By Frank Momoh
The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), in line with its mandate, has rolled out activities for the celebration of this year’s Cybersecurity awareness month.
Last years, the agency trained 3242 on basic and intermediate cyber security skills in partnership with CISCO.
The Cybersecurity awareness month held every October, is a month set aside globally to educate and create cybersecurity awareness.
This year marks the 20th in the series of collaborative awareness campaigns between public and private sector organisations globally.
To mark the 2023 National Cybersecurity awareness month, NITDA has lined up series of programmes specifically focused on sensitising the general public on cybersecurity threats and steps necessary to protect ourselves in the ever-growing digital space.
The theme for this year’s celebration is: See Yourself in Cyber, which highlights that cybersecurity is everyone’s responsibility.
The main purpose of this awareness campaign is to encourage the adoption of safe cyber hygiene.
To achieve this effectively, citizens need to accept, understand and be willing to apply these security measures to stay secure.
This year’s awareness campaign focuses on sensitising citizens on identifying and countering the following:
• Digital Misinformation and Disinformation;
• Social media attacks (Authentication and Social Engineering attacks);
• Phishing (Phishing scam websites, Email phishing/Business email compromise);
• Cyber bullying;
• Online responsible behaviour; and
• Ransomware attacks.
NITDA is partnering with relevant stakeholders to carry out grassroot awareness campaigns aimed at sensitising the general public of these cyberthreats and how to protect themselves. Specifically, the Agency is collaborating with Galaxy Backbone to disseminate specially-designed information flyers to public sector organisations.
The agency has, in conjunction with O-range Cybersecurity Training Service Limited, conducted Cybersecurity training in Ilorin, Kwara State, where more than 5,000 youths from various states participated.
Other activities lined up include:
• The NITDA-Cisco Cybersecurity Awareness Training aimed at training 4,000 youths in Ethical Hacking, Endpoint Security, Network Defense, and Cyber Threat Management.
The call for application was opened on the 2nd October while the portal for the virtual training will be opened on 18th October 8, 2023;
• A two-day Innovation Challenge on Cybersecurity programme, designed to identify and showcase innovative technologies on cybersecurity with special focus identifying solutions that can be adopted in the public sector. So far, over 3,000 applications have been submitted; and
• General Awareness programme focusing on sensitising the general public on NITDA’s initiatives and services such as:
• Trustmark system for online trading;
• Free Web Application Firewall for all MDAs;
• Public Key Infrastructure (PKI);
• Free Vulnerability Analysis and Penetration Testing (VAPT) for MDAs; and
• Monitoring of MDAs portals, social media monitoring and recovery, digital forensics, Cyber drill, and Cybersecurity Training.
We therefore call on private and public sector organisations as well as the general public to join us in ensuring that the Nigerian cyberspace is safe and secure.
Together, we can make the Nigerian cyberspace and the world at large safe and secure for all.
