IT-CRUISERS: Everything IT

In computer networking and cybersecurity, a firewall is a security system that typically establishes a barrier between a trusted network and an untrusted network, such as the Internet, thereby preventing unwanted malicious traffic. It allows or blocks traffic based on a defined set of security rules, and it is usually the first line of defence. In today’s cyberspace characterised by advancements in Artificial Intelligence and increasing cyber threats, humans have become an important component in the security equation and not just the technologies — the firewalls! The concept of a "Human Firewall" Human firewalls simply refer to individuals or employees of an organization who have relevant knowledge and consciousness regarding cyber safety and are consistently building the culture of cybersecurity in both work and personal digital life. These are people within an organisation who follow cyber security best practices and report any data breaches or suspicious online activity th...

Maintaining reliable and secure backups of data and systems is one of the most important functions of any organisational IT team, which also forms a critical component of an organisational IT disaster recovery and business continuity plan. Having reliable backups helps to ensure that a business can quickly recover and continue to operate in the event of any sort of disaster such as failure of active systems, cyber attack, human error or even natural disasters. On an individual level, people make effort to backup their personal data in case of loss of a device and to be able to regain access to their important personal data. This is achieved by simply restoring data from backups on a new device which is usually a seamless process and gets the user up and running, eliminating the pain of loosing important data. The question is what happens when these valuable “backup vaults” become the target for cybercriminals? Why do cybercriminals target backup systems/data, how can organisations and ...

The spate of cyber attacks has significantly remained on the increase, and there are no signs of it slowing down — not with the continued reliance of individuals, small businesses, educational institutions, and of course governments around the world on Cyberspace. This reliance has made cyberspace to generate a vast and unending pool of sensitive data and information which are of very high value, hence making it a gold mine and prime target for cyber criminals to exploit. If we examine this from the perspective of information technology versus the humans who generate, process and store/transmit the information, we can try to determine which aspect is the most vulnerable to the tactics and techniques of the cyber “Bad Actors’’. Over time it has been determined that the weak-link in the chain is the “end-user” side. To a considerable extent, the Information Technology security side has matured over the years and is constantly being developed. Several reports have attributed a very high p...

   According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), small businesses have become the engine of economic growth and social development across all countries, accounting for a staggering 70% of employment worldwide . Obviously, these small businesses rely heavily on the internet and other online platforms and resources, which form integral components and enabling tools for their transactions. This has become even more prevalent since the pandemic period. Regarding online safety, it is estimated that over 40% of these small businesses have experienced a cyber attack. The type of cyber attacks that are more commonly aimed at small businesses include Social Engineering attacks like Email Phishing and telephone phishing otherwise known as "vishing"  There are a few factors that make small businesses to be vulnerable to attacks. Cyber criminals assume that small businesses have weaker security measures in places, ...

It was a remarkable day for the future of cloud technology in Africa as Oracle launched the first cloud region (Cloud Data center) on African soil - In Johannesburg South Africa. This means users of cloud services especially within Africa can now be able to choose a location closer to them for hosting of their cloud resources and applications. Also regulatory requirements would be met such as the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation (NDPR). What is a cloud region/Data center? It is the actual, real-life geographic location where your public cloud resources are located, where your data resides physically. Some think of the cloud to be a hypothetical or intangible storage in the sky, but it is indeed a physical robust IT infrastructure consisting of server machines and high-speed network connectivity designed to provide secured access to a large number of users or subscribers. Currently, Oracle has about 39 cloud regions around the world. Google boasts of 29 regions, Amazon AWS 26 regions,...

The World's most popular Social Media platforms - Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger went down for over 6 hours on October 4th 2021. These super Social Media platforms are owned by one company - Facebook and run on same infrastructure. Reports has it that this 6 hour long outage saw $7 billion wiped from Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth as users flocked to alternative platforms. Image Source: https://see.news/users-report-issues-with-facebook-instagram-whats-app/ I observed the downtime here in Nigeria from around 16:55 GMT+1 when I could neither send or receive messages on WhatApp. Also I observed my Facebook news feed was not getting refreshed with new content. At first I thought the problem was with my mobile telecom data service, but realized I could access other websites on the internet. On making further checks online I saw a report from an online real-time outage monitoring website DownDetector that Facebook was down! There were numerous reports as well that th...

The Nigeria Apex bank - the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has announced plans to launch a digital currency called eNaira or Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) by October 1, 2021. The digital currency will be operated on the Hyperledger Fabric Blockchain which is an open source project that serves as a foundation for developing blockchain-based products, solutions and applications. It uses plug-and-play components that are aimed for use within private enterprises. Is CBDC similar to popular Cyrptos Such as Bitcoin? The answer is no, they are different in many ways: CBN can approve or override CBDC transactions since it is in control of the infrastructure, it a direct liability of the central bank and serves as the issuing authority. In contrast, crypto is private money with no central authority. The CBDC will be backed by law to become a legal tender, whereas the cryptos are not legal tender. Unlike cryptos that operate via blockchain networks in a decentralized way, a CBDC is a state...

Following recent policy on integration of mobile lines with the National Identity Number (NIN), the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) has ordered all Nigerians to link their National Identity Number (NIN) to their respective SIM cards or face termination of service from network providers. Image from  https://nimc.gov.ng/ Consequently, the major network providers in Nigeria (MTN, Glo, Airtel and 9mobile) has released easy and quick steps for subscribers to link their National Identity Number (NIN) to their mobile numbers, ranging from simple USSD codes to SMS and use of web portals. How Can I Retrieve My NIN? Simply dial *346# to retrieve your NIN number regardless of how long ago you did the registration with NIMC. I Do Not Have NIN, How Can I Register? Kindly walk into the any of the listed NIN enrollment centers closest to you – as listed on NIMC website https://nimc.gov.ng/nimc-enrolment-centres/ How to Link Your NIN to Your MTN Line   image from  https://www.mtn...

Digital Skills are no longer only for graduates of IT, Computer science and relates courses. In today's world if you do not have any form of digital skill you'll be left at a permanent disadvantage in the near future! School vector created by pch.vector - www.freepik.com Virtually every job or task today is either fully done with computers and software applications or aided by it. Therefore, employers are looking for persons with one form of digital skill or the other. Even smaller businesses out there make use of some form of digital platforms for their trading. Examples of Digital Skills Few years it was all about being computer literate, that is the basics of digital skills. But today, in addition to being computer literate you will need some digital skills to be relevant like the following: 1. Social media marketing skills ( E.g. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter marketing) 2. Digital marketing skills  (E.g. Email marketing) 3. Digital content creation (Graphic - vid...

Once again I bring to you online security tips; this time it is about the popularly used mobile messaging app  - WhatsApp.  Two-step verification ensures safety of the application and prevents intruders from taking over your account. Here are the steps to enable the two-step verification. Step 1: Open WhatsApp Settings. Step 2: Tap Account > Two-step verification. Step 3: Tap Enable. Step 4: Enter a six-digit PIN of your choice and confirm it. Step 5: Provide an email address you can access (Recommended) Step 6: Confirm the email address and tap Save or Done. You should see the final page as show below With this you have successfully enabled two-step verification on your WhatsApp account. Remember to keep your six-digit PIN safe and never disclose to anyone. Hackers can come by way of social engineering and trick you to release sensitive information like the six-digit PIN, beware of such. Thank you for reading and I hope you find this quite helpful. Stay safe!

You may have lost your mobile device, and for some reason could not retrieve your old phone number. It is important to note that after a long period of time you service provider could reassign the number to someone else, therefore there is need to update your online contact details accordingly. Designed by macrovector / Freepik What this means is you need to ensure your old mobile number is no longer linked to any of your online accounts and platforms. You can achieve this by updating your personal and contact information on all online platforms where you may have registered the old number, such as your bank accounts, Google account, Apple account, etc. For bank accounts kindly contact the customer service via phone call, visit their verified website or walk into nearby branch to update your details with your new number. Failure to effect these contact updates could lead to issues such as inability to receive One Time Password (OTP) notifications, SMS alerts and so on. These notifi...

With Google Drive cloud storage service you can backup WhatsApp media which includes chats, photos, videos, audio and documents. It is goodbye to data loss! The importance of performing this backup is if you change or lose your device you can always retrieve all your previous media files with ease. Google has recently announced a new agreement with WhatsApp regarding backup of WhatsApp chats and media on Google Drive which will allow users have extra storage different from their normal Google Drive storage quota. The announcement reads; "Due to a new agreement between WhatsApp and Google, WhatsApp backups will no longer count against Google Drive storage quota. However, any WhatsApp backups that have not been updated in more than a year will automatically be removed from storage. This policy will go into effect for all users on November 12, 2018 though some users may see the quota benefits earlier. To avoid the loss of any backups, we recommend that people manually back up...

In one of my previous blog posts INTERNET PENETRATION - Nigeria Top Three in Global Online Search , a research conducted by Google ranked Nigeria among the top three countries of the world that spend quality time online in search of various goods and service. The latest development is Google has announced Nigeria to be the first on the African continent to receive Google's free public Wi-Fi service via the Google Station initiative - a program to provide high quality, high-speed Wi-Fi hotspots in Nigeria. Google Station initiative is already live in five countries globally and will connect millions of users via 200 Wi-Fi hotspots spread across five cities in Nigeria within one year. The Internet connectivity will ride on a partner Fiber Optic infrastructure to provide Wi-Fi hotspots at public places such as colleges, shopping malls, markets and bus stations in over 200 locations in five cities across Nigeria by the end of 2019.

Google Map is a simple but powerful tool. You can use it to locate places around you such as Cinemas, Restaurants, Hospitals, etc. , find detailed directions from one part of town to another or from one city to another, as well as estimate distances and travel times. Here's how to find particular locations and discover places of interest. STEP 1:   Open the Google Maps app on your mobile device or visit https://maps.google.com on your internet browser. Once opened it should load the map of your current location. If not, you will be prompted to enable location service on your device, tap ok to enable and continue. STEP 2: Type in the name of the location you wish to search for in the search bar, for instance Port-Harcourt . You can use Google's voice input to speak the name of the location instead of typing it. The map of the location you searched will be displayed.  STEP 3:   You can then search for places within the location by using relevant keywords . e....

Following recent Facebook data privacy issues, Twitter has taken proactive steps by notifying users of their current privacy settings, acknowledging the fact that current default settings allows them to share certain users' private information with business partners. Users are encouraged to turn off the sharing if not desired. This blog post will guide you through the steps to check and adjust these settings to prevent your data from being shared by Twitter. Step 1: From your Twitter mobile app main menu, go To "Settings and privacy" Step 2: Go to "Privacy and safety" Step 3: Go to "Personalization and data"  Step 4: Uncheck "Share your data with Twitter's business partners" Step 5: If you decide to disable all settings related to personal data, simply toggle the button at top right corner. If logged on via web browser simply go to Profile and settings > Privacy and Security > Personalization and ...

Few weeks ago a data privacy scandal was in the news which involved Facebook and a political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. User information of over 87 million Facebook users where either exposed by Facebook to the consulting firm or the firm "inappropriately" obtained the data, beginning from year 2014. Following this incident Facebook has come up with some security settings that can help users evaluate third party apps already connected to their accounts. There are several third party apps on Facebook which by way of design accesses user information and can possibly share such information illegally. Therefore Facebook has released a statement advising users to review these settings and see exactly the apps currently connected to users accounts from the time the user joined Facebook till date. The statement reads "We understand the importance of keeping your data safe, and we are making it easier for you to control the which apps you share information wi...

Over the years Internet penetration has greatly improved across the developing countries of the world especially Nigeria which now has over 92 million internet users. Finding information online has become a common practice as people comfortably search for information using web search engines, especially Google  and get relevant search results that answers their questions and further provides them insight to related articles, events, photos, news and even map locations. Thanks to Google Map Local Guides like myself who diligently contribute to improve the map by sharing knowledge of the local environment. The mobile internet revolution has made it possible for people even in the rural areas to have access to internet on their mobile devices. During my University days, precisely in the year 2008, I carried out a questionnaire research on the topic: "How Effectively Do You Utilize Your Mobile Phones For Internet Access", the responses were amazing as people were alrea...

20 WORST PASSWORDS OF YEAR 2017 Just like the keys to your houses or cars, do you know your “online keys” are even more important? These online keys are simply your passwords and passphrases used to login to your personal or workplace accounts such as computer logons, online portals, internet banking platforms as well as the social media platforms. Image from Pixabay So how conscious are you concerning your passwords and how strong they are? Year 2017 witnessed a lot of online hack cases across the world, yet people still use passwords like '123456', “password”, “abcde”, and so on. According to a research carried out by SplashData ; They examined more than 5 million passwords that were leaked in 2017. Taking the top two spots for the fourth consecutive year are the old standbys, "123456" and "password." A number of variations of each, such as "123456789" and "passw0rd" also made the list. Here are the top 20 worst passwor...