We will eradicate cybercrime — Senate

By Tunde Opalana

The Senate said it is considering a bill against every form of cybercrime to effectively combat the threat of cyber-attacks in the country, DAILY TIMES gathered.

The chairman Senate Committee on Information Communication Technology (ICT), Senator Yakubu Oseni said this on Thursday while speaking with newsmen after a tour of a cyber-security firm, CyberDome Nigeria, as part of efforts to secure government institutions, in Abuja.

Senator Oseni, who expressed worry over the phenomenon of cyber-attacks across the world revealed that a Bill was already on the way to strengthen the fight against cybercrime.

“What National Assembly is doing to forestall cyber-attacks is a world activity and not peculiar to Nigeria alone. Unfortunately, our youths are also engaged in cybercrimes and that is very unfortunate and alarming but the Senate and the National Assembly is not sleeping over the matter.

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“There is a bill in the works to actually strengthen the fight against cybercrime and we are calling on the public to make relevant contribution so that by the time it comes to public hearing to that effect. We and indeed, the whole of Nigerians are worried about this phenomenon and we hope everybody will key in as it is a fight for everyone and we hope people will come and make relevant contribution”, he said.

On how soon the Bill will be presented, the lawmaker said: “I can tell you that it is not an executive bill, it is a private Bill. To tell you how concerned we are, there will be a conference coming up in October on cybersecurity which is going to be organised by the legislators and we hope the public and people of interest will come in and make a presentation.”

Speaking on his observations at the CyberDome Nigeria, Senator Oseni said with the demonstration the firm shown to the delegation “It means that they have a lot of clients patronising them already but we have to protect their identity as we are not interested in the persons, we are mainly interested in recommending them because they are providing good services.  We hope that others can cue in and also patronize them as we really need to protect our cyberspace.

“We may believe that we are not being attacked like the other nations and that is because they don’t know that we are really coming up very well in terms of ICT hence, we should be battle-ready by the time they eventually come. When they do, they will see the likes of CyberDome already providing a defensive mechanism for our cyberspace.”

Also speaking, Managing Director of CyberDome Nigeria, Chioma Iwuagwu said the firm has the capacity to protect critical infrastructure across Nigeria, especially at the national level.

“CyberDome is conceived as a world-class multi secret service provider. We provide bespoke cybersecurity operations such as critical infrastructure analysis that we are monitoring among other solutions across all industry verticals. We also provide services in those in oil and gas, energy, finance, healthcare, and even government you can see states and the federal government. The senate committee on ICT and cybercrime just paid us a courtesy visit.

“Basically what we do is to ensure that our security strategy is tailored to align with the business goal of the organization. And again we must have seen that with the COVID 19 there has been a lot of activities within cyberspace which actually has made it recognized and the cybercriminals actually are not resting on their oars.

“So what we do here is to try to be ahead of them such that we are able to prevent, detect, and respond to cybersecurity challenges. And as we know we are all digital citizens right now because we use our phones, we are always on the internet. So there is a need for us to ensure that we are adequately protected. Like I will always say the first line of defence is vigilance.”