The board and management of Cybersafe Foundation, a cybersecurity awareness creator has charged Journalists, especially those who report the Information and Communications Technology sector in Nigeria to leverage their expertise to make it believes is good money from reporting cybersecurity.
At a one-day training on cybersecurity it organised for members of the Nigeria Information Technology Reporter Association (NITRA), the Non-Governmental Organization on a mission to facilitate pockets of changes that ensure a safer internet for everyone with digital access in Africa, tasked journalists to have a mindset reset from passive reporting to active reporting.
For Dr Obadare Peter Adewale, a board member of Cybersafe Foundation and Co-Founder at Digital Encode, a lot of money is available for the journalist, who report cybersecurity. But it is importance for such a journalist to display three dimensions competence of cybersecurity reporting.
These three competence, according to him are cognitive competence by having theoretical knowledge; functional competence by having the practical skills and social competence by having behavioral and good attitude.
“In other climes, journalists make a lot of money reporting cybersecurity. That cannot be said of the Nigerian journalist. It is my hope that after leaving the training today, you will have a mindset reset and begin to work towards making money with your skills,” he said at the #NoGoFallMaga training held in Lagos.
He highlighted top 26 cybersecurity journalists and reporters to follow that will inspire the average Nigerian journalist who report cybersecurity.
While urging the journalists to keep learning, Dr. Peter argued that despite the harsh working environment, journalists in Nigeria still, have no excuses not to be reckoned with. Rather, they should continually up their skills and compete favourably among their global peers.
Meanwhile, the cybersecurity training for NITRA members was organized to look at ways to create more awareness on the dangers of cyber threats and attacks, and how to avoid them.
The resource persons include Mrs Favour Femi- Oyewole, Group Chief Information Security Officer, Access Bank, Abumere Igboa, Chief Information Security Officer, Stanbic IBTC, Dr Obadare Peter Adewale, Chief Visionary Officer and Co_Founder at Digital Encode, Confidence Staveley, Cybersafe Foundation and Bharat Soni, Chief Information and Security officer at GTB Limited.
The experts, in their various presentations warn that cybersecurity threats and attacks are still very much with us, warning that the phenomenon could just be the next pandemic. They warned that corporate bodies, government and individuals refusing to create barricades and walls for their platforms, digital tools and applications against cyber-attacks risk losing a fortune.
Delivery her training manure, the Founder of Cybersafe Foundation, Mrs. Confidence Staveley, argued that cybersecurity attacks are mainly driven by emotions, desire, fear, greed, urgency, panic, excitement, trust and curiosity.
She noted that what cybercriminals mostly want is identity, money, sensitive information and online account. Thus, they use all tactics to deceive people.
While describing phishing as one of the tactics being used by the cyber attackers, Mrs. Confidence highlighted some of the measures to identify phishing to include senders email domain address, generic and unfamiliar greeting, presence of poorly written grammar and spelling mistakes, presence of suspicious links, presence of suspicious attachments and the use of fear, urgency, outrageous claims and unusual requests.
