Cybersecurity: Senate Committee to engage Tech firm on Capacity building
The Senate Committee on ICT and Cybersecurity has stressed the need to educate more on the impact of the menace of cybercrime on individuals, businesses and the country as a whole.
The committee stressed the fact that more sensitization has become crucial in clipping the growing influence of cybercrimes in Nigeria.
To get this done, the group would be engaging the services of Datasixth, a cybersecurity organization, on capacity training and sensitisation.
The Senate Committee made this known when it visited Datasixth in Lagos. The team comprised the Technical Assistant, Senate Committee on ICT and Cybercrime, Patrick Essien; Committee Technical Manager, Senator Orker Jeff; Committee Chairman on ICT and Cybercrime, Senator Yakubu Oseni; member of the committee, Senator Ibrahim Hadejia and Senate Clerk on ICT and Cybercrime, Ayoh Ogon.
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Speaking on behalf of the team, Senator Hadejia, who said it was the Committee’s second visit to Datasixth, noted that one of the biggest challenges in the IT world today is security, vulnerability, among others.
Senator Hadejia said companies like Datasixth are coming up to solve these problems, especially in the financial sector, banks, fintech, oil and gas and companies that are vulnerable to attacks by hackers.
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He said that the IT sector globally has become very dynamic. After all, things keep changing with various innovations coming up almost daily, “it has also been discovered that cyber crooks too are not relenting, launching various attacks, from ransomware today, to malware tomorrow, and Trojan on another day. So, in tackling this menace, it is best to leave it to the professionals, who are dedicated to being a step above those hackers and cybercriminals.”
Senator Hadejia said there cannot be a digital economy without having a digitised government service. “Now, if you are going to digitise government services, the first thing that people would be scared of is vulnerability. Just like you have in the private sector, the same criminals would operate in that space in the public sector. So, we are talking to companies like Datasixth to come in and see how they can help government plan initial infrastructure to make it foolproof and secure as possible.”
He revealed that government’s plan to move 85 per cent of its businesses online by 2023, “that is not going to be met, but we are going there. So, as we are making that preparation, we should put security at the centre. Therefore, we are meeting with companies like DataSixth to see how they can come in, interface with government agencies like Galaxy Backbone, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) among others, so that as this infrastructure and government’s masterplan are being implemented, this will be done hand-in-hand with security.”
On where DataSixth comes to help, Senator Hadejia said this would be in the areas of capacity building, stressing that when talking about governance, “you need people who are capable to deliver in that field. Digitisation is a very big leap from paper to digital services. We equally know that it will come with some resistance within and outside. They need to come in, train these service providers and ensure that we have seamless exercise. We want to escalate this across all government layers so that when we are talking about the digital economy, the government is right there, step by step with the private sector.”
