The Nigeria Computer Society has urged the Independent National Electoral Commission to prepare for cyberattacks after its result portal was attacked from Asia during the Ekiti and Osun States governorship polls.
The society said this during its press conference on its 2022 strategic review and 2023 information technology outlook.
It suggested a coalition of security incident response team for future elections in the country, adding that attempt to engage INEC on the matter has not yielded any fruit.
President, NCS, Prof. Adesina Sodiya, in a paper presentation said, “Recently, INEC result portal was attacked from Asia during Ekiti and Osun governorship polls and this made NCS to suggest a Coalition of Security Incident Response Team for future elections in Nigeria.
Since NCS has been seen and perceived by everyone as non-partisan and free of government influence, NCS is ready to assist INEC to use IT to solve the teething problems we are facing during our election. We have written to INEC several times, but no meaningful response was received from them. As we are going into election years, i.e., 2023, we release ourselves to assist INEC to be among international observers.”
In September, the Chairman of INEC, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, while delivering a keynote address at a conference of stakeholders on election result management, organised by Yiaga Africa, to launch the Election Result Analysis Dashboard report agenda, revealed that the commission’s result portal had been a victim of cyberattacks from hackers.
He said, “Another technical concern for us is the repeated attempts to break through our cyber security system for the portal. Our engineers reported several cyberattacks on the portal during the Ekiti and Osun governorship elections. Some of them are from as far as Asia. I am glad to note that all of them failed.
“However, while we are confident in the security solutions that we have deployed for IReV and all our web presence, we must remain vigilant and continue to strengthen our defences. We have tasked our engineers to do everything possible to fully protect the IReV and all our web resources.”
