By Emmanuel Elebeke

L-R: Mr. Adebanjo Olufemi, Femi Omolola, Akin Ogundimu, the presenter of the certificates, from New Horizons Systems, Yemi Sokoya and Mr. Carl Ileka.

For malicious hackers, it may no longer be business as usual as business solution and IT training institute, New horizon, in collaboration with International Council of E-Commerce Consultants, EC-Council, at the weekend, graduated four ethical hackers on Certified Ethical Hacker certification, CEH v7.

The Certified Ethical Hacker certification is a professional programme of five years, design to fortify the application knowledge of security officers, auditors, security professionals, site administrators, and anyone who is concerned about the integrity of the network infrastructure.

A Certified Ethical Hacker is a skilled professional who understands and knows how to look for the weaknesses and vulnerabilities in target systems. He uses the same knowledge and tools as a malicious hacker, only that the end product of his activities is to save the malicious hacker’s targets.

The Version 7 is an improvement of the version 6. It was introduced to address the contemporary issues in security even if 100% of security may not be possible.

The graduands were drawn from both public and private establishments. They include: Mr. Carl Ileka of Rexit limited, Femi Omolola from office of the national Security Adviser, Abuja, Akin Ogundimu of Alcatel Lucent and Mr. Adebanjo Olufemi of Da-Clickx Networkx.

The CEH v7 Program certifies individuals in the specific network security discipline of Ethical Hacking from a vendor-neutral perspective.

Speaking on the programme, the programme instructor, Mr. Ojo Seyi identified colour as the greatest challenge facing the Africans who graduate from the programme but called for development of other courses from the CEH v7.

He also identified poor awareness as a major problem that needed to be tackled and called for effective legislation.

He blamed government agencies for not believing in the local trainees on CEH v7, warning that such action could hinder Nigeria from developing with the rest of the world.

“As a group, we can work together as a catalysts to break through and that is why wee need to believe in ourselves,” he added.

For him, until Nigerians begin to belief in themselves, the country will not develop.

Considering that most of the threats from cyber space are wireless network related, Seyi advised for the training of more ethical hackers to check mate the trend.

To be trained as an ethical hacker, the instructor said “you don’t have to be complicated before you can hack nor have to be a professional one can make use of the tool, since computer has made everything easier,” adding the application is no longer paper based but online.

Version 7, V7 is engineered by the professionals as an improvement on Version 6, V6.

According to Seyi, the advancement, came to be because people are now going wireless via mobile tools and it is this same advancement he said that EC-Council wants to drive home.

On who needs ethical hackers, Seyi said everybody that handles information needs it and should not be seen as an exclusive reserve of banks and other multi-nationals.

“Hackers are no longer going physical as it used to be, they can hack, while miles away and because of these prevalent issues such as ATM frauds, this has to be re-engineered by hackers themselves. For you to be defective, you must be offensive.

What they actually doing is awareness, reviewing security policies of their respective organizations. What we are trying to do is to mitigate, so that we are not overwhelmed by the security threats. Though V7 does not have 100% answer to every security risks, it will mitigate

Speaking on behalf of New Horizon, Mr. Akinyemi Sokoya said though the institute was evolving, it would continue to improve on the Nigerian content.

Responding, the graduands thanked New Horizon and EC-Council for the opportunity and promised to be good ambassadors of the institute for others to take it up, as they said the training will help them get foreign exchange advantage. They also advised th institute to collaborate with government in increasing awareness.