By 
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has ruled out possible undermining of the 2023 polls by hackers even as it revealed its result viewing (IReV) portal has experienced persistent attacks from multiple hackers across the world.
But there is no cause for alarm, a senior INEC official told IT Edge News at the weekend in Abuja. He said while the commission specifically had its system attacked by hackers during the off season elections in Ekiti in June 2022 and Osun in July 2022, the attacks had been effectively tamed without any compromise of the process.
“Our engineers are constantly on the alert and try to stay ahead of hackers,” said the official.
RELATED: Nothing has changed, says INEC to clear confusion over electronic transmission of election result
His statement expresses a similar position by INEC chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, who while delivering a keynote address at a stakeholders’ conference on election result management recently said “another technical concern for us is the repeated attempts to break through our cyber security system for the portal.”
Organised by YIAGA Africa, a civil society organisation (CSO), to launch the election result analysis dashboard (ERAD), the conference provided the opportunity for the INEC chief to address the fears and anxiety over the ability of the election umpire to fend off cyber-attacks.
“Our engineers reported several cyberattacks on the portal during the Ekiti and Osun governorship elections, some of them from as far as Asia. I am glad to note that all of them failed,” said Yakubu noting that INEC has recorded several attempts to breach its IT walls particularly the IReV portal.
“However, while we are confident in the security solutions that we have deployed for IReV and all our web presence, we must remain vigilant and continue to strengthen our defences. We have tasked our engineers to do everything possible to fully protect the IReV and all our web resources,” the INEC chairman assured.
He said the commission was doing everything administratively and technically required to ensure a hitch free elections in 2023.
His words: “For example, we found that some of the low-quality uploads that occurred in the field, which some of the observers have also noted, were due to the unavailability or substitution of presiding officers that were trained prior to the elections.
“We shall administratively deal with this challenge and ensure that only adequately trained Presiding Officers are deployed for elections.
“Also, more hands-on training may be required to ensure that all those involved throughout the value chain of the IReV are fully ready for what is bound to be a major outing during the 2023 general election.”
