Senate Considers Bill To Fight Cyber Crime

The Senate said it is considering a bill against all forms of cyber crimes.

The bill is to fortify the nation’s cyber space from global attacks by hackers.

The Chairman Senate Committee on Information Communication Technology (ICT) Yakubu Oseni disclosed this to newsmen in Abuja on Thursday after he led members of his committee on a tour of a privately owned cyberdome facility.

The lawmaker stated the parliament is worried by the rising phenomenon of cyber attacks and criminalities across the world, stressing the bill is designed to further strengthen the fight against cyber crime and protect the country’s cyber space from various attacks by cyber criminals.

“Cyber attacks is a world activity and not peculiar to Nigeria alone. Unfortunately, our youths are also engaged in cyber crimes and that is very unfortunate and alarming but the Senate and indeed, the National Assembly is not sleeping over the matter. There is a bill in the works to actually strengthen the fight against cyber crime.

“We are calling on the public to make relevant contribution so that by the time it comes to public hearing. We (legislators) and indeed, the whole of Nigerians are worried about this phenomenon and we hope everybody will key in as it is a fight for everyone. We hope people will come and make relevant contributions to the bill.”

Asked how soon the bill will be presented, the lawmaker said: “I can tell you that it is not an executive bill, it is a private bill.

“To tell you how concerned we are, there will be a conference coming up in October on Cyber security which is going to be organised by the legislature and we hope the public and people of interest will come in and make presentation.

“We may think that we are not being attacked like the other nations and that is because they don’t know that we are really coming up very well in terms of ICT, hence, we should be battle ready by the time they eventually come. When they do, they will see the likes of CyberDome already providing defensive mechanism for our cyber space.”

He commended the management of CyberDome for leading the pack in providing the much needed security back up and protection of the country’s cyber space.

Addressing the visiting lawmakers, the Managing Director of CyberDome Nigeria, Chioma Iwuagwu, said the firm has capacity to protect critical infrastructure across Nigeria, especially at the national level.

“CyberDome is conceived as a world class multi secret service provider. We provide bespoke cyber security operations such as critical infrastructure analysis that we are monitoring among other solutions cross all industry verticals.

“Basically what we do is to ensure that our security strategy are tailored to align with the business goal of the organization.

“And again we must have seen that with the COVID 19 there has been a lot of activities within the cyberspace which actually has made it recognized and the cyber criminals actually are not resting on their oars.

“So what we do here is to try to be ahead of them such that we are able to prevent, detect and respond to cyber security challenges.

“And as we know we are all digital citizens right now because we use our phones , we are always on the internet. So there is need for us to ensure that we are adequately protected. Like I will always say the first line of defence is vigilance.”