Juwah @ Securex Explains Establishment of New Media & Info Security Dept

Eugene Juwah, vice chairman and chief executive officer, Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) on Wednesday acknowledged that cybercrime and security of information on the cyberspace has become enormous challenge to the industry and the services users.

Juwah said, the Commission, thus, set up a department on New Media and Information Security to explore ways to protect corporate and individual citizens from the challenges, providing awareness and information to help those vulnerable to these crimes.

He made the remarks in a goodwill message through Mr. Tony Ojobo, director, Corporate Communications NCC, to Security Exhibition and conference (Securex 2014) organized by Montgomery West Africa, in Lagos.

He said: “This department has been involved in several collaborations that have yielded fruitful results in this direction”.

Speaking on other efforts made by the Commission in that regard, Juwah said, “You may be aware that the efforts of the Commission led to the approval of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), to establish a regional cyber-security centre in Nigeria. This has many benefits to our efforts at securing our society from high tech crimes.

“On another level, the nation is advancing in the sophistication that abound in cyber space with application of laws that are germane to tackling high tech crimes associated with the ICT industry through the Lawful intercept of suspicious and established criminally intended communications. These are all aimed at providing a more secured future for the nation and its citizens”.

The NCC Boss added that, logically, in the contemporary society, a more cyber secured nation will attract more investments and friendship in the committee of nations than those which have a criminally dominant cyberspace.
He had stated that the Commission engaged and implemented the SIM cards registration as a measure to provide clear identity for telecom users.

“It was our solution to the level of crimes associated with the use of phones. Ordinarily, phone services have been designed to provide solutions to our communications needs but criminals have capitalized on this to also dislocate the society.

“Our response to this security need, included the provision of a foundation for verification of citizens identification, which is needed for national planning and a secured nation.

He said that as a telecom regulator, NCC is very much committed to its duties and responsibilities, as it looks at several ways it could contribute to those solutions, especially trends that could be resolved using ICT.