Sometime in May, 2015, the Cyber Crime bill was signed into law. With this, individuals and organisations are now aware of what constitutes Cyber Crime as well as the punitive sanctions that goes with each type of crime.
Recently, Chidinma Iwe, CISO, MainOne, was my guest on Tech Trends, Channels Television and we had a chat around cyber security issues. He described the state of Cyber Security in Nigeria presently as a challenging and fast evolving environment and the landscape is ever changing.
He opined that the challenges that those saddled with the responsibility of security of enterprises will always be up to scale to meet up with what is going on globally because whatever happens in other parts of the world eventually happens here in Nigeria.
On the preparedness of Nigeria for the challenges of Cyber Security, he maintained that we are not as prepared as we need to be but, a lot of Nigerians are now paying close attention to it and industry watchers are carrying out a lot of awareness on Cyber Security.
In terms of preparedness, he is of the opinion that it will be expecting too much to ask of us in Nigeria, to be as prepared as the developed countries because of the level and state of our infrastructure, but we are fast growing.
In Chidinma's view, Cyber Crime is controlled by cartels, just like in the illicit drug industry where we have drug cartels, which has a demand side and a supply side to it. Instead of blaming the supply side alone for the perpetration of Cyber Crime, the demand side that creates the need to activate the supply side should also be looked into.
On what companies and organisations should do to prevent them from falling victim to Cyber Crime, Chidinma suggested that they should start out by identifying what their critical assets which needs to be protected are.
They should, afterwards, weave their processes, policies, standards, etc., around securing those assets. This is important so that the value of their investment in security will not be more than the value of the assets being secured. In the end, however, critical assets are relative and different from organisation to organisation.
On why individuals still fall for Cyber Crimes through phishing emails, Chidinma opined that it speaks volume of the human mind and need. People, he said, like good things, but good things comes at a price, however, these phishing emails offer these good things for free, so, people fall for it because they think they can obtain these good things for free.
The fact, he maintained, is that, not only Nigerians fall victim of these, but many people also do all over the world. He advised that people should have it at the back of their mind that nothing goes for free and always remember these phrases, "not even in Freetown is anything free" and "if it is free, then, you may likely be the product", so, people really need to be careful.
On getting rid of Malware attacks after the attacks have been detected, Chidinma maintained that it is better for Malware attack s to be prevented from happening in the first place because, a lot if damage will have been done when an attack takes place. By ensuring information awareness, people in an organisation should be advised not to click on links that can trigger a chain of events that can lead to Malware attacks. It is better to respond to references that directs you to a website for more information than to click on links.
Finally, on how organisations can better support tech initiatives to grow, Chidinma is of the opinion that tech organisations cannot enjoy the benefits from the tech ecosystem unless they support all sectors of the tech ecosystem to grow, hence, they should do more to support tech initiatives to grow to achieve this.
CFA is the Founder, www.techsmart.ng and Co-producer/Presenter,Tech Trends on Channels Television
