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Stakeholders Seek Legislation to Force Federal MDAs to Host Data in-Country

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Worried by continued disregard of federal government guidelines to its ministries, departments and agencies to host their data in the country, stakeholders in the data security ecosystem have urged the federal government to enact an act of parliament to support its guideline to ensure its full adherence.

 

This is coming against the backdrop of a revelation by Charles Bolifrank, head of sales, Sidmach Technologies at Cyber Africa Data Centre and Cloud Roundtable held in Lagos, that Sidmach managing WAEC and JAMB data host them outside of the country.

 

More so, Temitope Dele Oni, regional head, Lagos of Galaxy Backbone acknowledged that federal MDAs are still hosting their data outside of the country contrary to federal government guideline against such action.

 

Rock Adote, a software architect, frowned at the actions of federal government MDAs and called for enactment of law to support existing guidelines that will ensure that they comply by reason of law.

 

Reacting, Ike Nnamani, president, Medallion Communications, agreed on the need for legislation on hosting of data in-country, but preferred commercial and business need to make organisations to host in-country.

 

He cited the situation in financial sector where central bank of Nigeria (CBN) mandated all banks to host in-country, “but some bank in the guise of having offshore operations are still hosting outside of the country”.

 

“All these are happening because those MDAs feel they can get away with such flagrant disregard of government guidelines. I think value when compared to hosting outside of the country should be the determining force.

 

“Hosting data in-country comes with better quality of service, low latency, and makes ones data closer to him which will not be affected by internet gateway outage. Though it is cheaper to host outside because of cost of providing power, overtime this will change as more people embrace the service in-country,” he noted.

 

Nigeria CommunicationsWeek investigations revealed that commercial banks in the country having adopted outsourcing model are spending some $264,000 every year on hosting of their data at different tier 111 data centres in the country.

 

It was gathered that there are rack spaces at a typical data centre comprising of 42U and  a 2U in a rack contains between 16 to 18 servers depending on their specifications, and cost $1,000 monthly to host a server at a data centre in the country.

 

Peter Iwegbu, managing director, Pn Consulting, and former group head, ebusiness and payment, Access bank, offering insight on hosting of server by banks, explained that banks’ servers are based on applications that the bank runs and that a typical bank in the country runs an average of 20 applications which means 20 servers.

 

“But today the story has changed with virtualization. This means that a bank can have one physical box with partitions inside of the box for the various applications that the bank runs. With this innovation, instead of a bank hosting 20 or more servers as the case was in the past the bank will host only one physical box reducing cost,” he added.

 

 

 


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Nigeria CommunicationsWeek believes that technology makes life more exciting and helps improve the lives of people around Nigeria and indeed the world. So since 2007, we have devoted our energy to independent reportage of technology and how they affect lives.

E-Business

CrediCorp Partners FintechNGR to Drive Consumer Credit Initiative

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Nigerian Consumer Credit Corporation (CrediCorp), has partnered Fintech Association of Nigeria (FinTechNGR) to drive consumer credit scheme initiative through a robust payment platform that would be provided by members of FinTechNGR.

Speaking at a Social Meet in Lagos, organised by FinTechNGR, with the theme: “Augmenting the Future, AI, Credit and Transformation of Nigerian Finance,” the Chairman, CrediCorp Board of Directors, Aderemi Abdul-Bojela, said members of FinTechNGR would have specific roles to play in the partnership, in the areas of providing robust platform for money transfer, technology evaluation, among others.

“Today, CrediCorp is engaging with members of FinTechNGR in a social interactive gathering to discuss collaboration and support for the growth of Consumer Credit Corporation in Nigeria. We want to interact to understand how technology will drive the crediCorp initiative in Nigeria and also to understand the role that members of FinTechNGR will play in all of these initiatives around CrediCorp,” Abdul-Bojela said.

Describing the partnership as a welcome development that will enhance savings culture among Nigerians, the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of FinTechNGR, Dr. Babatunde Obrimah, said: “FinTechNGR is an enabler of technology advancement in Nigeria. We bring the players together to drive technology innovation.

“Our role in the FinTechNGR-CrediCorp partnership is to ensure that our members support the growth of consumer credit in Nigeria, by providing the relevant payment platforms for all financial transactions among the banks who are the lenders, the customers who are the burrowers and the CrediCorp who is the guarantor.”

Speaking about the benefits for Nigerians, Obrimah said the Consumer Credit Corporation in Nigeria would enhance the country’s credit culture and enable Nigerians to save and plan well with their savings. “The initiative will address inflation, help in liquidity flow, build trust in customers’ borrowing, boost credit culture and enhance the culture of savings among Nigerians,” Obrimah said.

Addressing the issue of risk and consumer trust, Abdul-Bojela said the CrediCorp has put measures in place to ensure that the banks that would be involved in lending, would be protected and guaranteed of the repayment of the loans within the CrediCorp ecosystem.

He said there would be an independent management that would ensure that the right technology is put in place to recover all monies.


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NITDA to Integrate of Digital Literacy into School Curriculum

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Kashifu Abdullahi, director general of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), announced plans to integrate digital literacy into Nigeria’s education system, to achieve a 70% literacy rate by 2027 and 95% by 2030.

NITDA to Integrate of Digital Literacy into School Curriculum

Kashifu Abdullah, DG, NITDA

The NITDA’s DG made the announcement on Wednesday in Abuja during a media parley.

He stated that in order to include digital literacy in the curriculum at all educational levels, from kindergarten to university, the Agency was collaborating with the Federal Ministry of Education.

Abdullahi, said that this program would equip Nigerians with the digital know-how and abilities they need to succeed in the digital economy.

He emphasized that NITDA would also launch the “Digital Literacy for All Initiative” to educate Nigerians outside the formal education system and provide access to quality digital content.

Nigeria would train over two million young people in in-demand IT skills in order to become significant global outsourcing hub

NITDA is also collaborating with the Defence Headquarters and security agencies to develop digital solutions to address security concerns, including the use of drones, artificial intelligence, and other digital resources to combat banditry, abduction, and terrorism, he said.

 

According to him, the agency’s draft SRAP 2.0 plan aims to establish Nigeria as a digitally empowered nation, with a focus on innovation, national prosperity, and inclusivity.

The director general of NITDA added that, if successfully implemented, this strategy could propel Nigeria into a new phase of digital empowerment and leadership in the global digital economy.


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Experts Highlight Trusted Relationships as Key Vector

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In 2023, more than 1/5 of cyberattacks persisted for over a month, the annual Kaspersky Incident Response 2023 report has revealed, with trusted relationships emerging as one of the main attack vectors in these prolonged cases.

The report draws on the results of Kaspersky’s cyberattack investigations throughout the year, gathered when supporting organisations sought incident response assistance or when hosting expert events for their internal incident response teams.

Primary reasons of organisations approaching Kaspersky Incident Response team with service requests were encrypted files (32.8% of requests), suspicious activities (31%), data leakage (20%), and also included non-authorised accesses (3%), service unavailability (3%) and money theft (1.6%).

Among initial attack vectors of the investigated incidents were exploiting public facing application (42.4%), compromised accounts and BruteForce attacks (28.8% in total), trusted relationships (6.78%), phishing (5%), insider’s activity (3.4%).

Kaspersky Incident Response 2023 report indicates that long-lasting cyberattacks that persist for more than a month constituted 21.85% of the total, increasing from 2022 by 5.55%.

One notable trend observed in these attacks was the exploitation of trusted relationships as a primary vector. Compromises leveraging trusted relationships have occurred previously, but in 2023 their frequency increased.

As this method of attack enables threat actors to infiltrate multiple victims through a single compromised organisation, investigative teams face several additional challenges. Firstly, initially targeted organisations don’t always recognise the importance of thorough investigations and may be reluctant to cooperate.

Secondly, attacks initiated through trusted relationships often require more time to progress from the initial intrusion to the final incursion phase. Therefore 50% of these attacks lasted more than a month. A similar proportion of attacks exceeding one month were exclusively registered within the insider and phishing vectors.

“Our latest findings underscore the critical role of trust in cyberattacks. In 2023 and for the first time in recent years, attacks through trusted relationships were among the three most used vectors. Half of these incidents were discovered only after a data leak had been found.

“By exploiting trusted relationships, threat actors can prolong attacks and infiltrate networks for extended periods, posing significant risks to organisations. It’s imperative for businesses to remain vigilant and prioritise security measures to safeguard against such sophisticated tactics,” comments Konstantin Sapronov, Head of Global Emergency Response Team at Kaspersky.

 


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