We live in the digital age today. It is a period when human beings and things produce close to three Quintilian bytes of data each day and constantly generating more.
This has made a lot of highly respected personalities to predict that the days ahead will indeed be challenging while others believe we will get by somehow as usual. One thing is certain, we should all be expecting more sophisticated attacks across the world, irrespective of the school of thought you choose to align with.
The Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett, believes that cyberattacks are a much bigger threat to humanity than nuclear weapons. This statement was made a few years ago. This view is certainly hard to believe for anyone who does not understand how deeply automated and connected the world is today.
Think about this: what could be more dangerous than having a group of people located in another country and yet influence important events like elections or cause a war by simply manipulating some algorithm or data? I personally think that Buffet is on point, which is why developing countries like Nigeria need to take their cybersecurity much more seriously.
My understanding of the importance of the cybersecurity subject-matter led me to attend this year’s cyber secure Nigeria conference organised by Cybersecurity Experts Association of Nigeria (CSEAN), an annual conference that seeks to bring together practitioners, executives, policymakers, media, etc to discuss issues around cybersecurity particularly drawing lessons from what is happening all over the world.
In his opening speech at the conference, the President of CSEAN, Remi Afon, stressed the fact that cyberthreats are on the rise.
“Every day, hackers are working on new techniques for getting through the security checks of governments and organisations. They are doing this so that they can cause damage, access sensitive data and steal intellectual property. As old sources of cyberthreats fade, new sources are emerging. In fact, cybercriminals are stepping up their game and data breaches are becoming both common and devastating locally and internationally. A few days ago, Palo Alto Networks released a report alleging that a Nigerian cybercriminal group known as SilverTerrier carried out 181,000 attacks, using 15 families of malware in the last year. Over the past 12 months, the group has fired an average of 17,600 spam emails per month, representing a 45 per cent increase from 2016,” he added.
The reality is that as the world becomes more super connected and crypto currencies gain grounds, cybercriminals are becoming more sophisticated in their operations, better organised in their — Finish Reading on the Punch
