As the world celebrates Cybersecurity Awareness Month,  this October,  stakeholders in the Nigerian cyber space have made a strong case for an Integrated Identity Management System, ‘The Nigerian Identity’, that  will allow international passport, phone number,  and Bank Verification Number (BVN), belonging to one individual,  grafted onto one composite interconnected file for easy detection and tracking of cybercrime  perpetrators.

 

 

They also called for a regular update of regulatory guidelines and improved collaboration between the financial sector regulators, industry operators and Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System Plc (NIBSS), to effectively manage emerging risks and achieve a secured digital ecosystem that facilitates safer transaction processing and customer experience.

 

 

This forms part of the submission of participants at the Information Security Society of Africa – Nigeria (ISSAN) Cybersecurity Roundtable with the theme: Re-Thinking Corporate Governance Rules on Money Transfers held in Lagos recently.

 

 

The Stakeholders comprised representatives from Deposit Money Banks, FinTechs, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), NIBBS, Internet Service Providers (Huawei), Tech Companies, Cybersecurity companies, Legal Practitioners, and the media.

 

 

In a communique released at the end of the forum, the stakeholders also stressed the  urgent need to create effective blacklists of criminals in the financial sector so that when they have committed any infraction anywhere within the industry, they should be blacklisted industry wide.

 

 

The participants identified human factor as the most critical element of a cybercrime, stressing that staff recruitment and customer on-boarding should be done with greater and continuing care and concern. They raised concerns on non-compliance to Tier 1 account transactions limits, urging operators to review and improve their respective security architectures as well as ensure the implementation of the existing regulations by the industry operators. Thus, the need for a stronger regulatory attention for FinTechs was canvassed especially in relation to enforcing the limits for Tier 1 accounts.

 

 

Other highlights of the ISSAN Roundtable include the need for the regulators to encourage and reward whistleblowers and sanction wrong information; create a platform to generate a connectivity graph for every email a customer provides for account opening to serve as a red flag; address the slow pace of action in investigating funds transferred to wrong account and a more robust regulatory and legal framework for money transfer, including ethical guidelines.

 

 

They further urged banks to make extra effort to build trust in customers’ minds; improve data protection; emphasize financial literacy for financial inclusivity; exert more effort in educating their customers on the workings of the financial system and enhance security of their Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)

 

 

In his keynote address, Director, Payment System Management, CBN, Musa Jimoh, commended the efforts of ISSAN in promoting a safer cyber space for financial transactions in the county, stressing that it is the responsibility of all stakeholders to ensure a robust payment ecosystem and a sound regulatory regime as the apex bank cannot do it alone. He further emphasized that banks and FinTechs should put adequate measures in place to protect their customers, stressing that it was the only way to embrace and trust the payment system.

 

 

Earlier in his welcome address, ISSAN President, Dr David Isiavwe, stressed the need for industry operators, law enforcement agencies and financial sector regulators to ensure they are steps ahead of the activities of cybercriminals.

 

 

“The cybersecurity space is constantly evolving. As the cybercriminals do not sleep or relent, operators and regulators have a duty to not also sleep. The protection of the cyberspace is the responsibility of all stakeholders.

 

 

“The increasing deployment of technology to optimize and ease financial transactions has not only revolutionized the payment space, but it has also broadened the attack surface for cybercrime. Thus, it has only become necessary that guidelines and principles that provide safety to these systems are continuously adopted locally and internationally as cyber-attacks are no more a matter of “if”, but “when” they will occur,” he added.

 

 

Isiavwe, who is also the Chief Compliance Officer of Ecobank Nigeria, noted that FinTechs have a critical role to play in the future of financial services, noting that the more they innovate, the more they need to automate the attendant controls and ensure that they are strictly monitored.