As Nigeria continues to digitize its financial systems, public services, and national infrastructure, one critical question emerges: Are we prepared for the next wave of cyberattacks?
Recent international research—such as the Temporal-Spatial Attention Network (TSAN) model, which I presented at the ICMLT 2025 conference in Helsinki—demonstrates that artificial intelligence is now playing a game-changing role in defending against sophisticated cyber threats, especially Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks.
The Changing Face of Cyberattacks
Gone are the days when cyberattacks were just brute-force floods. Today’s attackers use smarter, stealthier methods. They understand protocols, exploit timing patterns, and hide in plain sight. Traditional rule-based systems and shallow machine learning models often fail to catch these evolving threats.
This is where advanced AI models like TSAN come in. TSAN doesn’t just react—it understands. It combines temporal analysis (detecting how network traffic behaves over time) with spatial analysis (examining the structure of data packets) to make real-time, accurate decisions.
As someone who recently analyzed TSAN’s performance on industry-standard datasets like NSL-KDD, I found that it consistently outperformed older detection methods, with over 92% accuracy, while maintaining a small footprint suitable for real-world deployment.
Why This Matters for Nigeria
Nigeria is one of Africa’s most vibrant digital economies, with rapidly growing fintech, health tech, and govtech ecosystems. But with growth comes risk. Cybercriminals don’t respect borders—and we’ve already seen local incidents involving ransomware, phishing, and DoS-style disruptions.
Yet many Nigerian organizations still rely on outdated security tools that can’t keep up. The question isn’t if we will be targeted, but how prepared we are when it happens.
What Needs to Happen Next
- Adoption of AI-based cybersecurity tools: Public and private organizations need to start experimenting with and deploying models like TSAN—either independently or as part of commercial solutions.
- Investment in cyber research and talent: Nigeria must fund academic and industry-led research into AI for cybersecurity. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel, but we must contribute to and customize global solutions.
- Policy and public-private partnerships: Regulators should incentivize innovation in cybersecurity and encourage collaboration across sectors. The threats we face are complex—our response must be coordinated.
- Local adaptation of global models: Tools like TSAN are powerful, but they need to be tested against local network environments, including telcos, financial services, and government infrastructure.
Final Thoughts
AI won’t solve all our cybersecurity problems, but it will be central to the next generation of defence systems. Models like TSAN show what’s possible when cutting-edge research meets practical application.
As Nigerian professionals, researchers, and policymakers, we have a choice: wait for threats to escalate or proactively embrace innovation.
I strongly believe it’s time we choose the latter.
About the Author:
Bisola Kayode is a cybersecurity researcher, conference speaker, and mentor working at the intersection of AI and digital security. She is passionate about advancing cyber resilience in Africa through research, education, and innovation.
