Telecoms operators, start- ups, and businesses have been urged to stand up to cybersecurity challenges and brace for the new year.
According to tech experts, businesses, especially indigenous ones and small-scale entrepreneurs in Nigeria, must deplore the needed technologies that will enhance their operations to keep them in business.
Due to lack of the required technologies, many telecoms operators have folded up while so many others are losing revenue.
The industry experts said the operators in Nigeria had to wake to the reality of emerging technologies to ensure their continuity in business. It was reported that many tech startups shut down in 2023 despite getting funding from investors.
Analysts linked their failure to a lack of robust technologies, especially those who fell into the hands of cyber criminals. The increasing threat to organisations globally means more are taking cyber security seriously.
Seventy three percent of SMEs agree that cyber security concerns now need action, with 78 percent saying they will increase investment in cyber security in the next 12 months.
A concerning statistic is that 67 percent of SMEs feel that they do not have the inhouse skills to deal with data breaches.
However, this issue is mitigated as increasing numbers of SMEs are working with managed service providers for cyber security; percent as of 2022, up from 74 percent in 2020.
A report from a cybersecurity company, Sophos, revealed that some of the most prolific and active ransomware groups, including Akira, ALPHV/BlackCat, LockBit, Royal, and Black Basta, were now switching to remote encryption to attack organisations across the globe.
In the report titled: “Crypto- Guard: An Asymmetric Approach to the Ransomware Battle,” Sophos explained that in remote encryption attacks, also known as remote ransomware, adversaries leveraged a compromised and often under-protected endpoint to encrypt data on other devices connected to the same network.
The company noted that these attacks were particularly troublesome as traditional anti-ransomware protection methods cannot feasibly detect malicious files or activity, thus failing to protect them from unauthorized encryption and potential data loss.
Speaking on the findings by the company, the Vice President of Threat Research at Sophos, and the co-creator of CryptoGuard, Mark Loman, said: “Companies can have thousands of computers connected to their network, and with remote ransomware, all it takes is one under-protected device to compromise the entire network. “Attackers know this, so they hunt for that one ‘weak spot’ and most companies have at least one.
Remote encryption is going to stay a perennial problem for defenders, and based, on the alerts we’ve seen, the attack method is steadily increasing.”
In 2013, CryptoLocker was the first prolific ransomware to utilise remote encryption with asymmetric encryption, also known as public-key cryptography. Since then, adversaries have been able to escalate the use of ransomware, due to ubiquitous, ongoing security gaps at organisations worldwide and the advent of cryptocurrency.
A cybersecurity expert urged telecoms companies and startups to leverage emerging technologies to secure their businesses in 2024, saying business owners should not wait on the government to fight cyber crimes for them.
