Ahead of the formal take-off of the mobile money in January 2012,an expert in cyber security have called on the government to take strategic decision that would curtail the activities of cyber criminals in the country.
President of Information Security Society of Africa in Nigeria (ISSAN), Mr. David Isiavwe who made the call at a technical workshop on security organised by (ISSAN), held in Lagos said that “Cybercrime is on the increase, hence there is need for all stakeholders to join hands together to fight this menace”.
He noted that the quest to achieve a cashless economy by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) may be undermined by cybercrime if necessary steps are not taken to ensure security of data, systems and networks.
“This is particularly germane given the efforts being made by the Central Bank of Nigeria to achieve a cashless society”, he said.
He stressed that mobile money transaction can only thrive if there is information security explaining that Information security is concerned with the confidentiality, integrity and availability of data regardless of the form for data, which are now collected, processed and stored on computers and transmitted across computer networks.
The ISSAN leader therefore urged that organisations must take necessary steps to secure their data, systems and networks saying that where they do not have the technical resources in-house, they must engage skilled consultants to fill the gap.
According to him, the cyber crime menace in Nigeria has become one of the highest numbers in the world and was recently ranked third, in a report by the Internet Crime Complaint Centre, which tracks the prevalence of cybercrime globally.
He explained one the major threat, which include the Symantec research with 431 million adult victims globally in the past year and at an annual price of $388 billion globally based on financial losses and time lost, cybercrime costs the world significantly more than the global black market in marijuana, cocaine and heroin combined ($288 billion).”
According to him, cybercrime activities such as espionage, free ware, war dialling, crackers, Internet hoax, remote access tools, spyware, Trojan horses, viruses and worms, can wreak devastating havoc in information systems.
“Data breaches have been known to result in the loss of billions of dollars by various organisations. In some cases, lives are lost due to security breaches”, he stated.
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