ACTIVITIES of cyber criminals, which has sustained a rising profile globally, is projected to be costing the Nigerian economy a yearly loss of about N78 billion.

According to DataGroupIT, most hit group has been the financial institutions, followed by associations and government’s Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and regulatory authorities.

In a paper titled: Unified Intelligence:Authentication and Fraud, presented at the Advanced Threat Mitigation Strategy Seminar in Lagos, by the Product Manager, DataGroupIT, Dapo Salami, the statistics when interpreted, showed that financial institutions are loosing about N50 billion; associations N11 billion; Govt MDAs N10 billion; telecommunications firms N4.5 billion; ePayment companies N3 billion and on the overall, Nigeria loses N78 billion yearly.

The presentation listed top three cyber attacks methods used in Nigeria to include social engineering, which is about 83 per cent; malware 42 per cent; pharming, SQL injection, spoofing 23 per cent.
Other methods included brute force attacks, weak passwords; website defacement; use of unpatched software; organized crime syndicates, physical disconnection; hacking, email hacking; internal security breaches among others.

He said about 200 million strains of malware continue to look at business loopholes to wreck havoc, adding that 87 per cent customers from interaction feel upset, frustrated or betrayed when an online transactions is declined.
Salami, who said about two billion breaches were recorded in 2014, noted that data breaches and identity compromises continue to reduce the predictive value of traditional identity element validation and verification.

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