust in the state drains away.

Securing the Digital Nation is a practitioner's guide to protecting digital public infrastructure (DPI): the shared national systems that governments, banks, telecoms and citizens all depend on. It is written first for Africa and other emerging markets, where these systems are being built fastest and are often defended by teams smaller than the job.

Drawing on real events across Africa and beyond, from Kenya's eCitizen outage to ransomware against South Africa's Department of Justice and Costa Rica's national cyber emergency, this book shows what goes wrong and what works.

Inside, you will learn how to:

• Map the citizen journeys and hidden dependencies behind national platforms
• Understand who attacks the digital state, including insiders, fraud networks and those who target public trust
• Secure digital identity, payments, inter-ministry data exchange, citizen portals and national registries across their full lifecycle
• Buy national systems so that government owns the keys, the code, the data and the exit
• Make hosting and sovereignty decisions without giving up protection
• Protect privacy and the limits of state power while meeting the lawful needs of security agencies
• Keep essential services running when the platform goes down
• Coordinate a national cyber incident and prepare for elections, censuses and other high-stakes events
• Prove security to parliament, the courts and the public with evidence

Every chapter ends with a Quick Reference Tool, eighteen in all, ready to use in your next meeting, plus a DPI Security Baseline and a set of questions for ministers and permanent secretaries.

Written for government CIOs, CISOs and ICT directors, national CERT teams, regulators, permanent secretaries, development partners and the system integrators who build national platforms.

This is Book 3 of The Security Leadership Series, following The Security Executive and The Modern Security Leader. Each book stands on its own.

Edition details

• Publisher: Independently published
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798160225104
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 158