Emeka Aginam
27 August 2008
At the end of the just concluded 1st National Conference on Cybercrime & Cybersecurity held in Abuja last week, stakeholders in the Nigerian Information Communications Technology Industry were worried over the rising online fraud in the nation's economy, saying that Vision 2020 may be delayed unless cyber crimes are tackled without further delay.
. The conference with the theme: National Digital Security: Engaging the Challenges of Digital Criminality, & the Future of Nigeria" - the Role of Federal Government of Nigeria _ was indeed a significant wake up call for Nigeria policy makers at National, States and Local Government levels - who are mandated and responsible, for not only protecting the life and property of the Nigerian citizenry, but indeed safeguarding and sustaining the sovereignty.
Speaker after speaker at the event that attracted capacity audience noted that the effect of online fraud in Nigeria is so colossal that, if not put to end, is capable of wiping out development gains of a nation and retarding her growth fortunes by many decades _ in terms of Gross National Product, (GDP)
Unfortunately, financial sector, according to the conference is the hottest and biggest target of cybercrime in recent time as billions of dollars have been invested, with million of careers generated via this sector.
Without much pretense, the conference also noted that Nigeria cannot afford to wait and allow cyber criminals to perpetuate themselves endlessly without any formidable challenge.
Although Cybercrime is a global issue affecting socio-economic fabrics of many nations, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Global Network of Cybersolution Limited earlier in his welcome message during the forum while calling on both the Public and Private sectors of the Nigerian economy to map out strategies on how to fight cyber criminalities to the barest minimum lamented how Nigeria has been blacklisted as a threat to other countries because of its insecure cyber cyberspace.
'This derived from the negative image credited to the so called 'Yahoo Boys'. This, inevitably, affects Africa as a whole, because Nigeria is the most populous African nation and statistics shows that out of every 5 African, you have 3 Nigerians. Our nascent democracy has encouraged Foreign Direct Investment with huge sums of money been invested in our economy. How about waking up one morning to find out that our financial power house, CBN has been drained by hackers.
According to him, Nigeria does not need to wait for such attacks before a security measures are put in place, adding that every now and then, we hear of cyber attacks on banks in the United States and Europe with millions of dollars lost as a result of such attacks. A time to act is now, he said.
'It is therefore the need to critically address this issue as a case of national importance that we convene this conference to highlight the dangers of insecure cyberspace in the various sectors of the economy and the need to secure ourselves right from our infant and beyond highest echelon in the government and private sectors,' he explained.
Similarly, Chris Uwaje, also a Director of Cybersolution in his speech noted that Cybercrime is a serious issue to the nation's economy, saying that something urgent has to be done to save Nigeria from the impending Cyber Tsunami. "Cyber_Crime and Cyber Security are the greatest and, perhaps, most dangerous threat to the development of mankind living on the planet earth today," he said.
For Uwaje who has passion for capacity building in the Nigerian ICT industry, the issue of Cybercrime and Cyber Security have become perhaps the most critical issues on the global development agenda for almost all governments.
' As we migrate deeper into the unknown tunnel of the Digital Revolution, no nation will be capable of achieving the objectives and the critical tasks of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) nor fulfill the targets set for her national development vision and plans, unless she tackles and resolves the challenges of Cybercrime and ensures that commensurate infrastructure and human resource capacities are built to effective respond to the emerging monster.
It is within the dynamics of the available global statistics on cybercrime that the assumption that Nigeria faces a monumental challenge with respect on how to respond effectively to the recurring decimal of CyberCrime and Cyber Security,' he noted.
According to him, in line with the tenets of Vision 2020 and the 7 point agenda of the present administration, the conference represented a strategic imperative for the actualization of the 7 point Agenda, especially the security concern
For many observers, the conference is a digital security roadmap for national ICT policy instrument and aimed to provide a professional point of reference and deliver end_to_end national awareness on cyber crime and cyber security.
The conference objectives was focused on ensuring that participants were exposed to the critical mass of Digital Security and Risk Management solutions nationwide, statewide and Business Enterprise_wide .
It also embraced data and information security implementation, monitoring, threat, vulnerability disaster recovery, legacy data and information migration, ICT Security Legal Advice and Litigation Services, contingency plans and management, data recovery and special incident management.
The conference organisers - Global Network For Cybersolutions/ a non- profit outfit and other core stakeholders (policy makers at all levels, professionals, investors, captains of industry and users) aspires to work together with the Federal Government to propagate and set standard to assist the policy makers, agencies, corporate business and individuals and help them design nationwide and statewide technical security architecture, security policies, industry best practices. and other regulatory requirements, procedures and applications to enable them comply with national and global digital security statutes and standards.
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