Cybercriminals Attack Nigeria Financial Services, Aviation Sectors

By Czarina Ara Lasco

Nov 17, 2016 06:00 AM EST

The General Manager of Cisco Nigeria, Olankunle Oloruntimehin, has uttered his belief that the efforts to fight for the prevention and easement of cybercrime in Nigeria needs to be improved immediately. Oloruntimehin said that it will be possible through a multi-stakeholder approach which will involve the government, the industries, as well as the private and civil society organizations.

He also added that the risks of increasing cases of cybercrime of the financial services sector of the country was due to the unstoppable development in the field of technology.

Oloruntimehin said, "The most popular of cybercrimes in Nigeria is phishing and instances of malware attacks. Cybersecurity experts predict that 80% of Africa's PCs are infected by viruses and malicious software. This is especially concerning considering that 67% of traffic was generated by PCs in 2015 and this amount will increase to 21% by 2020."

According to him, over the previous years, Nigeria's financial services industry has experienced an escalating advancement of global sectors and stakeholders including Visa and MasterCard who are confidently showing to the market their refined associated IT solutions. Having said that, the local competitors had to significantly uplift the technological capabilities so that they could level themselves into the market competition.

"Technology has increased exponentially over the past 10 years and as a result, it has contributed to vulnerability to cybercrimes. Other crimes were perpetuated in the past but cybercrimes require a networking infrastructure to succeed," Oloruntimehin furthered.

The Chief Technology Strategist at Debbie Mishael Consulting, Engineer Ifeanyi Ogochukwu said that Nigeria has the need to protect the aviation sector in order to prevent the severe effect of cybercrime in the country, especially the interference in the domain of the aviation sector.

"Aviation is one of the most complex and integrated systems of information and communications technology (ICT) in the world, the global aviation system a highly technology driven environment is a potential target for a large-scale cyber-attack. The aviation industry keeps expanding, changing, and becoming increasingly connected due to the continual, and rapid integration of new technologies. As technologies rapidly evolve in a frenetic pace, however, so do our adversaries and their threats," Mishael explained.

"The Nigerian aviation industry therefore may be at risk without appropriate cybersecurity measures put in place for this evolving threat. It is imperative therefore that the industry maintain the highest levels of confidence in aviation."

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