Cyber security experts urge capacity building for cyber defense

Cyber security experts in the country, have urged the federal government to create a world class capacity as well as develop and train personnel to protect the nation’s infrastructure from cyber-attacks.

This is against the backdrop of several reports pointing at increase in cyber- attacks this year.

Oluseyi Akindeinde, chief technical officer, Digital Encode, emphasized on the need to set up a national Cyber security operations / digital forensics center across the country to be manned by competent people.

“This will need a high level of technical skills and technology resources if we are to combat cyber intrusions”.

This is coming in line with cyber security risk report published at the ongoing World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos.

According to the annual Global Risks Perception Survey (GRPS), cyber threats are growing in prominence, with large-scale cyber-attacks now ranked third in terms of likelihood, while rising cyber dependency is ranked as the second most significant driver shaping the global risks landscape over the next 10 years.

“Geopolitical friction is contributing to a surge in the scale and sophistication of cyber-attacks. At the same time cyber exposure is growing as firms are becoming more dependent on technology,” said John Drzik, president of Global Risk and Digital at Marsh, which partnered with the WEF on the report.

“While cyber risk management is improving, business and government need to invest far more in resilience efforts if we are to prevent the same bulging ‘protection’ gap between economic and insured losses that we see for natural catastrophes.”

‘Cyber attacks’ come in third place when looking at the five risks most likely to happen in the next 10 years. The top risk was ‘extreme weather events’, followed by ‘natural disasters’ and ‘data fraud or theft’ was the fourth most likely risk to come to fruition.

The annual report, released ahead of the annual WEF meeting in Davos, Switzerland this week, showed cyber security risks are also growing, both in prevalence and disruptive potential.

“Attacks against businesses have almost doubled in five years, and incidents that would once have been considered extraordinary are becoming more and more commonplace.”

The financial impact of cyber security breaches is rising, and some of the largest costs in 2017 related to ransomware attacks, which accounted for 64% of all malicious e-mails, WEF said.