Nigeria business online, govt organisations prone to cyber attacks, says ISSAN

THE Information Security Society of Africa Nigeria, (ISSAN) has declared that about 80 per cent of Nigerian businesses online and other government organisations with presence on the web are prone to cyber attacks due to the increasing spate of cyber criminal activities being perpetrated in the country.Top among the organisations, whose web portals and web-based applications have been found vulnerable to cyber attacks due to inadequate security measures for safeguarding their electronic platforms include the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Nigeria Stock Exchange, banks, pension fund administrators as well switching/electronic payment companies in Nigeria.This was disclosed in a technical presentation by the Chief Technical Officer of Digital Encode Limited, a corporate member of ISSAN, Mr. Oluseyi Akinsehinde, at a monthly organised by ISSAN in Lagos.While demonstrating how easy it is for hackers to hack into the databases of NSE, CBN, the banks and other business organisations in Nigeria, Akisehinde, said the recent hacking into the system of Hong Kong Stock Exchange and SASDAQ servers via web-facing applications.'There are advanced countries with high internet security measures, yet their systems were hacked. So, based on our findings in Nigeria, most busineswee4s, banks, including the CBN, NSE are vulnerable to hacking and we need to create this awareness as we go into a cashless economy by adhering to international security standards,' he said.Confirming this, the ISSAN Vice-President, Mr. Laja Sorunke, said, 'I want to assure you that Nigeria at the cyber space is under threats. We have much vulnerability. We have many loopholes in our system, we have issue bothering on our payment networks.'He warned that, if urgent measures were not taken by businesses and government organisations deploying web-based platforms to execute their operations, with the increasing rate of cyber security in the country, companies may soon be faced with high incidence of hacking, leading to loss of data critical to a business life and loss of revenue.According to him, high-level insecurity in the Nigeria's cyber space may affect cashless economy objective of the CBN, calling on the necessary government agencies and the private sector, especially in the electronic payment industry to put a robust framework in place in engendering proper implementation of the technical aspects of the impending cashless economy.
Click here to read full news..