The Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA) on Monday, urged the Federal Government to establish a cyber space monitoring team charged with the responsibility of ascertaining the country’s digital security level.

Mrs Chinenye Ajachukwu, Chairperson, Conference Committee of the association’s just concluded annual conference, said this while reacting to areas government needed to address to ensure value and growth of digital economy, in Abuja on Monday.

The conference which took place in Abuja from Oct. 21 to Oct. 24, had as theme, “Digital Concepts in a Growing Economy.”

ISACA is an independent, non-profit, global association that engages in the development, adoption and use of globally accepted information system knowledge and practices.

The association was incorporated by individuals who saw the need for a centralised source of information in the growing field of auditing controls for computer systems.

It has over 140,000 professionals in more than 180 countries.

Ajachukwu, who decried that the country was losing resources to cyber criminals due to poor gateway services, said with appropriate policies and implementation, the menace could be mitigated or the reoccurrence stopped.

“Nigeria should establish a cyber, digital space monitoring team to determine the state of the nation’s digital security.

“The government should increase the visibility of the centralised National Cyber Security Incident Response Team (NCSIRT) that is responsible for handling any attack on critical National Information Technology infrastructure.

“Nigerian government should come up with a regulation that would protect victims from financial losses via the Nigerian Payment gateway and digital frauds due to the failure of the gateway.

“We should, through the appropriate agencies, establish national policies, regulations, standards in the design and deployment of mobile applications for financial transactions in Nigeria that will guarantee safety of users’ funds.

“Establishing a digital economic hub that would be responsible solely for the use of ICT to create value for economic growth should be considered for achieving digital economy,” Ajachukwu said.

She also said that government needed to provide infrastructure to enhance mechanised agriculture to improve productivity and as well encourage the youthful participation for job creation.

According to her, the electoral system should be fully automated to allow transmission of results online, at real time to a central server and upload to the internet while ensuring that data of dead persons are removed while disallowing participation of underage persons.

The chairperson also recommended that the country needed to leverage on Information Technology (IT) to create smart cities, reposition the living standard of citizens, and improve life expectancy and productivity.

“Across the globe, the future of tax collection is electronic, online and automated. Nigerian government should build the digital economy where IT will be used to unearth new sources of value by enlarging the tax payment net.

“There is need to establish a standard for health records, inter-change, enforce its compliance across the health sector.

“Nigerian government should conduct a census of citizens to determine the actual size of the population, using IT infrastructure.”

She also said that the data of citizens collected by different agencies of government could be harmonised to generate income while the government should ensure implementation of regulations on protection of privacy.

Ajachukwu said that ISACA was open to collaboration to ensure National Digital Security