Pantami: FEC virtual meetings recorded over 100 hack attempts — most traced to Europe

Isa Pantami, minister of communications and digital economy, says there have been multiple attempts to hack the virtual meetings of the federal executive council (FEC).

He said this on Thursday while listing the achievements of his ministry over the past 42 months.

He said since the present administration unveiled a policy on virtual engagements for public institutions in 2020, a total of 108 virtual FEC meetings have been held.

Pantami also said most of the hack attempts were traced to locations in Europe.

The FEC virtual meetings came into place amid concerns over the 2019 outbreak of COVID and the need for physical distance to prevent the spread of infections.

“Government has been saving a huge amount of money through the implementation of this policy. Many meetings take place virtually, and even at the federal executive council, we introduced — the first-ever administration to introduce — virtual meetings,” he said.

“From the time we introduced virtual meetings in 2020, to the last meeting we conducted in late 2022, we managed successfully 108 federal executive council meetings.

“And throughout history, there wasn’t any security breach. Many criminals made efforts during our meetings to compromise.

“There was a time that we had our virtual meeting. In the process, there were 66 attempts in order to hack the system and compromise it in order to embarrass government. None of them was successful.

“In fact, there was a day we intercepted over 160 attempts in order to hack the system and embarrass government and none of them was successful. And most of the attacks came from Europe.

“We had to inform the country where the attacks were coming from.”

He also said through information technology, the federal government has saved over N47 billion.

“Through IT projects of the National Information Technology Development Agency, we have approved the implementation of over 1,600 government projects. And all of them are dealing with automation, and that’s why you’ll discover some of them in the Central Bank of Nigeria, FIRS, CAC, Customs, NCC, Galaxy Backbone Limited,” he said.

“All these government institutions, you’ll discover that we have approved the most processes and functions to be implemented virtually or to be automated — a minimum of 1,600. Through the process, we have saved the federal government over N47 billion.”