E-Business
Cloud Market Poised for Adoption in Nigeria

COVID-19 has exposed Nigeria’s market to the advantages that cloud can offer a business, and there is a shift in mindset to embrace the cloud operating model (including from on-premise to colocation), with security now front-of-mind for organisations and businesses.
This is according to Laurel Onumonu, AGM & Head Cloud Business Unit at Lagos-based Cyberspace Limited.
Onumonu spoke during VMworld 2020, hosted recently and virtually by VMware, and said Nigeria’s cloud landscape is opening up and gaining momentum, with more interest from businesses in leveraging the technology.
VMware executives said from a broad market perspective, while the overall response to cloud services and adoption does depend on the size of the business and region, the general objective is to become cloud ready.
At VMworld 2020, the company unveiled Virtual Cloud Network innovations that it believes will help customers create a modern network that better supports current and future business initiatives.
“With advancements across the VMware networking and security portfolio, customers will be able to more effectively manage the rapid shift to remote work, deliver traditional and modern applications faster and more securely, and reduce the cost and complexity of connecting and protecting the distributed enterprise,” the company added.
According to VMware businesses today, and the IT and application development teams supporting them, are racing to adapt to a new normal. Application architectures are more modern and cloud native; on premises datacentres are extending to include multi-cloud and edge compute environments; and the work environment is no longer a single campus or branch, but rather anywhere an employee can connect to the Internet.
This new reality introduces complexity that the network of the past 20 years was not designed to address.
“Customers tell us they want the same level of automation they have in the public cloud across their entire environment. But while they can automate some parts of their network, other parts such as firewalls and load balancers still require manual tickets for provisioning. That’s why partial automation is an oxymoron; it’s a half-built bridge that does nothing to get customers to where they want to be,” said Rajiv Ramaswami, chief operating officer, products and cloud services, VMware.
“The VMware Virtual Cloud Network delivers the automation and economics of the public cloud across every element of the network and spanning the entire distributed enterprise at a time when agility and cost matter more than ever.”
VMware will deliver new Virtual Cloud Network innovations across three areas – automation that enables the public cloud experience; modern application connectivity and security services; and solutions that re-imagine what’s possible in network security.
The company also announced Project Monterey—a technology preview focused on evolving its architecture for the datacentre, cloud and edge to address the changing requirements of next-generation applications, including AI, machine learning and 5G applications.
VMware is also announcing that it is collaborating with ecosystem partners to deliver solutions based on Project Monterey including Intel, NVIDIA and Pensando Systems and system companies Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise(HPE)and Lenovo.
“Organisations are introducing increasingly sophisticated applications from cloud-native to machine learning to streaming apps that are distributed and data intensive,” said Ramaswami. “We’re announcing Project Monterey to help customers address the shifting requirements of next-gen apps. By re-imagining the architecture of the datacentre, cloud and edge, we expect to offer customers the freedom to run these apps in the best environment.
According to the Cloud in Africa 2020 Report, released in early September by World Wide Worx, in partnership with F5, Dell Technologies, Digicloud Africa, and Intel, COVID-19 has pushed cloud computing to the front of decision-makers minds.
The study maps out latest cloud trends across continent, including South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana and Malawi.
It showed that 91% of surveyed respondents deemed cloud computing to be “important” in helping with business’ response to the crisis.
Furthermore, eight out of ten respondents (80%) believe that cloud computing has made a significant contribution to governments’ efforts in dealing with the pandemic.
The most common uses by governments were remote working (69%), public communications (55%), and crisis coordination (50%).
E-Business
Domain of Deception as Attackers Deploy Spyware Under Guise of Legal Threats

Kaspersky has detected a rapidly escalating malicious campaign that has targeted over 1,100 corporate users since June 2025. The attackers pose as a legal firm and in their emails threaten recipients with lawsuits over alleged domain name patent violations, aiming to deploy malware.
Victims who opened and launched the attached files – that mimicked legal documents – had a Trojan installed on their devices, and the attackers could spy on the content of their screens. Organisations across healthcare, finance, and education sectors have been targeted.
The campaign began with 95 emails on June 11 and has since continued to escalate. Apart from claiming that the recipient’s domain name violates patented combinations of a major brand and threatening litigation, in the email the fake legal bureau also expresses the patent holders’ interest in acquiring the domain and offers getting acquainted with the details of the alleged violations by opening the attached archive with “documents”.
It is worth noting that the attackers, likely to avoid detection, attach an archive that is not password protected, and inside it includes another archive that is password protected and a file containing the password along with it.
After the user entered the archive password and clicked on the alleged legal document inside, a Trojan was installed on the device. The user saw a message displayed that read, “This document cannot be opened on this device. Try opening it on another windows device,” and simultaneously the Tor Browser was covertly downloaded and installed in the background.
Through it, the malware regularly sent snapshots of the user’s screen to the attackers over the Tor network. The malware also autostarts whenever the computer is restarted.
“This campaign is a sophisticated blend of psychological manipulation and technical deception, leveraging fear of legal action to coerce businesses into executing harmful files hidden in attached archives. Its rapid growth since June 11 underscores the urgency for organisations to bolster defenses.
Victims face the risk of losing their private data. Robust email security, employee training, and swift incident reporting are essential to counter this evolving threat,” comments Anna Lazaricheva, spam analyst at Kaspersky.
E-Business
Global Crypto Heists Surge to $2.1Bn in H1 2025 as Digital Assets is Weaponised

In a sobering revelation of the evolving threat landscape facing the digital asset ecosystem, blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs has disclosed that over $2.1 billion worth of cryptocurrency was stolen in the first half of 2025 alone, spanning at least 75 high-profile hacks and exploits.
This staggering figure marks a 10 per cent surge over the previous first-half record set in 2022 and nearly eclipses the total stolen in all of 2024.
But beyond the monetary scale, the report reveals a deeper concern: a growing trend of state-sponsored cyber aggression weaponising crypto assets for strategic and geopolitical purposes.
The most devastating breach to date occurred in February when Dubai-based exchange Bybit lost $1.5 billion—the largest crypto heist in history.
TRM Labs attributes the attack to North Korean state actors, noting that the incident alone accounted for nearly 70 percent of total losses during the period and doubled the average hack size to $30 million.
“The Bybit hack redefined the threat landscape,” the report stated.
“It exemplifies how digital asset theft has transcended criminal opportunism and morphed into a tool of statecraft.”
Indeed, North Korea-linked entities were responsible for an estimated $1.6 billion of the total stolen, further entrenching Pyongyang’s status as the most prolific nation-state threat actor in the crypto sphere.
Yet the menace is diversifying. On June 18, Iranian crypto exchange Nobitex was breached for over $90 million by a group reportedly linked to Israel, Gonjeshke Darande (Predatory Sparrow).
Unusually, the stolen funds were routed to unusable vanity addresses, underscoring symbolic and political motives rather than financial gain.
TRM Labs flagged this as a “disturbing shift,” with digital asset theft increasingly deployed as a weapon in asymmetric geopolitical conflict.
The report also found that more than 80 percent of losses stemmed from infrastructure breaches, including private key theft, seed phrase leaks, and front-end compromises— attacks typically ten times costlier than other vectors.
Meanwhile, DeFi exploits such as flash loan manipulations accounted for 12 percent of losses, reflecting persistent smart contract vulnerabilities despite years of scrutiny.
As digital currencies become enmeshed in global rivalries, TRM Labs warns that conventional cybersecurity approaches are now inadequate.
“Massive breaches, often tied to nation-state operations, require a new defence paradigm,” the firm asserted, urging industrywide adoption of advanced safeguards and cross-border collaboration among regulators and law enforcement.
E-Business
CAC Launches AI-powered Business Registration Portal

Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) has inaugurated the pilot take-off of its new Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered registration portal.
A statement issued by the commission explained that Malam Hussaini Magaji, registrar-general of the CAC, made the announcement during the 2025 Stakeholders Forum in Port Harcourt.
According to him, “the initiative is a major milestone in Nigeria’s business facilitation drive.”
The Registrar further explained that the upgraded portal marks a complete overhaul of the Company Registration Portal (CRP), saying that it comes with advanced features designed to simplify and speed up business registration.
The new system, according to him, allows for instant name reservation approvals, likening the ease to creating an email account, and stressing that the AI-powered platform could suggest available alternatives to business names and approve them immediately.
Another innovation, he stated, is the ability to register a business using only the National Identification Number (NIN) of a director or proprietor, pointing out that there is an ambitious target of completing business registration and certificate generation within 30 minutes, subject to real-time NIN validation.
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