Tech Trends: How the Menace of Cyberattacks Can be Curbed- Remi Afon

Statistics from Cybersecurity Ventures predicted that there would be a ransomware attack on businesses every fourteen seconds at the end of 2019 and every eleven seconds in 2021. This does not even include the cyberattacks on individuals which is even more frequent than businesses.

This same source also forecasts that cybercrime will cost the world $6 trillion annually by 2021 and is expected to climb even higher by 2025. Shocking and alarming, not so? Going by this projection, discussions on how to combat this menace before it brings the world’s economy to its knees become inevitable.

In my recent discussion on Tech Trends with Remi Afon, a cybersecurity insurance consultant, he shares with us how we can better protect ourselves when using digital services.

CFA: Remi, glad to have you on the show.

Remi: I’m glad to be here. Thanks for having me today.

CFA: Awesome! So how would you describe the cybersecurity landscape globally in 2020?

Remi: 2020 has been a very interesting year due to a lot of reasons. One, the pandemic especially in Nigeria, talking about the EndSars as well. Those were the factors that were quite interesting in 2020. The pandemic resulted in a lot of people working remotely.

So this resulted in a lot of interesting activities in terms of organizations trying to adapt to the new way of working, making sure there’s security in terms of how they collaborate with their colleagues at work.

Also, looking at the EndSars protest which resulted in a lot of activism in Nigeria. Activism is a situation whereby people put protest online and try to take down some other organizations, some government organizations, sending what we call denial-of-service attacks (DoS) to them and some attacks to show their grievances against the government.

CFA: Interesting. Let me ask you this question. As we go into 2021, what are some of the emerging trends that you see both in the cybersecurity landscape as well as privacy with the new WhatsApp rules and Facebook? What are your thoughts?

Remi: There’s going to be a massive increase in email-based attacks, talking about BEC-Business Email Compromise, phishing, and spear phishing. You know, just in November, a couple of Nigerians were arrested as they were involved in attacking over 150 countries using the BEC technique.

What business email compromise involves is cybercriminals targeting CEOs, financial controllers of big organizations pretending to be them, and sending emails to people to steal their information so they can divert people’s money into their own account.

You can watch the full interview here.