ONE wise adage in the Information Technology, IT Landscape is “secure and control what you innovate.”
Youth empowerment
This can only be done, if IT local content is given a special attention. How will Nigeria respond if the nation’s Internet Gateway is hacked and disabled for 24 hours during a business working day?
24 hours in Internet time-zone amounts to colossal man-years! Within that time-space, there will be expensive pandemonium at many critical levels: Government, Business, Financial Transactions, Crude Oil movement, Stock Exchange, Aviation, Communication, Social Media and many more.
Indeed, how easy is it to hack and how difficult is it to defend? As we develop the Broadband to reach the under-served, harbour and accelerate more content, we must ensure that we can secure and control that superhighway. Where are the cyber-warriors and champions to engage, respond and defend the Nation as well as restore life activities?
Critical action
All the above translates into developing and taking two critical actions in 2015: First is to develop a comprehensive National IT Framework Bill and establish a distinct National Software Strategy and policy direction – incorporating the establishment of the ‘Office of the Information Technology General of the Federation’.
Secondly, we need to rework the Computer Science Curriculum and retool all our IT Lectures at all levels of education. The above is crucial to fabricate a solid and sustainable foundation for IT-Nigeria.
2014 was a complex amphitheater for hackers and the hacked! But, going by lessons learned in the past few years, global hacking landscape is likely to be much more intensive and will multiply at many levels of National Data at Government, Corporate Business Domain and Social Media Platforms amongst others.
Today, there are more than 10 billion electronic devices connected to the Internet – establishing a super-cluster of Inter-cloud digital activities. These e-Government and business-fueled transactional activities are encapsulated in the crystal-ball called Cyberspace. With the advent of IoT (Internet of Things), the challenges are likely to magnify many thousand folds for the IT landscape of the nations. Currently the Cyberspace is inhabited by many e-Sharks who are responsible for our collective connectivity experiences with significant predominance of Cyberscrime and Cybersecirity.
It therefore focuses on the fact that humanity is currently caught-up with perhaps the largest and most complex digital spider-web architecture currently known to man – where Nigeria is passionately and perhaps naively trying to play digital catch-up through conspicuous consumption!
This makes Nigeria very vulnerable with cyberspace attacks which are capable of disrupting the current fragile state of digital information and data in the political, economic, financial, business and social processes. Indeed. Hacking-attack is said to be easier than Hacking-defense – especially in a county like Nigeria where the deep-skill capacity and capability to defend our sovereign data and information systems is grossly inadequate.
Thumb estimates indicate that Nigeria needs at least 5,000 skilled ethical Hackers and Cyber-warriors to minimally ensure that we have a reliable response to Cyber attacks – both locally and internationally. Currently, the number of ethical hackers in Nigeria is not available, but will be lucky to count 50!
Indeed, we need a standing Cyber Army. Recently, the Nigeria Team on Cyberlympics (Global Cybersecurity – Africa – Competition) came fourth – loosing first and second place to Sudan and third place to Egypt. How best can we therefore defend our cyberspace? If we lose the control of our cyberspace recourses and capability, we lose all the benefits of the digital revolution!
However, questions are: What, as a nation do we want out of Cyberspace? What do we want to secure? How do we secure it? Can the current Cybercrime and Cybersecurity approach and strategy yield the commensurate objective without first establishing the fundamental framework and dynamic scaffolding required to firmly host our national digital activity branches?
In clear terms, should a National IT Framework Bill not supersede the Cybercrime and Cybersecurity obsession – currently searching in the dark?
To home the above, do we or don’t we require and need a Cybersecurity University and a Cybersecurity Commission as sustainable platforms for responding to the mirage and infinitive Cyberspace issues?
Emerging facts from several lessons of the digital natives and always-on evolution is that we now live in a “Software-First” world and perpetually connected with complex cyber threat where everyone is at risk. As we are all aware, at its origin, the Internet was not designed with security in mind rather it was created as a platform for research and military communications network.
Today, relevant studies reveal that nobody knows the exact size of the World Wide Web, originated by Berners-Lee by inventing the HTML and HTTP Protocols.
Evidence of the above also resides in the fact that in 2011, the World Wide Web Organisation commenced on a project codenamed ‘World-wide-web Index’ to evaluate and determine the number of WebPages in existence. Currently, no one knows – setting mankind on a guessing prey and making everybody to be at risk.
The evolution of man within the ‘humanity space’ is an infinitive process and unstoppable! In the same vein and thought process the Cyberspace has come to stay with mankind – incorporating Nigeria within the same space – and it’s an unstoppable bug! The Digital Natives with its always-on presence and life acts are simultaneously the raw materials and victims of the giant digital prison-factory constructed all around the world – now known as globalization.
Simply defined: Cyberspace is the ‘place between the places’ which are cumulatively viewed as the ‘unidentified space’ that allows electronic communication and content across multiple digital devices, platforms and across multiple digital pathways. This makes it possible to create, provide and deliver the illusion of instant communication better known as the Internet.
This situation also helps to explain the current state, condition and crisis within the IPv4 digital addressing resources, and the intervention of – those-who-know- to patch-up the digital space/cyberspace with the IPv6 digital addressing system with a storage of 340 trillion, trillion, trillion (Sextrillion).
Youth empowerment
This can only be done, if IT local content is given a special attention. How will Nigeria respond if the nation’s Internet Gateway is hacked and disabled for 24 hours during a business working day?
24 hours in Internet time-zone amounts to colossal man-years! Within that time-space, there will be expensive pandemonium at many critical levels: Government, Business, Financial Transactions, Crude Oil movement, Stock Exchange, Aviation, Communication, Social Media and many more.
Indeed, how easy is it to hack and how difficult is it to defend? As we develop the Broadband to reach the under-served, harbour and accelerate more content, we must ensure that we can secure and control that superhighway. Where are the cyber-warriors and champions to engage, respond and defend the Nation as well as restore life activities?
Critical action
All the above translates into developing and taking two critical actions in 2015: First is to develop a comprehensive National IT Framework Bill and establish a distinct National Software Strategy and policy direction – incorporating the establishment of the ‘Office of the Information Technology General of the Federation’.
Secondly, we need to rework the Computer Science Curriculum and retool all our IT Lectures at all levels of education. The above is crucial to fabricate a solid and sustainable foundation for IT-Nigeria.
2014 was a complex amphitheater for hackers and the hacked! But, going by lessons learned in the past few years, global hacking landscape is likely to be much more intensive and will multiply at many levels of National Data at Government, Corporate Business Domain and Social Media Platforms amongst others.
Today, there are more than 10 billion electronic devices connected to the Internet – establishing a super-cluster of Inter-cloud digital activities. These e-Government and business-fueled transactional activities are encapsulated in the crystal-ball called Cyberspace. With the advent of IoT (Internet of Things), the challenges are likely to magnify many thousand folds for the IT landscape of the nations. Currently the Cyberspace is inhabited by many e-Sharks who are responsible for our collective connectivity experiences with significant predominance of Cyberscrime and Cybersecirity.
It therefore focuses on the fact that humanity is currently caught-up with perhaps the largest and most complex digital spider-web architecture currently known to man – where Nigeria is passionately and perhaps naively trying to play digital catch-up through conspicuous consumption!
This makes Nigeria very vulnerable with cyberspace attacks which are capable of disrupting the current fragile state of digital information and data in the political, economic, financial, business and social processes. Indeed. Hacking-attack is said to be easier than Hacking-defense – especially in a county like Nigeria where the deep-skill capacity and capability to defend our sovereign data and information systems is grossly inadequate.
Thumb estimates indicate that Nigeria needs at least 5,000 skilled ethical Hackers and Cyber-warriors to minimally ensure that we have a reliable response to Cyber attacks – both locally and internationally. Currently, the number of ethical hackers in Nigeria is not available, but will be lucky to count 50!
Indeed, we need a standing Cyber Army. Recently, the Nigeria Team on Cyberlympics (Global Cybersecurity – Africa – Competition) came fourth – loosing first and second place to Sudan and third place to Egypt. How best can we therefore defend our cyberspace? If we lose the control of our cyberspace recourses and capability, we lose all the benefits of the digital revolution!
However, questions are: What, as a nation do we want out of Cyberspace? What do we want to secure? How do we secure it? Can the current Cybercrime and Cybersecurity approach and strategy yield the commensurate objective without first establishing the fundamental framework and dynamic scaffolding required to firmly host our national digital activity branches?
In clear terms, should a National IT Framework Bill not supersede the Cybercrime and Cybersecurity obsession – currently searching in the dark?
To home the above, do we or don’t we require and need a Cybersecurity University and a Cybersecurity Commission as sustainable platforms for responding to the mirage and infinitive Cyberspace issues?
Emerging facts from several lessons of the digital natives and always-on evolution is that we now live in a “Software-First” world and perpetually connected with complex cyber threat where everyone is at risk. As we are all aware, at its origin, the Internet was not designed with security in mind rather it was created as a platform for research and military communications network.
Today, relevant studies reveal that nobody knows the exact size of the World Wide Web, originated by Berners-Lee by inventing the HTML and HTTP Protocols.
Evidence of the above also resides in the fact that in 2011, the World Wide Web Organisation commenced on a project codenamed ‘World-wide-web Index’ to evaluate and determine the number of WebPages in existence. Currently, no one knows – setting mankind on a guessing prey and making everybody to be at risk.
The evolution of man within the ‘humanity space’ is an infinitive process and unstoppable! In the same vein and thought process the Cyberspace has come to stay with mankind – incorporating Nigeria within the same space – and it’s an unstoppable bug! The Digital Natives with its always-on presence and life acts are simultaneously the raw materials and victims of the giant digital prison-factory constructed all around the world – now known as globalization.
Simply defined: Cyberspace is the ‘place between the places’ which are cumulatively viewed as the ‘unidentified space’ that allows electronic communication and content across multiple digital devices, platforms and across multiple digital pathways. This makes it possible to create, provide and deliver the illusion of instant communication better known as the Internet.
This situation also helps to explain the current state, condition and crisis within the IPv4 digital addressing resources, and the intervention of – those-who-know- to patch-up the digital space/cyberspace with the IPv6 digital addressing system with a storage of 340 trillion, trillion, trillion (Sextrillion).
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