SHELT extends cyber security operations centre to Nigeria - ITREALMS

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SHELT has extended its own security operations centre (SOC) into Nigeria, reports ITREALMS.

This, ITREALMS gathered will serve as a local extension to its overseas and already established 24/7 SOC operation.

Pantami, Danbatta to lead 24 others @ dialogue on cyber security

ITRealms:

The Director General of National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Dr Isa Ibrahim Pantami, would be leading the chief executive officers of Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Nigerian Communication Satellite Limited (NigComSat) and 24 other speakers to the dialogue tagged Cyber Security: A Shared Responsibility, reports ITRealms.

According to the Executive Director of Centre for Cyber Awareness Development (CECAD), a non-profit ICT coalition agency, Dr Bayero Agabi, the dialogue would seek to collaborate with NCC, NITDA, NigComSat and other stakeholders to midwife a multi-stakeholders awareness campaign across, “government, corporate institutions and private citizens through the principles of the Public Private Partnership (PPP).” 

The event, which would hold in Lagos on December 8, 2016, would place Nigeria on a good stead to seek to adopt October of every year as the annual National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM), adding that Nigeria would be aligning with some countries that have earlier adopted October every year as awareness campaign month., which includes the USA, UK, Brazil and others. 

He also said that initial efforts by some stakeholders such as the Nigerian Internet Registration Agency (NIRA) are a precursor to the goal of declaring every October of the year as “cyber security awareness campaign month in line with global trend”.

This collaboration, Agabi said, would yield multiplier effect across public and private sector, as the growing threats of cyber security, “is more real than imagined. Nigeria can no longer afford to allow discrete access to its vital assets and the privacy of its citizens be compromised because of the low awareness index on cyber security among its citizens and corporate establishments”.  

He further said that NCC, NITDA and NigComSat are key players in the cyber security environment with laudable existing structures and vision to help Nigeria achieve a stable and secured cyber space usage and experience.

The DGs of NCC, NITDA and NigComSat would deliver keynotes that would stir robust discussions by a team of cyber security architects and lawyers, new media management experts and top security agencies among others.

Already, NCC’s Director of Public Affairs, Tony Ojobo, has expressed its organisation’s readiness “to help the current administration to succeed in its drive to ensure a safe cyber space in the country”.

Nenye Dom/GEE

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Maiturare opens CSEAN cyber security campaign @IBB University

ITRealms:

The Vice Chancelor of the Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University, Lapai in Niger State, Professor Muhammad Nasir Maiturare, today, Monday declared open the cyber security campaign in the university hosted by the Cyber Security Experts Association of Nigeria (CSEAN), reports ITRealms.

Disclosing this, CSEAN President, Mr. Remi Afon, in a press statement made available to ITRealms, said that Maiturare was joined during the occasion by CSEAN Vice President, Dr. Ismaila Idris who led CSEAN’s Team to the event.

According to him, this heralds CSEAN’s national cyber security awareness campaign targeted at universities and anchored on “STOP THINK CONNECT” was held at the New Auditorium, opposite the University Library.

He listed the aims of STOP-THINK-CONNECT to include educating all Internet users in Nigeria to be practically safe online and ensure that Internet safety is perceived as a shared responsibility at homes, schools, workplaces, and communities.

In addition, he said, the campaign aims at transforming the way the public and private sectors collaborate to make cybersecurity a workaday reality.

CSEAN, he explained initially launched STOP-THINK-CONNECT on January 2015 at association’s annual conference in Abuja and has since been spreading the campaign through social media, symposium and lectures in secondary schools and tertiary institutions across the country.

CSEAN intends to launch the campaign in all tertiary institutions and secondary schools in Nigeria. The association recently kick started the higher institution  campaign in two Federal Universities namely Federal University of Technology Minna and University of Abuja and has lined up ten other Universities for awareness campaign before the end of the year.

Afon pointed out that CSEAN is presently partnering STOP-THINK-CONNECT; a first-ever global public awareness campaign developed to help all Internet users keep their data, personal information, communications, and transactions safer and more secure online.

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ISACA to address Nigerian cyber security issues @ 7th annual international conference

ITRealms

Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA), Abuja chapter, will address the country’s cyber security issues at its 7th annual international conference, ITRealms reports.

The conference which is being organised in commemoration of its 10^th anniversary, on October 20-22, 2015, with the theme “Cyber Security: Aligning Nigeria with the Rest of the World,” will also provide valuable platform for policy dialogue, professional training and networking.

The conference, which holds at Rockview Hotels, ITRealms gathered, would attract ISACA members both local and international, IS/IT auditors, CIOs, CIS officers, compliance officers, risk managers, assurance and security staff. Other participants are enterprise architects, network administrators and analysts, accountants, finance officers, tax officers, and IT staff.  Bankers and forensic experts, staff of regulatory and professional bodies, lawmakers, lawyers, the Police, Armed forces, captains of industries and other related professionals complete the list of those who would attend the event.

According to President of the body, Mr. Opeyemi Onifade, the conference is the flagship IT governance, information systems security, assurance as well as enterprise risk management educational programme in Nigeria.

“Since its inception, the event has always attracted the interest of renowned professionals in the Nigerian ICT industry and beyond as it provides valuable platform for policy dialogue, professional training and networking among participants,“ he said.

Onifade, ITRealms learnt, disclosed that the following conference papers have been assigned to seasoned professional in order to prepare Nigeria for the cyber security challenges. software assurance: threats, vulnerabilities and controls, navigating the Internet of Things (IoT): privacy challenges; proliferation of citizen's biometric data- benefit delivery and risk implications (panel discussion); Big Data and Electronic Commerce : mitigating hacker exposure and risk; imperatives of legislative agenda for Cyber Security in Nigeria;  goal, attitude and behaviour for effective business leadership and career management.

Cyriacus Nnaji/GEE/ED,OPs

 
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Pix: Mr. Opeyemi Onifade,

Cyber threats: Nigeria ranks 59th - Symantec

Roundtable: Symantec Channel Manager, Nigeria & Ghana, Adeyemi Adeleke

and Symantec Territory Manager, IWECA (Indian Islands, West, East and 

Central Africa),  Sheldon Hand during the Company's Media Roundtable at 

Sheraton Hotel and Towers, Ikeja, Lagos Thursday.

Leading cyber security solution company, Symantec has ranked Nigeria 59^th on its latest ranking from 66 position recorded at the same period last year.

Disclosing this in an exclusive interview with ITRealms Online during his working visit to Nigeria last week, the Territory Manager, Symantec Pty Limited in-charge of Indian Ocean Islands, West, East and Central Africa (IWECA), Mr. Sheldon Hand, said in Lagos that with this ranking, Nigeria’s position has actually increased in the cyber threat sphere.

He explained that the way the ranking work is that if a country is ranked first, it means it’s the most country with security threats.

He also adduced some reasons for the Nigeria’s position, listing the booming economy, advent of more bandwidth routes and explosion in mobile devices.

For him, Internet security threats have actually tripled due to avalanche of technologies, especially mobile devices.

According to him, Symantec recently, released a report which is an analysis of all the threats on the internet, based on its deployment systems to scan over 8 billion electronic mails (emails) per day.

“We have more than 240,000 censors in 200 countries. These censors are networks in strategic places, and what this allows us to do is gather a tremendous amount of information and intelligence about the threats that are happening in the world on the internet,” he said.

Mr. Hand also affirmed that Symantec has specific statistics for Nigeria, which shows that in 2011 Nigeria was ranked the 66^th, which means that is the 66^th highest country with internet threats, but this has increased.

He explained that this does not meant that security threat ranking of Nigeria has gone down.

“No, If you ranks number 1, it means you have the most security internet threat, so Nigeria has gone from 66 to 59 which means security threats have increased,” Mr. Hand said.

As said by him, the reason for the aforementioned ranking based on Symantec perception are in three-fold, namely, the first one “is Nigeria’s economy is booming, it is estimated that about 2015 Nigeria’s economy will be bigger than South Africa’s economy, this is estimated by Morgan Stanley Research.”

He pointed out that over a couple of years, there have been an increase in the broadband capacity in Nigeria.

“So, the internet with broadband is a platform for malicious activities for security threats in one of two ways,” he said.

Lastly, he said, there is an increased security threat in Nigeria because of the adoption of mobile devices which has increased significantly as there is a lot of people using android, iphone, blackberry, tablets and many others.

 Remmy Nweke

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Automative overtakes Education in February spam rating - Report

February Intelligence Report of the Symantec Corporation has revealed that automotive sector has surpassed education sector in excess of three per cent spam rate.

The latest of this report made available to ITRealms Online, showed that as at the time of reporting, which is last month, February ending, that automotive sector recorded spam rate of 70.9 per cent, while education has 70.6 per cent spam rate.

Symantec also discovered that spam rate for the Chemical and Pharmaceutical sector was 68.9 per cent, and when compared with 68.4 per cent for Information Technology (IT) Services, 68.6 per cent for Retail, 68.5 per cent for Public Sector and 68.0 percent for Finance.

This, according to the report has shown that businesses are being targeted with emails purporting to originate from the US Better Business Bureau, socially engineered to suggest that a complaint had been filed against the organization and the details of the complaint could be found in the file attachment, which would lead to a Portable Document Format (PDF) file that contains an embedded executable or a universal resource locator (URL) that leads to the malware.

Reacting to this development, the Security Intelligent Manager at Symantec, Mr. Paul Wood noted that, these attacks are reminiscent of similar incidents that were first reported in 2007, when C-level business executives were being targeted with emails that purported to originate from the US Better Business Bureau (BBB).

The new wave of attacks bear similar social engineering techniques to the 2007 attacks, although recently the attackers are using considerably more advanced techniques, including server-side polymorphism, making them especially protean in nature.

“Server-side polymorphism enables the attacker to generate a unique strain of malware for each use, in order to evade detection by traditional anti-virus security software. Scripts such as Personal Home Page (PHP) are commonly used on the attacker’s Web site to generate the malicious code on-the-fly,” he identified.

Mr. Wood also stated that like the Greek sea-god, Proteus, the continually transforming nature of these attacks makes them very difficult to recognize and detect using more traditional signature-based defenses.

Remmy Nweke

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CPN disowns jailed banker over N9.2 m fraud

… Omenogor not an IT professional

The Computer Professional (Registration Council) of Nigeria (CPN) has disowned Mr. Romeo Omenogor over N9.2 million fraud at the United Bank of Africa (UBA), saying he is not a registered Information Technology (IT) professional.

The Registrar cum Chief Executive Officer of CPN, Mr. Shehu Sekiru, made this clarification in a press statement made available to ITRealms Online, saying that abinitio, the 10-year fraudster, Mr. Omenogor is not a registered IT professional in the country, therefore should not be referred to as an IT specialist in the first instance. 

“Therefore, he was not supposed to be employed by the bank abinitio,” he argued.

Reacting to a publication that implicated Mr. Omenogor, he said that CPN has used different medium to enlighten employers of labour and members of the public on the risk involved in employing unregistered IT practitioners to handle IT jobs in their organizations.

This, according to him, is because their investment in Information could only be protected by employing skillful, competent and knowledgeable people who are known and certified as professionals by their professional bodies.

To this effect, he said that CPN has specifically written the management of UBA in an effort to encourage the organization to ensure appropriate registration of their IT staff.

He recalled that Computer Professionals (Registration Council) of Nigeria was established through Act No 49 of 1993, stressing that the Act was passed into law on June 10 and gazetted on August 9 of the same year.

“It is a corporate entity that is charged with the regulation, control and supervision of the computing profession and practice in Nigeria in line with Section 1 (2) of the Act,” he said, asserting that CPN is under the supervision of the Federal Ministry of Education.

Remmy Nweke

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Ajijola says opportunities abound in cyber security

Idlelo5: Dorothy Gordon, Ajijola, Florence Seriki, Ibrahim Dikko

Advisor to the chairman of the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) Computer Emergency Response Team, Alhaji Abdul-Hakeem B. D. Ajijola, has observed that opportunities abound in the cyber security industry.

While speaking at the on-going Idlelo5 Conference in Abuja, Nigeria, on the theme: Developing Our National Economy Through Open Source Solutions, Ajijola said that in the global cyber security, expertise is relatively low.

He attributed this fact partly to the immaturity of the sector, thus opportunities avail themselves to those who have ‘learnt how to learn.’

Ajijola who dwelt on “Nigeria/ECOWAS cyber security solutions industry as a Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) economic sub-sector” noted that cyberspace is a paradigm for Africa.

He pointed out that in Africa, it does not matter whether you are a Lion or a Zebra, when the sun comes up you had better be running.

As said by him, human experience has demonstrated that it is not technology, infrastructure or finance per-se, but attitude predicated on correct knowledge that positively develops mankind, societies and economies.

We need to create virtuous cycles fostered by the synergies derivable from the Triple Helix of government, industry that is private sector centric and academia to spur the required innovation by empowering the citizens with knowledge, so that they will translate that knowledge into productive goods and services.

He defined Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) tends to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality and women’s empowerment, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability and develop a global partnership for development.

Trade not aid, he said should be the focus of African government and people, defining Open Source as a computer software whose source code is freely available, while governance entails “doing the right thing” even as management is all about doing things right.

He maintained that cyber security, is that “branch of security dealing with digital media or Information and Communications Technology (ICT)” while cyber-crimes are conducts prohibited by law, with prescribed punishment, carried out using electronic, ancillary devices, processes and/ or procedures.

He reiterated the call that Nigeria and Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) need to build a viable cyber security solutions industry as a Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) economic sub-sector.

“We must facilitate the sustainable development of MSME based cyber security solutions economic sub-sector operated by empowered ECOWAS citizens as knowledge workers most of whom will be aged 35 or below,” he proposed.

Ajijola said that ECOWAS countries are building an electronic future upon capabilities, processes and infrastructure that have been mastered on how to protect, particularly Nigeria.

“Relative to other sectors the cyber security sector is young and growing rapidly, thus opportunities to invest and successfully compete,” he asserted.

Remmy Nweke
ITREALMS Online ... delivering news for ICT4D

Ajijola is OIC advisor on cybersecurity

Nigerian Information Technology security expert, Alhaji Abdul-Hakeem Ajijola has been named the advisor to the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) Computer Emergency Response Team (OIC- CERT) on Cyber Security based in Malaysia.

The Chair of the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) Computer Emergency Response Team (OIC-CERT) Lt Col Professor, Dato’ Husin Bin Jazri (retired), made this known recently.

Jazri who also is the Chair of the OIC-CERT and Chief Executive Officer of Cyber Security Malaysia stated that the mission of the OIC-CERT, is to provide a platform for member countries to collaborate in matters pertaining to cyber security and thus strengthen their self-reliance in cyberspace.

This, he elucidated as in the light of the fact that cyberspace is not borderless, adding that while the borders of cyberspace are apparently seamless to the end user, the fact remains that every country has its own cyberspace which is defined by its national infrastructure and legal jurisdictions.

The purpose of OIC-CERT, he highlighted is to encourage and support the smooth collaboration and cooperation between CERTs among the OIC member countries and other CERT stakeholders.

According to him, as many of that are aware, criminals are exploiting new “opportunities” as “cyberspace” capacities, its utilisation and our dependence on it grows.

He stressed that the scope of malfeasance ranges from extortion and vandalism; theft of identities, ideas and designs; defrauding government, businesses and individuals; as well as the iniquitous exploitation the most vulnerable in the societies, particularly children.

Additionally, he noted that espionage undermines peace and fostering terrorism, whereas these challenges often have significant local impact, they are usually global in nature.

The world, including Nigeria, he observed is building an electronic future upon capabilities, processes and infrastructure that have not yet mastered how to protect.

He pointed out that like other nations, Nigeria seeks to address similar issues such as where the balance of responsibility lies for cybercrime prevention between governments, the private sector and individuals; the role of international conventions and entities; as well as the scope for greater practical co-operation measures between law enforcement and security agencies.

“This is why governments across the globe are building collaborative structures like the OIC-CERT,” he said.

The chairman of the organization, explained that Abdul-Hakeem Ajijola’ s advisory role would provides Nigeria, its government and people, with an opportunity to build indigenous capabilities, build multi-sectoral and global alliances, as well as participate in global capacity building activities like the upcoming OIC-CERT Cyber Drill Exercise 2012.

He is currently the Executive Chairman, Consultancy Support Services (CS2) Ltd., an Information Communication Technology (ICT)/ Cyber Security, Human Resources and Organization Effectiveness consultancy firm, based in Abuja. He is a member, Council of Regional Advisors for West and Central Africa of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) a Canadian Agency that supports research in developing countries to promote growth and development, as well as sits on the board of several other national and international organisation.

ITRealms Online gathered that Abdul-Hakeem has positively impacted Nigeria’s Information Technology efforts by serving on several committees including the committee that developed the National IT Policy which was approved by the Federal Executive Council in April 2001 and the review committee 2008-2009.

Abdul-Hakeem served as Senior Special Assistant Innovation and Technology to the National Security Adviser (NSA) to the President and Commander-in-Chief, Federal Republic of Nigeria from 1999-2010.

Remmy Nweke

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