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Warfare Could Bring Down ANation's Economy
- EC-Council Chief |
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activities of cybercriminals have continued to create
concerns all over the world. What many do not know are
the different methods adopted by the perpetrators in
effecting their nefarious activities.
Recently, New Horizons Nigeria, a leading IT training
institute brought the EC-Council President and Co-Founder,
Jay Bavisi to Nigeria to speak to a cross section of
the Nigerian people on the threats posed by this global
terror.
ROMMY IMAH was there and now reports... |
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Implications
for mobile and hospital hacking
There are many implications in mobile and hospital
hacking. Some companies have no IT policy and people
can bring in dangerous tools into the company that
could affect its smooth operations.
Mobile phones also allow the use of any applications,
and just allowing anybody to take in any mobile
phone into a company could be dangerous because
people could use mobile phones or digital devices
and they could use it to install malicious software
and steal data.
Electronic Jihad
Every company faces challenges of one form or the
other, and when this happens, it is not always advisable
to depend on the army or navy to protect the country.
Cyber warfare could be dangerous attack on any nation
and could bring down economy. Electronic Jihad is
just one way of fighting cyber warfare. There are
some group that hack for different purposes and
this should be checked.
What EC-Council is doing
The whole purpose of EC-Council is to reduce the
rate of cyber warefare accross countries. But a
country must first recognise that there is a security
gap before thinking of how to reduce the gap. A
lot of countries feel that there is no need to beef
up security against cyber attack, |
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just
because they have not been attacked. There are several
attacks that are going on in some organisations and their
computers that they are yet to find out. There is something
called backdoor and there are lots of data that could
be hacked.
Nigerian financial institutuions and online hacking
Security protection is key to any nation and organisation.
I think Nigerian financial institutions have not really
branded themselves as Information security institutions.
When this is lacking, they will be open to risk and online
attacks.
What Nigeria needs to do is to come with an agenda on
cyber security, accept the agenda and ensure that the
agenda is well implemented. All banks and stock market
operators need information security. |
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Controlling
Hacking Globally
There are several measures in which hacking could
be checked globally. EC-Council for instance is
hosing an Asia-Specific round-table gathering in
November this year to brainstorm on cyber security
globally. We are partnering with the ministry of
defence in most Asian countries. We will come out
with a global solution on how to reduce crime rate
in cyberspace.
The National Security Agency of the United States
for instance is coming up with global solution in
the area of human capital. The reason is that without
proper human capital development, there will be
room for hacking. |
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No matter
how sophisticated technology equipment a nation
or organisation may buy. And no matter the huge
investment of physical facilities without investing
on the human capital development, then it is mere
waste of energy and resources.
People that will handle the equipment must be trained
and must be knowlegeable in information security
management. Withou human capital and without proper
methodology in |
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place,
it will be difficult to controll cyber attacks.
Assessing EC-Council performance in fighting cybercrime
globally
It is difficult to assess this but what is important is
that cybersecurity does not count on the amount of money
invested on risk factor. It is difficult to calculate
the amount of money invested to check hacking. Hacking
comes in various forms and could come when everything
seems to be going on smoothly. It is difficult to calculate
the regional investment on security.
What Virus Kit is
It is basically a software that allows the user to identify
regularly known viruses. It helps the user to form its
own new virus that has the characteristics of viruses.
Loss to cyber attacks
It is pretty difficult to ascertain this, but some organisations
come up with figures and put their losses to the tune
of $3 billion.
Consulting for any African country
We do not consult for FBI, but EC-Council train FBI staff
on security management. We regularly train organisations
and staff from various departments in various countries,
not in the U.S. alone. We work with defence ministries
in various countries to provide training on cyber security
and we will like to work with the Nigerian Defence Ministry
to provide training on cyber security as well.
What we do is to bring the same level of knowledge in
the US to other countries where we offer training.
Collapse in world economies and security lapses
Not at all. It has nothing to do with security lapses.
The issue is that those that manage the world economy
loan money to people and organisations in the past and
these group of people cannot pay back the loan, talkless
of the interest.
The truth of the matter is that people take advantage
of any situation to strike. They have taken advantage
of the collapsing economies and they are benefitting from
it.
Country worst hit in cyber attacks
It is difficult to mention, but I could say that the U.S
seems to be the worst hit because they are transparent
and provide every security information to the public.
When they are hit, they tell the world, and give the statistics.
But not every country does this. Some countries that have
decided not to give information on cyber attacks does
not imply that such counties are more security thight.
They are even the worst hit, because they are afraid to
report so that hackers may not attack them the more.
Partnership with New Horizons
New Horizons is an education centre and an IT training
organisation. Their role is to provide IT knowledge to
people and corporate organisations but the role of EC-Council
is to provide global knowlege of security management and
we are partnering with them to extend our global training
to Nigeria. We at EC-Council create the solution and provide
the expertise in training. |
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Why
Virtualization Has Become An Issue Today, By IDC Manager
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Premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory
services, and events for the information technology,
telecoms and computer technology markets, IDC has said
that the need for IT vendors to have a requirement and
need for market intelligence informed its hosting of
the recent 2008 Virtualization and Datacentre Roadshow
in Lagos Nigeria.
Ranjit Rajan, Senior Research Manager-SW Group at IDC
who stated this in an interview with ICT Today Magazine
said the event was meant to create a platform for end
user companies, IT vendors and other stakeholders in
the IT industry to come together to discuss the concepts,
issues and challenges in technologies for the benefit
of everybody.
“The most important beneficiary is the end users,
they get a view of what IT vendors have to offer and
also get IDC views and prospectus in terms of technology
and market. IDC also tries to present global trend so
that technologies can be developed within Nigeria”,
he noted.
The research expert stated that the roadshow was about
virtualization since globally, this has become a hot
topic because of its rapid adoption especially in developed
countries of the world.
“We are trying to see what we can do for Nigeria
and West Africa. We present to companies in Nigeria
the key benefits and challenges of virtualization and
bring key vendors like Microsoft and IBM so that they
can talk on strategies and framework, and what they
are offering to satisfy the needs of Nigerians in this
regard.” |
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He said there was need for
understanding of virtualization within enterprises in
Nigeria as this can help companies maximize the value
of IT investments, decreasing the server hardware footprint,
energy consumption and the cost and complexity of managing
IT systems while increasing the flexibility of the overall
environment.
“We have a local office here
so we have a local prospectus of what companies are looking
for and what the situation of Nigeria is. So, we consistently
speak to IT vendors and end user companies; we have a
sense of what is happening here. At the same time, we
got Microsoft and IBM and the local actors to play and
in the end, we have been able to provide local understanding
of global trend.” On why it was
only two vendors, Microsoft and IBM that participated
at the event, Rajan explained that when the idea of the |
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| virtualization
roadshow came up, it was only the two companies that showed
interest to come around and showcase what they have in stock
in the area of virtualization adding that in the future more
companies will identify with the programme.
On the level of adaptation of technology in Africa, the senior
research manager said there are similarities and dissimilarities
between different parts of technologies in Africa and looking
at the similarity, there is the advantage that most of the
countries in this region are emerging economies, growing rapidly
and because of this, there was a need for an explosion of
information within these countries.
“Those countries are also expanding rapidly, so there
is need for a robust information system. The developed markets
have this sense of maturity that information systems are not
really exploding but that there are more of investments in
IT. In an emerging market, companies are putting their basic
information system in place so there is a lot of capital expenditure
investment happening with new business increasing all the
time.
“There is rapid increase in spending as compared to
other proportion. Because emerging countries like Nigeria
do not have a legacy of old system in place, they do not have
the problems of other countries that have legacy systems.
So they spend on knowledge rather than move with old legacy
systems. It allows Nigerians to keep a view of technology.
And this is very exciting”, he observed.
For companies he said, the market research element helps to
understand the requirement of the market before launching
the product and guides the market offerings after launching
adding that it helps to understand the needs of the market
and would in turn, help companies in optimizing their marketing
strategies.
“The companies tend to assume and compare Nigeria with
few other countries to see if it will probably behave the
same. But now companies are beginning to realize that the
nuances of Nigerian business behaviour are different from
other countries. At this stage, I will say we are not doing
enough marketing research as it should be but it is growing
rapidly and we see a lot of interest from IT vendors for us
to understand the behaviour of IT in Nigeria”, he concluded. |
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