FG Mulls CERT Ecosystem

Federal government at the weekend said the country it is working towards the establishment of a Computer Emergency Readiness and Response ecosystem complete with Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) as part of efforts to attain the highest levels of security on government infrastructure and working in line with the recommendations contained in the National ICT Policy.

Arc. Namadi Sambo, Vice President made the made the remark at the just concluded Nigeria Computer Society (NCS) 11th International Conference held in Osun State adding that the resources will serve as teams of experts that are able to respond to national emergencies, especially cyber-threats, attacks and cyber warfare.

He said with greater use of ICTs in government and the private sector come added responsibility to protect the nation’s hard and soft ICT infrastructure from physical and cyber attacks.

The VP spoke on the premise of the well advertised recent attacks by Irish activist “Paddy hacker” on government websites, which are typical examples of current external challenges.

He said: “A comprehensive cyber crime and cyber security bill is currently being crafted by the Ministry of Justice and will soon be submitted to the National Assembly for consideration. This piece of legislation will improve the legal framework needed to secure our ICT infrastructure and will increase coordination between various security arms of government.

“This year’s conference themes, “e-Government and National Security” is extremely apt and I would encourage you all to explore how we can improve and accelerate our e-Government and National security agendas through sufficient leveraging of ICTs”, he said.

Sambo noted that the importance of nurturing the key industry sector cannot be over emphasised and fortunately, the federal government and the NCS share a common view regarding the potential positive impact of a developed IT sector on National economic and social development.

 “This therefore represents a great opportunity to meet key members of a vibrant sector of Nigerian industry and also share the immediate and long-term intentions of the Federal Government with respect to the IT sector.

“As you know, the Ministry of Communication Technology was created as a response to a realisation of the importance of ICTs to socio-economic advancement. We continue to place emphasis on the increased adoption of ICTs in government, through our ambitious e-Government agenda with the intent of improving citizen engagement as well as transparency, efficiency and productivity in governance.

“It is also worth mentioning that the 1-Gov.net shared services platform designed and rolled out by Galaxy Backbone PLC (Government ICT infrastructure services provider) was awarded first place in the United Nation’s 2013 Public Services Award in the “Promoting Whole-of-Government approaches in the Information age” category,” he said.

He added that it signifies an important validation of our vision for e-Government service as the Ministry continues to act as a central repository for all government ICT projects.