CYBERSECURITY JOBS ISN’T CYBERSECURITY JOBS IN NIGERIA
By: Emmanuel Simeon
Tags: Developer Stories, Information Security, Unemployment, Nigeria, Cybersecurity

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“We predict there will be 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity positions by 2021. The cybersecurity jobs forecasts have been unable to keep pace with the dramatic rise in cybercrime, which is predicted to cost the world $6 trillion annually by 2021, up from $3 trillion in 2015.” Source — Cybersecurity Ventures

But the harsh reality of this is that:

THERE ARE NO CYBERSECURITY JOBS IN NIGERIA, BUT THE SKILLS ABOUND

I came to this conclusion after a year of job searching for cybersecurity jobs in Nigeria.

Cybersecurity or Information Security could be such a great course of study but isn’t a great profession or skills on its own.

The technology space In Nigeria is developing and so are some skills set, and in life all developments are in phases, if you can recall there was a time in Nigeria, when the major players in the tech space were the earliest network engineers who were making millions of naira per job, of note, was that internet just became commercially available then and banks and other organizations wanted taking advantage of the internet to centralize their operations.

Then we moved to another phase, we got tired of consuming a lot of foreign software’s and it’s getting too expensive, the trend changed, we focused on software development, and you hear things like Africa Developers are World Class Developers, Brillance are evenly distributed and lot more, this category of developers covers both the Web and Enterprise Software Developers, currently we are still witnessing the days of developers in Nigeria.

Now let’s talking about Cybersecurity in Nigeria, three things I know for sure:

1. No major company in Nigeria is paying for security separately

2. The few cybersecurity firms in Nigeria aren’t making much money or either servicing much clients either and don’t need many hands.

3. The current security experts in companies today are those who had worked in other departments or served in other areas in the company and later developed there security skills and knowledge.

I was recently speaking to a C class executive of a Nigeria I.C.T firm and the topic was about my passion in computing and skills set and how I keep developing my skills in security pending the time I could find something to call a job in Nigeria definition (some office space you go to 5 times a week Monday — Friday, with a boss and at the end of the month you get paid a salary) and he gave me a shocker.

And he asked me a question: Who pays for security separately in Nigeria?

In his words and combining with my experience, when a network is been set up in an organization, for instance, it’s the job description of the network engineer and the networking team to keep the network secured, and there isn’t more to it, they are responsible for suggesting, recommending, buying, installing and configuring any networking security devices(firewall, IDS, IPS) that would be used, and from the ISP end, an additional level of security as a service is been offered.

The same thing goes for programming, web development and database administration, when you an expert in any of this areas or been given a job, the company or individual tasked with building the website, application or database are the same people responsible for the job of securing those assets.

And then the euphoria hit me, there aren’t Cybersecurity jobs in Nigeria that comes as Cybersecurity jobs.



You need to possess domain knowledge in a particular area such as “Networking”, “Programming”, “Database Administration” and the latest “Cloud Administration” first.

Then come second your skills or qualification in Cybersecurity which could be an added advantage and give you an edge over another as the current state of Cybersecurity services in Nigeria is paying for one and get security free.

While we keep waiting for the third phase of our technological transformation, am believing that by then as a Nation we would be having enough digital assets to be protected and Cybersecurity would be a job of its own.

To my fellow Cybersecurity/InfoSec Guys and Girls, I would keep building secure Web Application for now and fix web vulnerabilities.

I hope to one day seat in a Security Operation Center (SOC) as a SOC Analyst and sip some coffee, watching my Security Dashboard update and waiting for a Beep or alert from my IDS/IPS to prompt me into action.

Simeon Emmanuel

CISCO CCNA Cyber Ops