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

ITREALMS Online ... delivering news for ICT4D

Spammers take advantage of holidays – Report

The January report of the Symantec Intelligence has shown that spammers were using holidays and major events to make their mail more appealing.

The Symantec Corporation made this disclosure recently in a report on the findings which saw over 10,000 unique domain names compromised with a redirect script written in PHP that contains a reference to the New Year in the file name.

Also, the report had it that the redirect scripts were hosted on compromised Web sites and links to these were included in spam emails, which were subsequently blocked by Symantec.cloud. 

Senior Intelligence analyst at Symantec, Mr. Paul Woods, said that the Symantec Intelligence expected to see spammers taking advantage of other upcoming “calendar events” with one of the most important traditional Chinese New Year celebrations starting this week and continuing for several days,  as well as the just ended Valentine’s Day.  

“We also expect to see plenty of spam and malware taking advantage of some of the major upcoming sporting events this year. We are already seeing references to the Summer Olympics in London as part of 419 or advance fee fraud messages,” he said.

Mr. Woods further said that by relating their mails to widely-celebrated holidays and current events with global interest, spammers and malware authors could at first glance make their messages more interesting, and increase the chance of recipients visiting spam Web sites or becoming infected. 

Mr. Woods further disclosed that, during December, global spam levels dropped, but in January gradually returned to similar levels as in November 2011, which is still lower than the 2011 average. 

“In January 2012, the global ratio of spam in email traffic rose by 1.3 percentage points since December 2011, to 69.0 per cent (1 in 1.45 emails). This follows a more noticeable drop in December when spam fell by 2.8 percentage points to 67.7 percent. The recent increase means that spam has almost returned to the same level as in November 2011,” he said. 

Pointing out that the global phishing rate increased by 0.06 percentage points, taking the average to one in 370.0 emails (0.27 percent) that comprised some form of phishing attack.

The global ratio of email-borne viruses, he said, in email traffic was one in 295.0 emails (0.33 percent) in January, a decrease of 0.02 percentage points since December 2011. In January, 29.0 percent of email-borne malware contained links to malicious Web sites, unchanged since December 2011.

However, January also saw an average of 2,102 Web sites each day harboring malware and other potentially unwanted programs including spyware and adware; a decrease of 77.4 percent since December 2011.

He explained that the report, the most frequently blocked malware for the last month was WS.Trojan.H. This, Mr. Wood noted, is a generic cloud-based heuristic detection for files that posses characteristics of unclassified threat. Just as files detected by this heuristic are deemed by Symantec to pose a risk to users and are therefore blocked from accessing the computer.

Geographically, Saudi Arabia became the most spammed in January; with a spam rate of 75.5 percent. China was the second most-spammed with 75.0 percent of email traffic blocked as spam. In the US, 69.0 percent of email was spam and 68.7 percent in Canada. The spam level in the UK was 69.3 percent.

In The Netherlands, spam accounted for 70.7 percent of email traffic, 68.2 percent in Germany, 69.1 percent in Denmark and 68.6 percent in Australia.

The Netherlands, he said, became the country most targeted for phishing attacks in January, with one in 62.6 emails identified as phishing. The UK was the second most targeted country, with one in 179.4 emails identified as phishing attacks. Phishing levels for the US were one in 1,145 and one in 379.9 for Canada.   

Additionally, he said, the Netherlands had the highest ratio of malicious emails in January, with one in 61.4 emails identified as malicious. The UK had the second highest rate, with one in 169.1 emails identified as malicious.

While in South Africa, one in 305.9 emails were blocked as malicious, event as the virus rate for email-borne malware in the US was one in 592.5 and one in 285.4 in Canada. 

Remmy Nweke

ITREALMS Online ... delivering news for ICT4D

Vodacom promises better connectivity with AfricaIPconnect

The Internet Service Provider for pan-African corporate total communication solutions and telecommunications, operating under the name Vodacom Business has promised better connectivity with the AfricaIPconnect solution.

Marketing Manager, Vodacom Business Nigeria, Ms Anne Ihugba, gave this promise in a press statement made available to ITRealms Online at the weekend. She said that the product, AfricaIPconnect, is set to redefine and guarantee better connectivity to organizations that want a superior end user experience when navigating the Internet space in the country.

Vodacom Business’ AfricaIPconnect, she said, is a reliable, fully managed high speed Internet solution for large, medium and small size businesses located anywhere in Africa, using Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) access technology.

The Executive Head, Product and Services at Vodacom Business Nigeria, Mr. Wale Odeyemi, was quoted as saying that Africa remains an underserved region in terms of reliable terrestrial connectivity with the infrastructure largely in the deployment phase.

“A number of major towns and cities across Nigeria fall within land locked regions with little or no access to terrestrial Internet services,” he said, stressing that Vodacom Business’ AfricaIPConnect solution is a highly reliable service built on premium C-band satellites to provide a direct connection to the Tier1 Internet backbone at speeds of up to 4Mbps/1Mbps for each of the customer sites, offering up to 99.5 per cent uptime.

“AfricaIPconnect takes reliable and cost effective connectivity in Nigeria and Africa at large to the next level,” he declared.

Vodacom Business’ AfricaIPconnect, Odeyemi said, comes in four different service plans, namely the Premium, Lite, School IP and the Occasional IP plan for adhoc and periodical use. 

He explained that the Premium Plan offers a low contention service at speeds up to 1024Kbps on the uplink and 4096Kbps on the downlink which could efficiently connect up to 30 PCs suitable for businesses with multiple branches and networks.

“With special attention to the educational sector, the School IP Plan is a tailor made solution for public and private institutions in Africa,” he said, adding that this plan is well optimized for downloading and uploading educational resources from the web and is recommended for up to 30 concurrent PCs with bandwidth consumption up to 512 kbps on the uplink and a maximum of 2048Kbps on the downlink.

Also commenting the Managing Director Vodacom Business Nigeria, Mr. Guy Clarke, stated that the Vodacom AfricaIPconnect gives a new turn to Internet connectivity in Nigeria. 

“We are confident that our AfricaIPconnect solution beats any other VSAT Internet access in Nigeria, it has come to revolutionize how businesses access the Internet and stay connected to their operations and partners worldwide. The AfricaIPconnect product has been developed to provide our customers with dependable solutions that suit their varied corporate Internet connectivity requirements.”

Remmy Nweke

ITREALMS Online ... delivering news for ICT4D

Oracle says businesses cut off in data boom

The latest report released by Oracle entitled Next Generation Data Centre Index Cycle II has revealed that many businesses seem to have been caught off guard by the boom in ‘Big Data.’ Oracle stated that the findings also suggested data has become an issue for boardroom consideration, while sustainability is back on the agenda.

A press statement from Oracle Corporation made available to ITRealms Online shows that the report follows Cycle 1 (C1) of the Next Generation Data Centre Index, made public in May 2011.

Oracle thus established that many businesses are lagging behind in their use of innovative technology in data centres, making them less able to meet industry demands and respond to change quickly.

“Many were also found to be lagging in terms of managing spiraling energy costs,” part of the press statement endorsed by Claire Alexander read.

Further, Oracle indicated that the new research, that is Cycle 2 (C2) showed there has been improvement in the general performance of many organisations, as measured in three key areas, namely the achieving data centre flexibility, sustainability and supportability.

Equally, the report indicated that taken as an overall average across these three sub-indices, businesses scored 5.58 on a scale of 0 to 10 where 10 would be the most sophisticated data centre strategy possible, assessed by analyst house Quocirca1, and compared to 5.22 in the first report.

Some other key index numbers include that the proportion of respondents with in-house-only data centres is down from 60 per cent (C1) to 44 per cent (C2). While those using some external data centres have risen from 40 per cent (C1) to 56 per cent.

The report added that many more businesses now see a need within two years to build new data facilities, up from 27 per cent in C1 to 38 per cent in C2.

Whereas, sustainability is back on the agenda, fewer respondents reported they do not have sustainability plan in place in C2, recording 6.39 per cent against 13.19 per cent, while the number of data centre managers seeing a copy of the energy bill has risen from 43.16 per cent to 52.19 per cent in C2.

The vice president, Hardware Sales, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), Oracle, Mr. Tom Pegrume, was quoted as saying that they are seeing similar trends to EMEA across Africa.

“There is a visible acceleration in consolidation, virtualisation and systems management. We are seeing increasing alignment between IT and business with many companies taking advantage of the radically improved price performance on new technology to develop innovative products and services that were not possible two or three years ago,” he observed.

Also, the senior vice president, Systems, Oracle EMEA, Luigi Freguia, said “Wrestling with Big Data is going to be the single biggest IT challenge businesses face over the next two years. By the end of that period they will either have got it right or they will be very seriously adrift of their own business and the threats and opportunities posed by Big Data.”

He pointed out that encouragingly, this research suggested businesses realise they have a need to catch up on data within their organisation,

“Many are looking at a combination of short-term need and longer term planning. They are looking to outsourced solutions in the short-term while planning long-term to build something in-house,” he said.

Just as the unique challenge of big data represents the coming together of many IT trends, the growth in connected applications, devices, systems and individuals in both the consumer and business world creating vast amounts of structured and unstructured data through everything they do.

Freguia described mining and understanding of what data holds as the key to business success and that process must begin in the data centre.

“The findings of this report suggest businesses are becoming aware of this and are rapidly trying to get on top of their short and long-term data needs,” he said.

Remmy Nweke
ITREALMS Online ... delivering news for ICT4D

Lagos to host 66th Telecom Consumer Parliament

Dr Onyia, Commissioner of NCC

All is now set for the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to host its 66th edition of the Telecommunication Consumer Parliament (TCP) in Lagos this Friday.

A press statement from NCC endorse by the Head, Media and Public Relations of the Commission, Mr. Reuben Muoka and made available to ITRealms Online, indicated that this edition of parliament holds at Banquet Hall, Excellence Hotel, Ogba, Ikeja, Lagos State, on Friday February 17, 2012.

He also said that the chief host at the event, the Executive Vice Chairman of the Commission, Dr. Eugene Juwah would be in attendance while the theme for discussion would be: “Mobile Payment: The Consumer Perspective.”

He recalled that last year, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) hosted stakeholders to a public forum to brainstorm on a number of solutions on the dichotomy of banked and unbanked consumers; issues of inter and intra competition between mobile money and network providers, security as well as interoperability, a move which was applauded by industry watchers.

Muoka also noted that the Telecom Consumer Parliament has been scheduled for 2pm at the Banquet Hall, Excellence Hotel, Ijaiye/Isheri Road, Ogba, Lagos.

He pointed out that the event provides telecom consumers the opportunity to meet one on one with their respective service providers to discuss issues or complains bothering on telecom services.

Remmy Nweke

ITREALMS Online ... delivering news for ICT4D