Experts recommend collaboration in fight against cyber attacks

With the growing cyber threats, experts in the field have called for collaboration in intelligence sharing, especially among players in the financial services sector as panacea to tackle the challenge.

The experts made the suggestion at the 2017 Cyber security Conference dubbed, NaijaSecCon, held in Lagos.

On intensifying awareness, Rotimi Akinyele, the Convener of the conference said the event was a way of proffering solutions to cyber security issues. To that effect, he added that the conference will be a yearly event.

“Everything we are doing has to do with awareness. People invest in cyber solution, buy fireware worth millions, but in the end people need to be aware because there are some basic things which people are not aware. We are starting with awareness, this is going to be a gradual things, it is not just going to be a one-off.

“Yearly we will be organising this conference and it is going to be bigger. The interesting thing about the programme is that people are willing support. They hold views that what we are doing will change the future of cyber security in Nigeria. The mentality about cyber security is that if there is no strong attack, people will not get serious. We have had regulatory bodies which made it compulsory for financial institutions abide by certain cyber security standards and regulatory framework. As long as the motive is right, the support will be heavily required,” he pointed.

A senior cyber security expert, Chinedu Onwukike, disclosed that the activities of cybercriminals are on the increase despite the existence of several agencies set up to tackle the ugly trend, which he attributed to the dearth of forensic test by the agencies.

“A lot of agencies have been created to tackle cybercrime but nothing serious has been done. There are no forensic tests been carried out, people get away with fraud.

“There have to be collaboration in intelligence sharing by financial institutions to tackle cyber-crimes; this is the practice in advance societies. We have monthly meeting where they threat sharing since they are working in the same ecosystem,” he explained.

Similarly, Senior Cyber Security Specialist, Debra Okwuzi, emphasised that before embarking on global partnerships, it is imperative to create awareness locally about the fight against the menace.

“There is internal cyber security issues which we need to solve, for instance terrorism. Before talking about the global body, we need to talk about what happens internally. There has to be a lot of synergy on how to address cyber-crimes. Cyber-crime is growing exponentially, and the issue has been in the media and this has attracted government attention to pass into a cyber-crime bill.”

As part of the event of the conference, hacking competition tagged, ‘2017 Naija SecCon Ethical Hacking Competition, was also organised to help discover new talents and innovations. Cyber security professional, Olofinlade Victor, leader of the HackerFringer team emerged winner of the contest.