Nigerians are yet to feel the impact of the cybercrime law, one year after, no thanks to the dearth of trained judicial and enforcement officers to implement the law.
Oluseyi Akindeinde, chief technical officer, Digital Encode, said that the cybercrime law is yet to be properly interpreted by the judges owing to the very technical nature of cybercrimes.
“Currently, the judges are being trained in some of the cybercrime related offenses so as to properly adjudicate cases that come before them,” he said.
“There is a lot of improvement in Nigeria’s cyber defence and a lot more are still being done to fortify the cyberspace, in areas such as real time monitoring for cyber attack detection and response systems like incident response which centres around how to respond when an attack is detected as well as digital forensics,” he explained.
He noted that these are effectively handled by a national cyber security response team which is absent in the country.
Tobechi Ndubuaku, chief operating officer, Tobeit Consulting, organizers of annual Hackcess conference, added that the delay in commencing implementation of the law is not good for the country as organizations are constantly face with threats of cyber attacks.
He urged agencies saddled with the responsibility of offering judicial workers training on the implementation of cybercrime law to fast-track it to save private organizations from huge cost of providing cyber security for their data among other targets of cybercriminals.
Ahmed Adesanya, IT Security and Connectivity consultant, added that while judiciary arm of the government is preparing itself for full implementation of the law, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) should come out with a framework that organizations must follow in order to secure their sensitive data which will also provide a coordinated approach to fighting cybercrime, especially, now that organizations have taken their businesses to the cloud.
Chris Uwaje, Director General, Delta State Innovation Hub and advocate of cyber security had warned that cyber terrorism is real and must be taken serious.
Uwaje called for the setting up of “ethical hackers” to protect networks by hacking and stealing vital information and later returning them to show their vulnerability.
It would be recalled that the country’s cybercrime law was signed into law in October last year bringing to an end the problem of lack of legislation in the fight against cybercrime and related offenses.
