Effective management of risk associated with cyber crime will require the collaboration of government and the private sector, acting President Yemi Osinbajo says.
Osinbajo spoke at a cyber-security conference with the theme “monitoring, detection and prevention: Keys to organisational growth,” in Lagos, last week, saying that a 31-member cyber-crime advisory council already set up by the government would work closely with the private sector to reduce incidences of cyber crimes in Nigeria.
He acknowledged the challenges of cyber crime globally and the need to confront them, hence, “as a nation, we must develop the necessary capacity to tackle them and all avenues that give room to cyber criminals must be blocked thoroughly.”
Represented by Lanre Osibona, his senior special adviser on ICT, the acting President said while government was keen on enthroning a digital economy, avenues that would give room to cyber criminals must be blocked thoroughly.
Osinbajo said government would establish the right environment secure for businesses to thrive, especially as it related to ICT development in the areas of smart cities and cyber security, among others.
Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos State on his part said the development of ICT was one of the defining events of the 21st Century and had resulted in a paradigm shift in the way things used to be done, bringing with it incredible improvement in efficiency and effectiveness, cutting across all spheres of human endeavour.
Represented by Olufemi Odubiyi, the state commissioner for science and technology, Ambode observed that cyber crime was a global phenomenon that posed potent threat to national security, organisational survival and corporate growth, among others.
According to Ambode, “the benefits that have continued to accrue to humanity with the advent of ICT cannot be quantified, while the issues of cyber fraud, hacking among others, cannot be completely wiped out. The challenges, which I believe, are the reasons for this conference, would continuously lead to development of strategies that would prevent unauthorized access to vital or critical information and other resources’.
He suggested that whatever strategies that are already in operation or would be recommended for implementation including legal provisions, processes and procedures must be subject to periodic review to ascertain their effectiveness in the face of changing realities.
“This is very vital, considering the fact that cyber-crime strategies are continuously evolving. Counter cyber-crime strategies must therefore be dynamic and pre-emptive in order to forestall the potential colossal damage which may be monumental in terms of financial loss or threat to organisations going concern,” Ambode said.
Maiden Alex-Ibru, publisher of The Guardian Newspaper, observed that Nigeria had shown a growing awareness of the need to strengthen cyber security, which includes initiating the registration of GSM users in 2011 and 2014 and the launch of centralised biometric identification system for the banking industry, Bank Verification Number (BVN) by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
She said this should, however, be seen as a first step that must be built into an institution.
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