Cyber Security: Heads of NITDA, NCC, NigComSat lead 24 others to talk

Cyber security has been declared a major statutory responsibility of the present administration and the concerned government agency like the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has vowed to wield its powers to ensure that the administration succeeds in achieving peaceful and secured cyber space activity.

The Director-General of NITDA, Dr Isa Ibrahim Pantami, who made the declaration recently, would lead the DGs of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Nigerian Communication Satellite Limited (NigComSat) and 24 other speakers to Nigeria’s first all-embracing talk that is planned to usher the country into a proper consciousness of tackling the growing menace of cyber insecurity.

According to the Executive Director of the Centre for Cyber Awareness Development (CECAD), a non-profit ICT coalition agency, Mr Bayero Agabi, the dialogue, with the theme, “Cyber security: a Shared Responsibility,” 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, 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. These countries include the USA, UK, Brazil and others.

He said that initial efforts by the 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.”