NITDA plans to add DNS security to government cyber assessments, as Guardian reported a September average of 5,740 weekly cyberattacks per Nigerian organization, up 109% year over year.
Guardian attributed the Nigeria figure to Check Point data. Check Point's September report put the global average at 2,803 attacks per organization each week, a 48% annual increase. A Check Point-authored June release listed Nigeria at 4,361 weekly attacks per organization, compared with a global average of 2,270; that June measure was cited during the webinar.
BusinessDay and Nairametrics reported that NITDA Director General Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, represented by an agency official at the NiRA webinar, said the agency intended to add DNS security to assessments of ministries, departments and agencies and encourage signing government .gov.ng domains. The reported remarks described an intention rather than an enacted government requirement.
BusinessDay separately reported, citing NiRA's July report, that 15 of 164 accredited registrars had DNSSEC-enabled domain management.
DNS maps a human-readable domain name to a numerical address computers use when connecting to a service. Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) add cryptographic signatures to DNS records, allowing configured resolvers to check a record's source and whether it has been altered. The Internet Engineering Task Force's RFC 4033 describes DNSSEC as offering authenticity and integrity checks, but no traffic confidentiality or defense against denial-of-service attacks. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) also says configuration errors can prevent users from reaching legitimate domains. DNSSEC is designed to verify DNS responses rather than secure all activity on a website.
NiRA says registrars handle services such as registration and renewal between registrants and the .ng registry. ICANN says domain owners and network operators also take part in DNSSEC deployment. NiRA President Adesola Akinsanya called DNS security “an economic question,” BusinessDay reported. The webinar reports gave no date for when NITDA would change its assessments.
