Oluwadamilare (Eyinimofeoluwa) Odusami

THE ROLE OF CYBERSECURITY IN STRENGHTENING NATIONAL SECURITY

by: Odusami, Oluwadamilare Eyinimofeoluwa.

National Security, like we all know, is the first call of duty to every sitting government in all parts and regions of the world. Governmental agencies and parastatals play a crucial role in defending its citizens against all forms of threats but sadly this enforcement is not as effective as it ought to be, especially in African.

The cyber world now plays a crucial role in all affairs of national economy, irrespective of sector or industry. With this in mind, we have to adapt to the various changes in communication, service delivery, device management and even policies that we will have to use in making our works and lives easy and less demanding.

The most important asset to any individual is his data, especially his personal identifiable information, likewise the most important asset to a country is her data especially classified documents that could be a threat if leaked to enemies or potential threat actors. National data and records, especially from its citizens and parastatals should be kept with high level of confidentiality and integrity, due to the fact that this information are valuable and could be used to exploit any nation of her resources and political will. For this reason, cybersecurity measures must be created and implemented as realistic as possible in order to address such threats and to ensure that the nation is always ready to curtail and control every possible risk or attack.

Risk and threats occur typically in every nation and they have to be controlled to the barest minimum even if they cannot be totally prevented/eradicated. In Nations all over the world, we face various threats and risks which may be in form of terrorism, global warming, economic failure, false information or fake news, national cyber breaches and even infectious disease outbreaks. The role Cybersecurity procedures and technologies play in bridging noticeable gaps in security as well as assisting national security agencies to curtail crime and ensure economic availability and development can therefore not be overemphasized.

Below are some of the roles Cybersecurity plays in promoting national security;

1. Assurance of Proper Incident Response: Cybersecurity technologies could be instrumental to giving first hand support to various forms of attacks. This Support could be given by a first responder from a certain type of security operation center built to handle certain scenarios of attacks. This could be practiced across various industries, sectors and agencies to improve first hand response and guidance in the case of a security breach. In the case of computing and networking infrastructure, a proper intrusion detection system or incident response system can be adopted to secure national infrastructures;
2. Confidentiality of Classified Documentation: Confidentiality which is one of the triads of cybersecurity is pivotal to securing national assets, especially those national assets and industries that have very detailed information and records of various aspects of the economy, which when leaked or accessed by unauthorized parties could cause severe damage to the nation;

• Alignment with International Standards: International Standards such as the EU-GDPR, HIPPAA, COBIT, PCI-DSS, various NIST publications and many other standards are adopted in ensuring that critical business, health, educational, financial and National infrastructures are built with some level of standards that will ensure that this components of the economy are always in alignment with some basic security protocols and features;

1. Proper Education and Awareness in the Public Service and among Civilian Populace: The Public Service which covers some arms of the civil service, military, paramilitary must be well informed and educated on the right steps to take to protect themselves and mitigate any threat that may come their way in the course of carrying out their duties. In a similar way, when the citizens in various sectors of the economy are well groomed, there will be less compromise by threat actors and they will know how to handle and report such incidents. Awareness, such as this, goes a long way in strengthening national security because when the people are more cyber resilient, it is easier for a nation to implement controls and allow automated technology play its part well in preventing cyber-attacks;
2. Auditing of National Defenses in Relation to IT Infrastructure and Procedures: Good cyber security practices encourages auditing to be done very often to determine the nation’s security posture and to determine if it will be able to survive any attack launched against it by threat actors. Auditing would usually be done in various ways to make sure no loopholes exist in any form of the system. These auditing could also help ensure all security professionals are always on their toes to ensure maximum security posture and reduce the attack surface of any system;
3. Promoting Economic Stability and Preparing Sectors for Various Forms of Attacks: Economic assets cannot be hundred percent secured, but cybersecurity practices would help to ensure that these assets are critically monitored, updated and maintained at specified intervals to improve its perimeter security. In addition, for instance, through regular backups, cybersecurity professionals can always retrieve their data if lost or stolen by ransomware. This will ensure that the organization does not totally shut down for whatever reason, and this is the job of a business continuity plan in some sectors;

• Equipping Defense Bodies to Respond and Practice Modern Cyberwarfare Strategies: The Cold war has now gone digital. Every nation should, therefore, follow-up with the trend as the new power is from the amount of information a country has. In order to protect national intellectual properties, documentations, investigations and top secrets, it is expected that all nations should be prepared to defend itself against espionage and threats that could occur from nations intending to compromise them. Cybersecurity practices and technologies like encryption, backups, firewall configurations and network segmentations can be employed to get this done;
• Intelligence Gathering: Cyber security tools can be sourced by professionals to get liable intel about terrorist organizations, cybercriminals and crime patterns in various regions of a country. This intelligence will aid law enforcement agencies and military bodies to fight crime and defeat insurgencies because they have first-hand viable and reliable intel.

1. Investigation of Cybercrimes and Cyber-attacks to Critical Infrastructure (Digital-Forensics): Cyber-crimes have come to stay, but we can mitigate it and uncover who does these crimes, what tools and approaches they use and why these crimes occur through forensic tools and various logs that may have occurred at certain time when the event happened.

Cybersecurity is robust and should be adopted to solve far more problems than those mentioned above in a nation. The modern need for this sector to grow is very crucial and should always be put into consideration all the time considering the growth rate of I.O.T and various internet related services coming into nations across the world.