Scam: Don advocates introduction of cybersecurity programmes in Nigerian varsities

Prof. Rasheed Jimoh of the Department of Computer Science, University of Ilorin (Unilorin), on Friday advocated the introduction of cybersecurity-specialized programmes in Nigerian universities.

Jimoh made the call in Ilorin during his paper presentation at the Unilorin 239th Inaugural Lecture titled “Deconstructing the Crawling Mindsets: Combating Security Challenges of Net-Centric Computing.”

The don, who teaches in the University’s Faculty of Communication and Information Sciences, observed the need for effective capacity building and cybersecurity.

He urged the Federal Government to support the use of biometric technology in public places to check cybercrime activities in the country.

He noted that the use of fingerprint authentication for all educational processes within the university system will prevent cases of impersonation and campus insecurity.

According to the don, the biometric algorithm selects the distinctive characteristics of each fingerprint, encrypts this data, and saves it as a template.

“Students’ biometrics can easily be collected from the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board’s Central Admission Processing System (CAPS).

“We must understand the reality that integration of ICT within a Net-Centric computing environment for seamless operations is not contestable, except we settle for crawling at a jet age with serious implications of not catching up with our competitors and the rest of the world.

“Thus, crawling in the digital era when the rest of the world is moving at a very fast pace can never be an acceptable option,” he said.

Jimoh submitted that the only option left for the country was to wake up to the calls and find a way of eliminating or reducing the cybersecurity challenges associated with operations in the emerging Net-Centric computing environment.

This, he said, was achieved through the adoption of information security management ethics and standards coupled with the implementation of suitable cybersecurity techniques.

He noted that these techniques are capable of achieving reliable authentication, security risk mitigation, secured sharing of information and resources, intrusion-free operations, and integrity-proven cyber activities.

The don said sophisticated authentication methods should be encouraged to guarantee the security of both card and card-less financial transactions so as to prevent all associated financial frauds.

The don urged the government to double its efforts and provide funds for aggressive sensitization on the need for cultural adaptation to the emerging digital era.

He said that this sensitization must be done with specific attention to the use of the basic Nigerian languages.

“Organisations should hire experts in the core areas of information and cybersecurity with adequate training and retraining, given the dynamism of the discipline,” he said.