Weak identity protection raises businesses’ cyber threats
For organisations looking to protect themselves and prevent their identities from being misused or stolen, the highest priority remains to have strong passwords.
These were the words of Modern Workplace and Security Business Group Lead for Microsoft Middle East and Africa Emerging Markets, Mohamed El Nemr, in Lagos.
He said there could be little doubt that cybercriminals have firms’ passwords in their sights. This is particularly the case in Africa where businesses are often more prone to cyber-attacks than companies anywhere else in the world.
According to him, Microsoft’s threat and data research shows just 22 per cent of Cloud Identity Solution and Azure Active Directory users have implemented strong identity authentication protection.
“What would you imagine your username and password are worth to a hacker? According to Microsoft’s latest threat and data research, the average price for 1,000 stolen username password pairs is around $0.97. What’s more, securing 400 million username and password combinations in bulk will earn a cybercriminal around $150.”
He explained that: “As part of the first edition of Cyber Signals, Microsoft’s new quarterly cyber threat intelligence brief, we take a closer look at the dangers of the rising mismatch in scale of identity-focused attacks in relation to levels of organizational preparedness.”
He said the brief, which offers an expert perspective into the current threat landscape, aims to be a valuable resource to Chief Information Security Officers in Nigeria, as they navigate the constantly changing threat landscape.
“Cyber Signals aggregates insights we see from our research and security teams on the frontlines, including analysis from our 24 trillion security signals combined with intelligence we track by monitoring more than 40 nation-state groups and 140 threat groups.”
He said the newly released research shows that though threats have been rising fast over the past two years, there has been low adoption of strong identity authentication, such as multifactor authentication and password-less solutions. In fact, just 22 per cent of Microsoft’s Cloud Identity Solution, Azure Active Directory, users had implemented strong identity authentication protection as of December 2021.
However, he said the consequences of a data breach are now front of mind for 64 per cent of companies in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) according to current Microsoft-IDC research. In fact, risk experts across MEA rank cyber incidents as the second highest risk facing the region, largely because of the increase in both size and expense of data breaches.
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