Cyber Security: Why Nigeria Needs Computer Emergency Response Team

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://leadership.ng/news/368843/cyber-security-nigeria-needs-computer-emergency-response-team

By Nkechi Isaac
Leadership
April 29, 2014

Cybercrime is one of the fastest growing areas of crime. More and more 
criminals are exploiting the speed, convenience and anonymity that modern 
technologies offer in order to commit a diverse range of criminal 
activities. These include attacks against computer data and systems, 
identity theft, the distribution of child sexual abuse images, internet 
auction fraud, the penetration of online financial services, as well as 
the deployment of viruses, Botnets, and various email scams such as 
phishing.

The global nature of the Internet has allowed criminals to commit almost 
any illegal activity anywhere in the world, making it essential for all 
countries to adapt their domestic offline controls to cover crimes carried 
out in cyberspace. The use of the Internet by terrorists, particularly for 
recruitment and the incitement of radicalization, poses a serious threat 
to national and international security.

In addition, the threat of terrorism forces authorities to address 
security vulnerabilities related to information technology infrastructure 
such as power plants, electrical grids, information systems and the 
computer systems of government and major companies.

Speaking at the handover and launching of the Computer Emergency Readiness 
and Response Team (CERTT.ng) Ecosystem by Consultancy Support Services 
(CS2) to the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), 
the former acting director-general of the agency, Dr. Ashiru Daura, said 
the project marked a turning point in the fight against cyber crime in 
Nigeria.

Daura said, “CERTT.ng is concerned with cyber crime which is crime 
committed on the cyber space, the internet. A lot of these crimes, which 
are of different kinds, happen every minute and every second, now even 
though we try as much as possible to provide protection for our systems, 
our networks some of these criminals penetrate or attack. So, there is 
need for us to do at least two things and these are to repel the attack 
and recover the systems, to make sure that we can come back to our 
original status as fast as we can and then also learn few lessons from the 
attack. That’s the purpose for this team which is to provide response to 
any threat or attack in the cyber space.”

[...]

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