SON moves to save N200bn annual loss to hackers, cyber crimes

Worried over the huge financial losses to cyber crimes and hackers, the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) has expressed its commitment to standardise the nation’s Information Technology (IT) sector.

According to reports, Nigeria loses over N200 billion on an annual basis to cyber crimes, a figure described as ‘unacceptable’ by the standards body while restating its commitment to sanitise the IT industry.

The Director-General and Chief Executive,  Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), Mallam Farouk Salim, gave the assurance during a recent validation exercise for the ISO 27001 Information Security Management Systems Course organised by the SON  in Abuja and Lagos.

According to the statement issued to newsmen after the exercise in Lagos, SON said that it is committed to sanitising the IT industry through training and the implementation of the International Organisation for Standardisation’s (ISO) Standards.

Salim, who was represented by the Director Training Services Engr. Timothy Abner revealed that the validation of the ISO 27001 ISMS course is part of the organisation’s effort to guarantee confidence in its ability to offer full training and certification packages to the Nigerian IT Industry.

 He said the validation course would amongst others provide the organisation with a holistic and strategic training package, when deployed would address standardisation and regulatory deficits in the Information Technology sector, in a bid to boost reliability and efficiency in the sector of the nation’s economy especially through the regulatory agencies and the professional bodies.

The SON boss indicated further that the training would also ensure that SON can commence offering ISO 27001 Information Security Management Systems Courses for institutions and businesses that wish to secure their information away from hackers and other cybersecurity threats.

Salim was quoted as saying, “The training will also increase SON’s pool of qualified auditors in pursuant of the execution of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between SON and the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA),  the nation’s foremost supervisory body for Information Technology.”

“At the end of the capacity building training, it is expected that the training package developed will be implemented successfully in the training. SON has scheduled for staff of the Nigerian Communications Satellite Limited (NIGCOMSAT) to be facilitated by the SON Training Services (STS) Directorate in the coming week,” he said.

To further achieve these objectives, the SON trainees who participated in the validation were drawn from the Policy, Research and Statistics (PRS) Directorate, and the Information Technology Departments of SON.

The SON Training Services Directorate also within this period of the validation exercise for ISO 27001, announced the release of the year 2022 training programmes and the commencement of the circulation of enrolment forms to the general public for various courses scheduled for the year.

The courses according to the schedule released on its website are categorised into Management System Courses and Technical courses (by sector) commencing from January all through to December 2022 with highly rated courses open to both the public and the private sector.