NiRA to train EFCC officials on cybersecurity

The Nigerian Internet Registration Association (NiRA) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to provide cybersecurity training for the personnel of the anti-graft agency and other national security organizations.

Speaking during the MoU signing ceremony at the EFCC Head Office in Abuja the Executive Chairman of the EFCC, Abdulrasheed Bawa, reiterated the resolve of the Commission to build the capacity of the personnel to effectively combat the emerging trends in cybersecurity.

According to Bawa, the MoU would further boost the understanding of his personnel on the modern trends in cyberspace and assist the Commission’s investigations.

The EFCC boss, while expressing delight over the collaboration, said that the EFCC had a well-equipped Academy to sustain the training.

• “We are very proud to collaborate with you because we realize that part of our mandate is collaboration. We need relevant stakeholders whether in the government or private sector to achieve our mandate”.
• “I find this MoU very appealing. I accept your collaboration and we are ready to start as soon as possible. We have a well-equipped Academy to carry out this training and I advise that the training is not only onsite but also online so that many people can join, and even other agencies can benefit from this using the same platform,” he added.

Earlier, the President of NIRA, Muhammed Rudman while providing some insight into the goals of NiRA, said that the purpose of the MoU was to strengthen collaboration between his Association and the EFCC. According to him, there was a huge gap between NIRA and law enforcement agencies, which needed to be bridged.

• “We have law enforcement agencies locking up Registrars when there are cybersecurity issues in terms of websites, based on the crimes perpetrated by end users. So, to protect our Registrars from having challenges with law enforcement, we identify EFCC as the right partner to provide capacity building to address these gaps in terms of cybersecurity awareness and general knowledge of ICT,” he said.

He added that when the MoU is fully implemented it would benefit not only the EFCC but other agencies as well.

NiRA is the registry for .ng, Nigeria’s Internet Domain Names and it is responsible for maintaining the database of names registered in the .ng country code Top Level Domain.