ETHICAL HACKING AND CYBER SECURITY IN NIGERIAN TELECOMMUNICATION INDUSTRY

The issue of cyber security is one that has been discussed by many people in various perspectives, most coming at it from different sides than the others. Cyber-crimes have gone beyond conventional crimes and now have threatening ramifications to the national security of all countries, even to technologically developed countries as the United States. The illegal act may be targeted at a computer network or devices e.g., computer virus, denial of service attacks (DOS), malware (malicious code). However, ethical hacking has been used by various telecommunication companies to cover the loophole and this study is identifying the problems and providing an overview on the issues and the solutions. Cybersecurity through ethical hacking plays an important role in the ongoing development of telecommunication industry, as well as Internet services. Enhancing Cybersecurity and protecting critical information infrastructures are essential to each nation’s security and economic well-being (Odinma, 2013). Making the Internet safer (and protecting Internet users) has become integral to the development of new services as well as government policy. An ethical hacker is a computer and networking expert who systematically attempts to penetrate a computer system or telecommunication network on behalf of its owners for the purpose of finding security vulnerabilities that a malicious hacker could potentially exploit (Okonigene &amp; Adekanle, 20016). Ethical hackers use the same methods and techniques to test and bypass a system's defenses as their less-principled counterparts, but rather than taking advantage of any vulnerabilities found, they document them and provide actionable advice on how to fix them so the organization can improve its overall security (Laura, 2015). The purpose of ethical hacking is to evaluate the security of a network or system's infrastructure. It entails finding and attempting to exploit any vulnerabilities to determine whether unauthorized access or other malicious activities are possible. Vulnerabilities tend to be found in poor or improper system configuration, known and unknown hardware or software flaws, and operational weaknesses in process or technical countermeasures. One of the recent examples of ethical hacking occurred in the 2010, when the United States government used groups of experts called "red teams" to hack its own computer systems (Laura, 2015). It has become a sizable sub-industry within the information security market and has expanded to also cover the physical and human elements of an organization's defenses. A successful test doesn't necessarily mean a network or system is 100% secure, but it should be able to withstand automated attacks and unskilled hackers. The exceptional outbreak of cyber-crime in Nigeria in recent times was quite alarming, and the negative impact on the socio-economy of the country is highly disturbing. Over the past twenty years, immoral cyberspace users have continued to use the internet to commit crimes; this has evoked mixed feelings of admiration and fear in the general populace along with a growing unease about the state of cyber and personal security (Oliver, 2010). This phenomenon has seen sophisticated and extraordinary increase recently and has called for quick response in providing laws that would protect the cyber space and its users. Nigerian cyber criminals are daily devising new ways of perpetrating this form of crime and the existing methods of tracking these criminals are no longer suitable for dealing with their new tricks (Adebusuyi, 2018). The victims as well, show increasing naivety and gullibility at the prospects incited by these fraudsters. This paper seeks to give an overview of ethical hacking and cyber-security in Nigerian telecommunication industry, outline some challenges and proffer solutions. KEYWORDS: CYBERSECURITY, ETHICAL HACKING, TELECOMMUNICATION, CHALLENGES, INFRASTRUCTURES, VULNERABILITIES.