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Nigeria’s Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Professor Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, has called for a global approach to tackling the menace of cybercrime as the need for datafication takes the lead among global economies.
Pantami advocated the need for an international approach to cybersecurity as against the existing regional or national approach, noting that “with cloud computing and cloud devices, national or regional regulation of data could be less relevant because as obtained in many situations, data may not be domiciled within a sovereign nation, therefore, border restrictions do not apply and are not respected.” He was quoted in a Facebook post by his spokesperson, Uwa Sulaiman.
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While addressing the Forum of Technology Ministers at the Future Tech Forum in London this week, the Nigerian minister noted that “the need for the collection of data is increasing daily and will continue to do so at a significant pace.”
Data has grown in super folds in the last decade, the Nigerian minister said quoting various authorities while addressing his counterparts on ‘The Future Of The Internet: Trends And Opportunities’ inside the London Science Museum.
His worlds” According to research, from the dawn of civilization to the early 200s, only five exabytes of data was collected. Today however, approximately 2.5 exabytes of data is collected within 24 hours. By implication, the amount of data generated and collected within 48 hours today, is the same as that which was generated and collected over five thousand years before.
“Again, research by the International Data Corporation has indicated that in the next four years, 41.6 billion Internet of Things (IoT) devices could be connected and inter connected and these devices are expected to generated around 79.6 billion petabytes of data”
Going by these figures, Professor Pantami emphasized that datafication is on a significant rise and will continue to do so which is why there is the need for governments to prioritize the protection and judicious use of data. He noted that this motivated him to author The Datafication Of Society To Foster An Internet Economy.
“Datafication is inevitable. Therefore, we must place the same importance on cybersecurity especially considering that a new malware is released every 4.6 seconds globally to compromise the cyber space and inevitably, generated data. There is a clear indication that in the wake of the pandemic, the rate of cybercrime increased significantly due to an increased online presence. It is therefore necessary to give the same emphasis, priority and preference to the issue of cyber security”.
