Nigerian-Born Cybersecurity Engineer Olufemi Owolabi Recognised At ICICT 2026 For AI-Driven Zero-Day Malware Research

Olufemi Owolabi, Senior Security Engineer at UK health-fintech company 10mg Health, has been recognised for his contribution to the research paper “Autonomous Threat Reasoning: A Self-Adaptive Framework for Zero-Day Malware Detection and Response” at the 11th International Congress on Information and Communication Technology (ICICT 2026).

The congress took place from 24 to 27 February 2026 as a hybrid event, with in-person sessions at the America Square Conference Centre in London and virtual sessions held online. Organised by the Global Knowledge Research Foundation and G R Scholastic LLP, ICICT brings together researchers, engineers, scientists and academics from across the world working in communications, intelligent systems, software, and security, e-governance and health informatics.

As first author, Owolabi presented the research to an international audience at the congress. Papers accepted at ICICT undergo peer review and are published by Springer Nature in its Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems (LNNS) series, placing the work on one of the world’s leading academic publishing platforms.

The recognition places a Nigerian-born engineer among the global voices shaping how the world responds to one of cybersecurity’s most difficult problems: threats that have never been seen before.

Zero-day malware exploits vulnerabilities that are unknown to software vendors and security teams, leaving organisations exposed until a fix is found. Because these threats carry no known signature, traditional defences that depend on matching known attack patterns often miss them entirely. By the time a new strain is identified and catalogued, the damage may already be done.

The challenge is growing. Security researchers and industry bodies have reported a rise in attackers using artificial intelligence to speed up how they discover and exploit weaknesses. As the time between a vulnerability’s discovery and its exploitation shrinks, defenders can no longer rely on human teams alone to spot and contain every new threat.

Owolabi’s paper responds to this shift. It explores how AI-driven systems can reason about suspicious behaviour, learn from what they observe and adapt to new threats as they emerge. Rather than waiting for a threat to be identified and added to a database, the self-adaptive framework is designed to recognise abnormal activity, assess its risk and support faster, more autonomous detection and response.

The approach reflects a wider move in cybersecurity from reactive defence to anticipatory defence. For organisations with lean security teams, including many startups and growing businesses in emerging markets, systems that can reason and respond on their own could close a gap that has long left them vulnerable.

Owolabi brings a practitioner’s view to the research. At 10mg Health, an AI-powered healthcare finance company that helps pharmacies, clinics and other healthcare providers in emerging African markets access financing, he built and leads the security systems that protect the platform’s cloud infrastructure, APIs and partner integrations. His day-to-day work covers security architecture, access controls, and threat monitoring and incident readiness for a platform that handles sensitive financial and healthcare data.

That operational experience shapes his research. Platforms like 10mg Health connect healthcare providers, lenders and technology partners through interconnected digital services. Each connection creates value, and each one also creates a point of exposure. Protecting those connections against threats that have not yet been named is precisely the problem his framework sets out to address.

Speaking on the recognition, Owolabi said: “Attackers no longer wait for us to catch up, and many of them are now using AI to move faster. This research is about giving defenders systems that can think and adapt in real time, not just react to what they have seen before. For platforms serving Africa’s healthcare providers, financial institutions and small businesses, that kind of resilience is not a luxury; it is what makes digital services worth trusting.

“It means a great deal to contribute this work on a global stage, and to show that some of the ideas shaping the future of cybersecurity can come from engineers who started their careers in Nigeria. I am grateful to my co-authors and to the ICICT community for the opportunity to be part of this conversation.”

His journey to the international research stage began more than a decade ago in Ibadan, where he started as a hardware and software engineering intern before moving into network engineering roles across Nigeria. He studied Telecommunication Science at the University of Ilorin and went on to secure enterprise networks at SimbaNET and Sumal Foods before relocating to the United Kingdom, where he earned a Master’s degree from Ulster University.

The ICICT paper forms part of a growing research portfolio. Owolabi has also contributed to collaborative work on CoGuard, a large language model-based multi-agent system for autonomous security policy enforcement in cloud environments, which was presented during the 9th International Conference on Advances in Artificial Intelligence (ICAAI 2025), and to a federated learning framework for self-powered IoT sensor networks using explainable AI, which was presented at the 11th International Congress on Information and Communication Technology (ICICT 2026). Together, these projects reflect his focus on autonomous threat reasoning, cloud security and privacy-preserving intelligent systems.

Alongside his engineering and research work, Owolabi is committed to developing the next generation of technology talent. In 2025 he served as an invited industry judge and mentor at the University of Ilorin Technology Innovation Challenge, guiding students working on ideas in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, blockchain and the Internet of Things. He has also served as an industry judge for Technovation Girls, a global programme encouraging young women to build technology solutions, and volunteers in information security and data protection.

He is a member of BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, holds Advanced Registered IT Technician (Advanced RITTech) registration and is a member of ISACA.

His recognition at ICICT 2026 adds to a growing list of African technology professionals contributing to global research in artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, and underlines the role engineers from the continent are playing in building a safer digital future.

Apata Oyeniran is a Correspondent at Independent Newspapers Limited. He is professional and management scientist. He has found himself writing on education, tourism/hospitality and business. He is committed, makes people and responsibilities less burdensome.

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