NIGERIA has emerged fourth in the 2020 Africa regional Global Cybercrime Index (GCI) assessment in which Mauritius, Tanzania and Ghana top. Egypt and Tunisia are ahead of Nigeria except that the report classifies them under Arab states.
GCI is an initiative of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations specialised agency for information and Communication Technology (ICT).
It was launched in 2015 to measure the commitment of 193 ITU member states to cybersecurity to help them identify areas of improvement and encourage countries to take action, through raising awareness.
According to the 2020 survey released yesterday, Nigeria polled a total of 84.76 points across five focal areas to take the fourth position in Africa and 47th globally.
Detailed analysis of the 172-page report identifies legal measures as the country’s area of relative strength while capacity development is its area of potential growth. The other three areas assessed are organisational, technical and cooperative measures. The country picks the highest points (20) in legal measure and the least score (12.21) in capacity development.
Kenya, Benin and Rwanda come immediately after Nigeria in the rating while South Africa takes eighth position on the Africa index.
Mauritius, which leads Africa, shared 17th position with Norway at 96.89 per cent. Tanzania, which ranks 37th, has 90.58 points to pick the second position on the Africa regional table while Ghana comes third in Africa and 43rd on the global list with 86.69 per cent.
The United States sits atop the index with 100 points, showing 100 per cent performance across all areas of assessment. The United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia tie in second position having picked 99.54 points. Many of the countries assessed tie, hence Nigeria is 55th on the country-by-country count.
Micronesia, Vatican and Yemen sit on the bottom of the table. The three countries have no data, hence they are not evaluated.
In Africa, 29 countries have data protection legislation while four in the process with drafted copies as against 11 that are yet to commence the process of enacting such laws. Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) has the best record in data protection legislation with all the nine-member states instituting legal framework in the area. Europe, where 45 countries have legislation on data protection as against one that does not, emerges comes next to CIS.
The report says data protection legislation may take the form of regulation that could, for example, compel an organisation to disclose a cybersecurity breach or establish yearly audit requirements.
“On the surface, privacy advocates may note that a significant number of countries that already have data protection and privacy regulations in place have worked to update them. In addition, 133 countries have signed protection and privacy regulations into law, 15 are in the drafting process, and 46 have no regulation in place. Many countries with existing regulations have made updates to their legislation to reflect new agreements and norms. Since the last iteration, more countries have implemented measures requiring breach notifications. In this edition, 102 countries have introduced data breach and incident notification requirements in legislation and policies,” the report summary notes.
Africa also scores low in the breach notification measure; 24 countries compared with 20 have no measures in place. Again, Europe scores high with 39 countries, as against seven with none, reporting the presence of cybersecurity breach notification measures.
The global community has improved in combating identity theft. Overall, 97 countries have made laws in this regard while 17 are in the legislative process just as 80 are yet to make any move.
Director of the ITU’s Telecommunication Development Bureau, Doreen Bogdan-Martin, says “this snapshot of the world’s commitment to cybersecurity is just a starting point for further discussions, interventions, and strides towards achieving global, regional and national cyber safety.
According to the report, about 64 per cent of countries have adopted a national cybersecurity strategy (NCS) by the end of 2020 while more than 70 per cent conducted cybersecurity awareness campaigns compared to 58 per cent and 66 per cent in 2018 and 2019 respectively.
Despite notable improvements, gaps in cyber capacity persist, according to ITU. The GCI revealed that many countries and regions lag in key areas.
