Galaxy Backbone, a federal government establishment, set up as a vehicle for distribution of ICT services to both the public and private sectors, has said that it stopped about 1.2 million cyber attacks in the process of the elections that held on February 25, 2023. This is according to a media report.
Speaking at a forum in Abuja, on Tuesday, the Managing Director of Galaxy Backbone, Muhammad Abubakar said the firm prevented nearly 200 cyber attacks on the day of the presidential and national assembly elections.
According to Abubakar: “On the election day alone, we were able to prevent more than 200 attacks, and the next day, the attacks geometrically escalated to around 1.2 million and all were blocked from our enterprises.”
He noted that a business continuity and cyberspace protection committee had been formed to guard and regulate digital activities while optimizing the GBB’s technical services.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has on several occasions, reiterated its commitment to protecting its high-tech equipment from possible cyber-attacks when electronic voting takes effect.
The Commission had stressed on the processes it went through to secure the electronic voting system from attacks. “Cyber-attacks and cybercrimes are global challenges and are not limited to, or peculiar to, Nigeria. The essence of the pilot is to understand the challenges of the system, plug loopholes, perfect the system, and deploy it for bigger elections,” it said before the election.
“It is the responsibility of the commission to constantly and continuously protect its systems through backups and migrations to more robust platforms.
INEC said the pilot the system allowed the Commission to learn from its challenges, and plug loopholes that might be exploited by desperate people.
