About 5 million scam emails go out of Nigeria yearly, Galaxy Backbone (GBB), has said.
The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Galaxy Backbone, Prof. Muhammed Abubakar disclosed this at a two-day training workshop the company organized for journalists under the auspices of the Nigerian Information Technology Reporters Association (NITRA) in Abuja.
According to Abubakar, the increase in the number of scam emails that go out of Nigeria yearly is a result of an increase in connectivity and the number of internet users in the country.
The GBB boss, who was represented by the senior manager of the company, Mr. Ifedayo Balogun, expressed worry over the increasing spate of cyberattacks in Nigeria and advised internet users to take precautionary steps to ward off the scammers.
‘’Five million scam emails go out of Nigeria every year. We don’t have information on inbound traffic because they come through a separate medium, through the transatlantic medium and there are about four of them that carry internet traffic.
‘’Nigeria Internet Exchange can give a record of this traffic coming into the country and part of the challenges that we had was that we are not supposed to advertise ourselves. But now things are changing because of the service that we are providing to both the private and the public sectors. We are coming out.
Some of the services we offer are free to the public and some are not free because this equipment is bought from third parties.
The two-day capacity building workshop which was organized by the company said he said it was intended not to only equip the journalists with the skills required to professionally report the IT world, but to also advance cyber security awareness among vulnerable Nigerians.
Galaxy Backbone is the information technology and shared services provider of the Federal Government of Nigeria.
He said the partnership between the company and the media was a mutually beneficial one, as it helps the GBB push its “developmental information, especially on Nigeria’s digital economy drive to the public”.
“You have spent some days here and I’m sure you already know some of the things we do and the services we provide, and I can also see a lot of knowledge sharing and transfer, the questions and the answers provided.
“I must say thank you very much for your attention and it is believed that this will certainly not be the end of our relationship and partnership as it is just the beginning”, he said.
In his vote of thanks, the President, NITRA, Abuja Chapter, Mr. Blessing Olaifa thanked the GBB MD and the wonderful staff for the rare opportunity to be trained.
He said the training exposed other statutory responsibilities and achievements of GBB which were hitherto hidden because of inadequate publicity, therefore, urged the management of GBB to do more in that regard.
“There is no training in this digital era in ICT that is little, especially from the quantum of knowledge acquisition that has been impacted on us the journalists.
“For instance, some of the updated modules taught were eye-openers and we are happy about it.
“We have also been made to know other statutory responsibilities which we initially taught was the purview of other agencies.
“I will appeal that there is a need for more publicity on the side of GBB, especially on the unique and critical services that they are rendering especially in actualizing the vision and mission of the federal government digital economy road map.
“We were impressed to know what the agency does to stop and mitigate attacks on cyberspace”, he said.
2DAY Training by GBB.
The MD, GBB, Prof. Mohammed Abubakar, represented by the Senior Manager in the Company, Mr. Ifedayo Balogun:
Galaxy Backbone needs to provide the right information to the public, MDAs, and the private sector, so we need you the media to help us push this developmental information, especially on Nigeria’s digital economy drive to the public and for GBB
We see that as a win-win situation or as a marriage because inputs determine the output.
You have spent some days here and I’m sure that you people already know some of the things that we do and the services that we provide and I can see that a lot of knowledge sharing and transfer and I’m surprised by the number of questions that were asked here today and I’m happy that answers were provided by my colleagues today.
I must say thank you very much for your attention and it is believed that this will certainly not be end of our relationship and partnership as it is just the beginning and we at GBB we have our corporate policy.
We have about 3 officers in Abuja where you can come in and ask whatever information you are looking you will …get answers to it because we know that will create awareness about GBB and the Federal Government through the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy and …as a whole and we are all children of the government and we must make sure that we represent our parents…we hope that we will see ourselves more often in the future
Mr. Blessing Olaifa:
we want to thank GBB for this opportunity to have so much in these two days. We are happy that the MD approved our letter and we have seen GBB as working as a team with all the resource person and supporting that were here through this 2day training. There is no training in this digital era in ICT that is little, especially from the quantum of knowledge acquisition that has been impacted on we journalists.
For instance, some of the updated modules taught we eye opener and we are happy about all this.
We have also been made to know other statutory responsibilities which we initially taught were the purview of other agencies. I will appeal that there is a need for more publicity on the side of GBB, especially on the unique and critical services that they are rendering especially actualizing the vision and mission of the federal government digital economy road map.
We were impressed to know what the agency especially to stop and mitigate attacks on cyberspace and then.
Engr. Garba Balarabe/Dept of Research, Digital Innovation, and Skills Devpt:
All our services are available to the public we have 30 bouquets of services that are available to the public and they are 6 categorizations, they are services that delivered via fiber backbone through ELT, Visat, and Microwave etc and then we have productivity services and these services help our customers in the process of doing your support to work they make faster more efficient and even to cut cost of operation.
Productivity services are services that help in the process of doing your work they help and help you get faster and more efficient and even cut costs like sharing mail and communication services and pass data fast memos retrieving information etc etc
On affordability: Our prices are very competitive we do competitive analyses with others and some of them we benchmark lower because we are a government-owned company and not an agency we are however structured in such a way that we don’t operate like a company because in IT world if we operate like an agency there are some challenges and because of that we are structured like a company so that we are agile efficient and can compete globally our standards and processes are globally benchmarked against the best players in the industry…
On security bouquet…on kidnapping etc what we do as in the whole world IT is an enabler we come and support you to do your job very well we are working with all the security agencies in the country but it is not something that you can see.
We provide them with an enabling environment for them to work faster and I can assure you that all the security outfits in Nigeria are on our network we provide certain services for them but those services are peculiar to their demand and request, and we cannot suggest them.
For instance, they have a joint security operating network when the joint security center was established in 2014 it was GBB that helped them to deploy it we sell the idea to them and they bought it and there are a lot of other things that we are doing and like I said they are the people that will say can you come and do for us.
On the 5 million scam emails that go out of Nigeria yearly?
…we don’t have information on inbound traffic that comes through separate mediums through the transatlantic medium and there are about 4 of them that carry internet traffic…Nigeria Internet Exchange can give you the traffic coming into the country and part of the challenges that we had was that we are not supposed to advertise ourselves, but now things are changing because of the service that we are providing to both the private and the public sectors we are coming out.
Some of the services are free to the public and some are not free because this equipment is bought from third parties.
Other service proposition?
we have a solid security proposition…..and besides that, we are governed by the global best practice in the industry and we are the first government company to be ISMS SMS certified. These two are the global best practices that benchmark and supervise your operations so these are frameworks that we adopted like the British Standard Organisation they provide you with that framework and you adopt them and take everything hook line and sinker starting from your objective to your operating procedure is all defined by those international bodies that is why when you go to some organizations you will ISO 20,000, 2007, BSI and so we have some of those standards.
We are ISMS SMS.
The ISMS standard is Information Service Management System (ISMS), it is a global body that defines how you operate what you do and what you cannot do and we are audited every year by them.
If we fail to meet their standards they will withdraw our certification and without that certification, there are certain services that you cannot render or provide.
How many subscribers do you have…As I said we have over 411 MDAs on our network giving them different services and out outside of this we are also providing a lot and right now don’t have that information.
On 5G readiness and how prepared is GBB to key into that technology
There is a lot of misunderstanding about 5G, this technology is just a medium. For instance, let me give you a background, we started from 1G, which is like one lane highway, 2G is two lanes, 3G is three lanes, 4G is four lanes and 5G is five lanes and what 5G does for you is the ability to carry traffic from point A to B that is larger volumes of traffic and faster.
However, the best medium of communication is through fiber because when you are communicating with fiber you operating at the speed of light. The 5G is mobile communication, what GBB offers through the fiber backbone is about a thousand times faster than the 5G. The 5G is limited and is a protocol in mobile communications.
The fiber still remains the fastest and the best medium of communication.
