Emma Okonji
Following the increasing rate of cyber security threats to businesses in West Africa, Nigeria inclusive, cyber security experts from across West African countries, who attended the ESET Security Day 2021 conference, which held in Lagos recently, have called for strict adherence to cyber security measures that will address the challenge.
Recently, enterprises are facing increasing cyber security threats, which call for improved security tools that can be smoothly integrated into increasingly complex and diverse networks and critical infrastructure.
The experts were of the view that to further address the challenge in a comprehensive manner, businesses must deploy Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) to ensure their entire platform is secured.
Speakers at the conference called on both the government and the private sector operators to always secure the third-party data in their possession and comply with data protection regulations.
Managing Director, ESET West Africa (Anglophone countries), Mr. Olufemi Ake, said the conference, which started since 2011, aimed to educate subscribers and partners in West Africa on most issues that are currently trending around cyber security threats.
“We also viewed ESET Security Day 2021 to get closer to our subscribers and prospective customers. We also learned from them as they shared experiences in the corporate world in respect to security”, he said.
Speaking on ESET’s strides to protect its users from the rampaging cyber traitors, he said that with one billion users protected by ESET it is a great testament to the robust solutions and legacies products the company has built over the three decades ago.
“We have over a billion users that we secure globally currently. If you consider the fact that we have an agreement with Google to secure the backend of Chrome, you can deduce that with the number of Google Chrome users that amounts to over half a billion. So, we make bold to say that we have over one billion people that trust us to secure their devices. We are excited about this,” Ake said.
Expert in Cyber Security Risk Management, Daniel Adaramola, said while compliance to regulatory standards remained important, the key driver of information security is the need to protect against constant threats to an organization.
“Regulatory compliance is done when the third party is satisfied. Information security is a carrot as it motivates the company to protect itself. There are also questions as to whether cybersecurity should be driven by government bodies,”Adaramola said.
A Cyber Security Risk Consultant, Fowler Oriyomi, talked about Managing Hybrid Systems in an enterprise environment, noting that as companies race to the cloud to improve efficiencies, reduce costs, and foster flexibility and agility, they are creating a patchwork of different cybersecurity protocols.
Oriyomi described the modern post-COVID company as “one million-armed octopus in thousands of locations and every arm is a digital access point that can be compromised by script kidders, social hackers, professional criminal hacking organisation or even nation-state actors.”
Senior Digital Security Associate at Co-Creation Hub, Habeeb Adebisi, advised organisations to intensify their cybersecurity defense approach.
He said it is regrettable that most people, including businesses, ignore security advisories and end up paying huge penalties as research finding indicates 90 per cent of organisations in Nigeria have suffered breaches.
