Nigeria says on blue alert for cyber attacks

Nigeria is already on blue alert for cyber attacks coming from any part of the world, the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) said Thursday.

Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation, has begun the use of satellite to monitor the country's websites to repel any form of attacks by cyber hackers, the agency, laden with the responsibility to monitor attacks that are coming from different continents, said in a statement.

According to the statement, sectoral satellite has been set up and this is used to monitor various attacks coming from all over the world, especially as it concerns the country.

"One of the things the satellite does is to monitor several attacks coming from different geo-political globes, and once the attack is organized, it is seen, it is alerted," the statement said.

Part of NITDA's objective is to block targets or blacklist affected websites against future attacks, secure the nation's networks through its software testing center, where it ensures safety of software being brought into the country, while it also trains network administrators of organizations against cyber threat.

"Once we have any attack coming to Nigeria, we alert the agency concerned, either on the website, bank or any of the sectoral industries. If their IP had been defamed, we try to blacklist the Internet Protocal address to ensure that they will not attack the second time," it added. Endit