NITDA Approves CBN’s ICT Security And System’s Upgrade

As part of the National Information Technology Development Agency’s move to ensure a threat-free cyberspace, the Central Bank of Nigeria was saddled with the responsibility to embark on a project aimed at restructuring the CBN’s Information and Communications Technology security and system’s infrastructure upgrade projects, Punch Nigeria reported.

According to NITDA, the CBN embarked on this project to subdue cyber threats that have become a menace to financial institutions in the country. The Director-General of NITDA, Isa Pantami had earlier in the year rung the alarm on the danger of leaving loopholes for cyber-criminals to penetrate. He alerted the banking system, health sector, power and the transportation sectors of the risk of not tightening their network security appliances.

According to NITDA, among the successful projects includes the Enterprise Network Security which had the responsibility to upgrade the bank’s network security appliances and ensure a steady availability of protection against advanced threats.

Other core projects have also been cleared. They include: “the Intelligence Security Operations Centre project that is aimed at providing a dedicated centre, technology and team for continuous monitoring of the bank’s network to prevent, detect and deal with cyber attacks”. Another is “the implementation of a network access control solution- a security approach designed to restrict the availability of network resources to endpoint devices- aimed at enhancing infrastructure security as well as limiting potential effects from emerging security threats.” Also included is “the Identity and Access Management Solution project aimed at ensuring that the right individuals access the right time and for the right reasons.”

The nation’s president, Muhammadu Buhari had last year emphasised on the need for stringent compliance with the IT projects clearance directive to curtail cyber threats. It’s, therefore, a worthy project that all the ICT projects have been cleared before implementation. 

We can assume that institutions will not run at exorbitant losses with the newly implemented security measure to ward off criminals with sophisticated technology, which they assure the public can detect advanced threats.