Sunday,February 28, 2021 / 07.20AM / Ottoabasi  Abasiekong  for WebTV/Header ImageCredit: FITC Nigeria

Strategies for addressing the risks and adverse effects of cybercrimesand hacking in Nigeria came to the fore at the FITC Consulting 2021 technologysummit which discussed the theme "2021 Hacking Predictions and Prevention:Security Strategies to Enable The Remote Workforce".

Giving the keynote presentation Mr.Menny Barzilay, the CEO of Cytacticsaid the conservative estimates in the Web of Profit research showed acybercriminal revenue worldwide of at least $1.5trn. This meant that if cybercrimewas a country it would have the 13^th highest GDP in the world.

The expert noted that the report also highlighted the value of somecybercriminal activities across the globe which include;

• $860bn - Illicit/illegal online markets
• $500bn- Theft of tradesecrets/Intellectual Property
• $160bn - Data trading
• $1.6bn - Crimeware-as-a-Service
• $1bn - Ransomware

He described Cybercrime in the words of Dr. Michael McGuire as aneconomy which has a hyper-connected range of economic agents, relationships and other factors now capable of generating, supporting,and maintaining criminal revenues at an unprecedented scale".

Barzilay urged organizations to invest in cyber crisis responsefacilities and not just in cybersecurity, strengthening their architecture.

In his contribution to the discourse Dr. David Isiavwe, General Manager,Ecobank & Chairman Board of Trustees, Information Security Society ofAfrica, Nigeria noted that the COVID 19 pandemic prompted a massivework-from-home movement, leading to the accelerated use of videoconferencing,collaboration tools, and cloud-based applications.

Speaking further he alluded to the fact that networks and remote accessinfrastructure have come under severe pressure. He added that new threats havealso emerged targeting these technologies and pandemic-related anxieties.

Isiavwe listed some of the interesting statistics  that occurred in2020 during the heat of the pandemic which  includes;

•  240m average malicious email per day
• 6,000% increase in COVID 19 themed spam
• A 260% increase in click-through tomalicious URLs from February- March 2020
• A 775% spike in cloud service usage
• The United States of America is a toplocation for spam and malware detections

He stressed the need for organizations to understand the variouspatterns of cyberattacks that can affect their operations which range fromattacking the confidentiality of information, attacking of system availability,and compromising the integrity of systems and information.

Other kinds of attacks identified by  Dr. Isiavwe are the BusinessEmail Compromise, Password Targeted, Social Engineering, and Card DataInfrastructure.

He also revealed that Cyber attacks in the first half of the year 2020, exceeded the entire attacks recorded in the preceding year 2019.

Mr. John Anyanwu Partner, Cyber & Privacy, KPMG, Nigeria on his partbelieved technology is at an inflection point with events in the globe changingat a fast pace, which has led organizations to adopt digital technology as abusiness continuity imperative.

Providing further insight he said technologies like ArtificialIntelligence are helping to reinvent business models and enable processes likeidentity & access management, enhanced authenticating,  fraudmonitoring & prevention, data privacy, user behavior analytics, securityincident detection & response.

He called on businesses to increase awareness on digitalization andprovide mechanisms to address the inherent risks involved in it.

"Digitalisation offers numerous opportunities and risks that need tobe managed with commensurate investments in risk management and auditingcapabilities," he said.

The President, Cyber Security Expert's Association of Nigeria (CSEAN),Mr. Remi Afon, provided compelling data on the challenges of identity theftwhich showed the following facts;

• Social Media Users are a high-risk groupfor ID Theft
• Citing Symantec 87% of consumers have leftpersonal information exposed online
• Most Small businesses store privateinformation that could be exposed
• Stolen credit card data is often sold ondark web marketplaces for as little as $0.50 per card

Afon identified the following as the fastest-growing Cybersecurityskills to learn in 2021 which are;

• Application security
• Cloud security
• Data science
• Threat hunting
• Automation
• Risk Management

Mr. Sebastian Nzeadibe, the Country Manager, Fortinet in hispresentation informed stakeholders on the key financial services Cybersecuritytrends and challenges, that should be addressed by organizations.

Nzeadibe said companies, corporations, and organizations are facing theissues of cost reduction, improved visibility, automation & operationalefficiency, flexibility, reactive risk, growing attacks, insider threats,rationalization of IT operations, integration of security infrastructure, andthe transition to the cloud.

For the Oil and Gas sector, he added that Capex/Opex reduction,expanding attack surface, risk & compliance, sophisticated threats, andproductivity and uptime were the trends and challenges.

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