A report on the Nigeria Cyber Threat Landscape 2022 by the Cyber Security Experts Association of Nigeria (CSEAN) says that Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) had more cyber threats in 2022.
The Director of Research and Development (CSEAN), John Odumesi presented the research findings at their two days conference tagged, “Cyber Security: a Digital Transformative Tool in Achieving Sustainable Development Goals’’, on Tuesday in Abuja.
According to NAN, Odumesi said the research reflected the trend of cyber-attacks in 2022 which would serve as a guiding mechanism on occurrences in 2023.
He said, “Part of the findings and key threat trends we discovered is that data protection policies enforcement and disclosure practices are grossly lagging; there is a surge in corporate phishing attacks.
“There is a rise of ransomware in the industrial control system environment, compromise of business emails, and malware such as Backdoor skyrocketed.
“We also observed that the 2023 general elections triggered a deluge of misinformation, disinformation and attacks on small businesses –which was more than double.
“In the first three-quarter of 2022, 97 per cent of individuals lost about 1000 USD but we were not able to classify losses by organisations, but we classified the increase in the attack.
“For SMEs, there was an increase in phishing attacks of 84 per cent compared to the previous year of 37 per cent.”
The CSEAN officer admonished the government to enforce regulations on data privacy and inform the public when institutions were under attack so as to take precautionary measures.
“To combat cyber attacks, we need to maintain a detailed cyber security policy; individuals and organisations should be email sceptic; organisations should develop an incident response plan.
“We also need to protect our systems, travel wisely on the internet, avoid password pitfalls and engage the services of Cyber security experts,’’ he said.