As Nigeria’s internet subscriptions reach 123 million, her move into cloud architecture brings access controls, security audits and digital investigations into focus.
Chisom Elizabeth Alozie’s move into cloud security architecture follows seven years of enterprise work involving user access, security audits and digital investigations. Her responsibilities have ranged from administering accounts to examining evidence of suspected attacks, placing her work at several stages of an organisation’s response to security risk.
In November 2019, Alozie became Lead Cloud Security Architect at Packet Switching Solutions Ltd. The appointment follows roles at Total E&P and Dangote Group, where her responsibilities covered access administration, technical support, security controls and incident investigation.
Her move comes as Nigeria’s digital footprint expands. The National Bureau of Statistics recorded 123.16 million active internet subscriptions in the third quarter of 2019, up from 103.51 million a year earlier, an increase of 18.98 per cent. These are subscriptions rather than a count of individual users, but they indicate the scale of the country’s connected services.
Alozie’s experience concerns the systems behind those connections. At Total E&P, her responsibilities included administering user access and configuring remote connections. At Dangote Group under Dancom Technology, she moved into team leadership, security analysis and audits. The progression connects her new architecture role with earlier work on how employees enter, use and protect business systems.
Alozie started her career at an ICT training institute in April 2009, where she was one of the key staff members who helped develop the training center for IT professional training, including Cisco, Microsoft, hardware, and software. This development equipped her with vast knowledge in IT training and support.
Alozie later joined Total E&P in September 2011 as a contract IT user Support Engineer. She remained in the position until October 2016.
At Total, Alozie worked with Active Directory to administer passwords and configured VPN and single sign-on access. These responsibilities involved the practical management of employee access to enterprise systems. She also worked with virtual machines, supported operating-system migration and delivered technical training to end users. Her contribution combined systems administration with helping employees use the technology required for their jobs.
Alozie says: “Access administration is part of security work. A support team has to understand who needs access, which systems they need and how changes to their accounts are handled.”
Her academic route began with Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Port Harcourt, where she completed her bachelor’s degree in November 2006. She returned for a Postgraduate Diploma in Management, completed in November 2015 while she was working at Total.
Her transition from support to security analysis expanded the scope of her work. Instead of dealing only with individual technical requests, she took responsibility for a support team and contributed to reviews of security and continuity controls. Her management qualification forms part of the background to those organisational responsibilities.
In November 2016, she joined Dangote Group under Dancom Technology as Senior IT System Support and Security Analyst. She held the position until August 2019, leading an IT support team and serving as BCT IT audit leader.
As BCT IT audit leader, Alozie’s responsibilities included programmes associated with ISO 27001 and ISO 22301. The work brought information security and business continuity into the same professional remit. Alongside leading the support team, she contributed to the review of controls and the documentation used in internal audits.
Alozie says: “An audit requires evidence of how a control works. My support experience helped me connect the written procedure with the way people used the system each day.”
The financial stakes were visible in research published during the year. IBM Security’s July 2019 study, conducted by the Ponemon Institute, put the average cost of a data breach among participating organisations worldwide at $3.92 million. The average time to identify and contain a breach was 279 days, comprising 206 days to identify the incident and another 73 to contain it. These international findings describe the study sample, rather than a Nigerian average.
Her investigative responsibilities were more specific. Alozie conducted forensic disk examinations using Autopsy and analysed memory evidence through the Volatility Framework to reconstruct attacker behaviour and incident timelines. Disk and memory examinations address different forms of evidence. Her work combined them to examine the sequence of events surrounding a suspected compromise.
Alozie says: “In a digital investigation, the sequence of events matters. Examining disk and memory evidence helps establish what happened and supports a more informed response.”
Alozie also prepared documentation and training materials covering security, incident response and forensic findings for compliance activities and internal audits. This placed the recording and communication of investigative findings within her responsibilities, alongside the technical examinations. Her earlier end-user training at Total and later security documentation at Dangote show how communication featured across both stages of her work.
Alozie says: “Technical findings need clear documentation. Colleagues should understand the evidence, the steps taken and the issues requiring further attention.”
Her progression also belongs within a wider discussion about women in cybersecurity. The April 2019 Women in Cybersecurity report from professional association (ISC)² estimated women’s representation at 24 per cent. The estimate used a broader methodology, including IT professionals who spent at least a quarter of their working time on security responsibilities. The figure describes international research and does not establish women’s share of Nigeria’s cybersecurity workforce.
Alozie’s earlier roles illustrate why security work extends beyond specialist job titles. Password administration, remote access configuration and user training were part of her support responsibilities before she became a cloud security architect. Her subsequent audit and forensic work added the examination of controls and incident evidence to this operational background.
At Packet Switching Solutions, Alozie’s appointment covers cloud security architecture and secure migration design. The change places her at the design stage of a computing environment, after years of supporting systems, reviewing controls and investigating incidents. Access configuration, audit requirements and incident findings each provide a different perspective on the decisions involved in that work.
Alozie says: “Cloud security design draws on operational experience. The questions I have worked with in support, audits and investigations remain relevant when designing access and planning a migration.”
By the close of 2019, Alozie’s professional record spans enterprise support, team leadership, security audits, forensic examinations and cloud architecture. The appointment marks a change in the stage at which she contributes: from supporting enterprise systems and examining incident evidence to helping design the security of cloud environments.