NiRA, EFCC sign MoU to collaborate on cyber security

[FILES] EFCC Chairman, Abdulrasheed Bawa.
Photo: CORRUPTIONREPORTER

The Nigerian Internet Registration Association (NIRA), the registry for .ng Internet domain name and responsible for maintaining the database of the registered country’s code Top Level domain, has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to provide cyber security training for personnel of the EFCC and other national security organisations.

The Executive Chairman of the EFCC, Abdulrasheed Bawa, speaking during the ceremony between the EFCC and NIRA led by its President, Muhammed Rudman, at the EFCC Head Office, Abuja, reiterated the resolve of the commission to build the capacity of the personnel to effectively combat emerging cyber threats.

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

“We are very proud to collaborate with you because we realised that part of our mandate is collaboration. We need relevant stakeholders whether in the government or private sector to achieve our mandate.”

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

“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.

Rudman, while providing insights into the goals of NiRA, said the MoU was to strengthen collaboration between the 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 cyber security issues in terms of websites, based on the crimes perpetrated by end users,” he revealed.

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.