Published Article

The study was carried out to strategically assess risk mitigation resources of dark web and cybercrime threat in Nigeria. The population of this study comprised all professionals in computer science, computer engineering and security agents who have been exposed to cyber crimes, cyber security and general computer science. The study adopted a descriptive survey design, while stratified random sampling technique was used in selecting 400 respondents. The instrument for data collection, which was tagged “Dark Web and Cybercrime Threat Mitigation Questionnaire (DWCTMQ)”, was administered to the respondents and used for the study. The instrument was vetted by experts in computer science as well as test and measurement before the reliability test was conducted with 40 computer experts who did not form parts of the main work and it produced the average reliability coefficient of 0.87, proving the instrument to be reliable for the study. Data collected were analysed using percentage analysis, mean statistics and goodness of fit chi-square analysis. From the results of the data analysis, it was observed that there is high level of dark web and cyber crimes activities in Nigeria. It was also observed that the services and websites used in perpetrating dark web and cyber crime threats are Tor, I2P for services and Silk Road, Sheep Marketplace, Black Market, etc. for the websites. The result identified the risk mitigation resources and strategies to disrupt the dark web and cyber crimes threats in Nigeria to be “raising public awareness of the risk and impact of cyber activity and the need to deploy basic protective measures, providing cyber security education on the use of strong passwords, application of system updates in a timely and efficient manner, securing devices by enabling a firewall and deploying solutions to address viruses, malware and spyware; leveraging trusted resources and finally, building an economic framework. One of the recommendations was that cyber security should be seen by all as a shared responsibility which requires the attention of a broad range of stakeholders with effective public/private partnership that incorporates businesses and institutions of all sizes along with national, state, local, tribal and territorial agencies to produce successful outcomes in identifying and addressing threats, vulnerabilities and overall risk in cyberspace.