Nigerian Economy Attracts Investors, Terrorists - Symantec

Nigeria faces new threat from people hiding under the anonymity of the internet to wreck havoc adding to her notoriety as haven for car hijacking, armed robbery and sea piracy, a new report made available to Nigeria CommunicationsWeek revealed.

The report, 2012 global cyber vulnerability index ranked Nigeria 59 indicating that Nigeria’s rising economic profile boosted by global crude oil pricing is attracting not only foreign direct investments (FDIs), but also computer hackers who have subsequently raised the country’s internet security risk profile.

Symantec Corporation, the largest maker of security software for computers, best known for its Norton brand in its 2012 internet security threat report volume 17, ranked Nigeria in 59th position up from the previous 66th position.

The threat also means that Nigeria’s military institutions could be open to malicious malware attack by an adventurous hacker, even a disgruntled employee could breach its security protocol as seen by the recent United States Pentagon (US Defence Headquarters) leaks to wikileaks.com.

A recent case in point is the introduction of Stuxnet and Duqu, which were specifically targeted at (enemy) strategic state apparatus.

The latest of such being Flame, leading to the United Nations warning against global cyber-war.

Sheldon Hand, Symantec Territory manager, West, East, Central Africa and Indian Ocean Islands (IWECA), stated at a one-day global internet security threats workshop held in Lagos that Nigeria has gained more global attention because of its rising economic profile.

Recent World Bank Global Economic prospect report released showed GDP growth rate for Sub-Saharan Africa is projected at over 6 per cent, from a projected 5.3 per cent in 2011.

 This is despite the G8 countries experiencing negative balances in their economies. The report specifically noted that Nigeria is expected to surpass the continent’s economic powerhouse, South Africa by 2015.

Boosted by this outlook, internet hackers find the Nigerian territory becoming more lucrative to exploit as investors also continue to find the market quite attractive to plough.

Elsewhere, Nigeria’s rising internet usage profile also attracts spammers to her, resulting in increase in spam activities. Currently, Nigeria has 45 million registered internet users, and with the adoption of mobile devices the figure keeps increasing by the day.

Hand listed four key global spam trends, noting that malware attacks were on the rise as much as 81 per cent, targeted attacks are expanding, mobile threats expose all users and data breaches are on the rise too.

The Symantec Territory manager stated that over 60 per cent of Nigeria’s telecommunications operators are hooked on its security, while 50 per cent of banks are also protected. “With increasing use of IT facilities across the banking and telecommunications ecosystems, more and more corporations are seeking ways to protect data either from being corrupted or stolen,” said Hand.

Worldwide 294 billion emails are sent daily, translating to 2.8 million emails every second. But astonishingly, some 50 per cent of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) lack disaster recovery plan.

According to Hand, the risk of losing critical data is more on the increase as the world get more connected devices on the internet.

 There are currently one billion connected devices globally, while 1.3 billion PCs are connected to the internet.

To keep these critical data safe, Hand said Symantec has recently introduced two products: Backup Exec 2012 and NetBackUp 7.5 to take care of security needs of both SMEs and big firms.

The increasing internet data security threat to Nigeria’s economy is underlined in the fact that a single malware attack on institutions like the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) or the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) could throw the entire economy into gloom.

Globally, Hand stated that Symantec blocked a total of over 5.5 billion malware attacks in 2011, an 81 per cent increase over 2010.

Web based attacks increased by 36 per cent with over 4,500 new attacks each day. 403 million new variants of malware were created in 2011, a 41 per cent increase of 2010. Spam volumes dropped by 13 per cent in 2011 over rates in 2010. 39 per cent of malware attacks via email used a link to a web page. Mobile vulnerabilities continued to rise with 315 discovered in 2011.