The federal government affirmed the key role of information and communication technology (ICT) in the nation’s economy when it recently called for increased regional collaboration for the development of an ICT ecosystem in West Africa as a potential digital hub on the global ICT Map. The government made the call at the two – day 18th Annual General Meeting of West African Telecommunications Regulators Assembly (WATRA) in Abuja.
The country as the largest ICT market in West Africa has taken policy and regulatory initiatives in making ICT telecoms a major contributor to its economic growth. The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) is spearheading the implementation of critical ICT policies, such as the Nigerian National Broadband Plan (NNBP) 2020 – 2025 and The National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy (NDEPS) for a digital Nigeria 2020 – 2030.
However, the year 2020 ended with many cyber security attacks and data breaches on SMEs, health institutions, public, private, financial and non – financial institutions in Nigeria and the world at large. The attacks reportedly targeted many personal devices, cloud tools and remote working infrastructure used during this period. Given the prevailing trends in social, economic and political events in Nigeria and other countries. Experts believe that cyber security attacks would continue to rise in 2021 hence the need for collaboration with other countries in the sub region to combat them.
It is envisaged that there would be a possible rise in deep fakes within the Nigerian cyber space. Deep fakes are hyper-realistic, manipulated digital elements such as sound, videos and photos generated using artificial intelligence and machine learning tools and algorithms in-fact they are unreal digital representations with the aim of looking and sounding as real as possible. Phishing and business email compromise (BEC) is still rampant in the Nigerian cyber space as they prey on human emotions and give rise to higher profits for their attackers.
They have grown in sophistication and complexity as attackers are getting more creative and patient with their schemes and methods.
In 2020 the world saw some unprecedented and significant cyber attacks against major cyber security and technology firms, including Fire Eye and Solar Winds, IT contractors to U.S federal agencies. These waves of attacks resulted in the theft of proprietary, internal and unreleased security tools as well as the breach of the Solar Winds’ security monitoring products through the exploitation of a backdoor written in the code.
This recent hacking of the U.S federal agencies is similar to the hacking of Juniper Networks in 2015. The networks which provides firewall and network software to corporations and U.S government agencies said in a regular review that it discovered “unauthorized code” that could allow an attacker to decrypt (and thus snoop on) communication sent through its virtual private networks – the systems that encrypt communications for remote log-ins to a government or business network.
Juniper reportedly said that as a matter of policy, it does not add backdoors that could compromise customers or its products. The company’s stance raises questions about whether encrypted networks should include so-called backdoors at all which U.S Intelligence says would be helpful to gain access to criminals’ communications, but security experts argue that could be used by the wrong hands. It was in-fact reported that a foreign government hacked Juniper Networks through the backdoor created by the U.S Intelligence Agency.
This means the agency could as well use back doors to secretly harvest information from users of consumer electronics without their consent or knowledge. The U.S National Security Agency (NSA) has been reluctant to disclose whether it is placing backdoors in commercial technology products.
Report confirmed that the U.K Government Communications Headquarters with the knowledge and apparent cooperation of the NSA, acquired the capability to covertly exploit security vulnerabilities in 13 different models of firewall made by Juniper Network. The truth is Americans are trying to monopolize the world’s information field, and in doing this they accuse other nations of hacking the U.S cyberspace infrastructure.
It is on these grounds that delegates at the 2020 world economic forum in Davos considered how to create a global consensus on deployment of so-called fourth Industrial Revolution Technologies. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany reportedly said that many European companies have out-sourced their data to U.S firms. As a result, she argued that Europe should claim “digital sovereignty” by developing it’s own data platform and thus reducing the dependence on companies such as Google and Microsoft for their cloud services. Digital sovereignty includes the idea that users, being citizens or companies have control over their data. President Emmanuel Macron of France shares the same worries when he reportedly said that “if nothing changes in Europe in 10 years time no one will be able to guarantee the technological soundness of your cyber- systems, no one will be able to guarantee who possesses the data and how, of citizens or companies.
In fact, current conditions require every country to claim digital sovereignty, and for the UN to strengthen its role in formulation of fare rules of conduct in the use of cyberspace by states.
President Buhari recently signed a national cyber security policy and strategy (NCPS) for the country which, according to the National Security Adviser, Major General Babagana Monguno (Rtd), “is expected to direct the government’s attention on pillars of strengthening cyber security governance and coordination across stakeholders, fostering critical national information infrastructure protection, improve cyber security incident management and strengthen legal and regulatory framework.” We pray that this mandate is achieved.
Imoisile writes from Lagos.
