According to Layer3, a cloud and network technology company, storing data abroad increases Nigeria’s security vulnerability.
Nigerian websites are mostly hosted in foreign countries, making them targets in their host countries for several reasons, according to the firm.
The firm said given the dangers associated with hosting data abroad, it is only logical that Nigerian businesses host data locally, especially with the encouragement of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA).
The Chief Sales Officer, Theresa Adeyinka, said organizations whose data are hosted in other countries do not have immediate access to the physical spaces in which they are kept and as a result, are at the mercy of the data residency laws of the countries that host them.
Adeyinka said if any countries feel the organizations have violated their laws, they could deny them access to their data, especially if Nigeria is caught in a diplomatic row with them.
Risks of Foreign Data Hosting
She noted that the risks to foreign-hosted data could arise along the global data transmission line. According to her, undersea cables that transmit data from stations elsewhere in the world to Internet users in Nigeria may get damaged.
She cited the 2020 incident, when a submarine cable system was severed, which disrupted internet services to financial institutions, SMEs, and larger corporations in Nigeria, noting that such disruptions could cost the affected businesses millions of naira in revenue loss, depending on how long they last.
Adeyinka also cited the Russia-Ukraine conflict, noting that data centers in Ukraine have struggled to sustain their operations, with some having incurred increased energy costs.
She said several western internet service vendors have halted their services to Russia, noting that if Nigerian organisations have their data held in a country under attack like Ukraine, there is always a risk that their data could be lost when data centers are attacked.
Adeyinka said the fact that this could happen already places a large portion of Nigerian businesses in a vulnerable position, noting that a report from 2017 indicated that only 2.3 percent of .ng websites were hosted locally.
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She further stressed the fact that the threat that foreign agents may act against data hosts within their territories is real, stating that businesses and government agencies can minimize this risk by keeping their data closer to home.
She said cloud solution providers like Layer3Cloud are making this a much easier action to take by providing virtual servers, disaster recovery, data backup, and object storage services to help businesses transit to the cloud and enable them to instantiate multiple cloud computing use cases to their advantage.
Adeyinka said organizations seeking to move their data to local hosts can achieve this as the team at the organization helps clients remain on the right side of data residency and other IT-related laws in Nigeria.
About National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA )
National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) is a public service institution established by the NITDA Act 2007 as the ICT policy implementing arm of the Federal Ministry of Communication and Digital Economy of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
It has the sole responsibility of developing programs that cater to the running of ICT-related activities in the country. NITDA is also mandated with the implementation of policy guidelines for driving ICT in Nigeria.
It plays an advisory role in copyright law by verification and revision of applicable laws in tandem with the application of software and technology acquisition.
The majority of these activities are achieved through the organization of workshops which cater to the training needs of her staff, government functionaries, and education sectors.
NITDA was commissioned by the administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo through the perfection of a bill designed to provide for the establishment of National Information Technology Development in 2007 (NITDA Act).
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Operations of NITDA started in 2001, six years before the bill was passed into law. The agency’s main objective is to provide ICT as a tool in tertiary institutions to drive the mechanism of the education sector in the country. Its creation has given birth to the establishment of state ICT agencies in other states of the Federation such as the Plateau State Information and Communication Technology Development Agency.
The agency started its operation in Abuja, FCT with 30 computers. These devices were used for the training of major government functionaries which include the president and his ministers. Within the first three years of establishment, the agency supplied 5700 computers system to over 187 educational institutions in the country which includes: universities, secondary, and primary schools.
More About Layer3
Layer3Cloud is an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solution that allows businesses and organizations of all types to remotely and virtually build, manage, store and instantly deploy servers and data in our secure data centre based in Nigeria.
