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E-Business

Remote Connections Up 44 per cent During COVID-19 Lockdown in Nigeria

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As a result of the COVID-19 Pandemic, many organizations in Africa are finding themselves transitioning their workforce to work from home. IT departments are re-architecting their environments on the fly to allow for remote access.

According to a report by Serianu made available to Nigeria CommunicationsWeek, “in Nigeria, remote connections have increased by around 44% since the onset of Covid-19 with highest increase realized in March, 2020 after the president declared lockdown in key cities. Lagos is the most affected state, hosting over 40 per cent of the identified vulnerable connections put at over 4,500 vulnerable connections.”

The report noted that with the increased usage of these services comes an increased risk of compromise. Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) and Virtual Private Network (VPN) services have registered a history of security issues and publicly disclosed vulnerabilities and many organizations are slow to patch their systems for known exploits.

William Makatiani, managing director, Serianu Limited, identifying how organisations can protect themselves said: “It is important to remember any time you try to access something remotely there is a risk. And because Remote Desktop Protocol fully controls a system, you should regulate, monitor and manage who has access closely.

“Enable strong passwords and account lockout policies to defend against brute-force attacks; use two-factor authentication; audit your network for systems using RDP for remote communication. Disable the service if unneeded or install available patches. Users may need to work with their technology vendors to confirm that patches will not affect system processes among others.”

Also responding to the report, Kenneth Okereafor, cybersecurity and Biometric expert said that COVID-19 pandemic has a peculiar impact on the state of cybersecurity in Africa, “peculiar due to our unique economic and developmental challenges. The social distancing requirements of the pandemic have necessitated the embrace of technology for remote office colloquially referred to as “Work From Home” since we live in a highly connected world of data”.

He identified three major cybersecurity issues which organizations in Nigeria have to contend with as employees work from outside of a traditional office environment are.

“First, sensitive official data being transmitted across unsafe telecommunications channels and poorly-protected telecommuting systems can be intercepted by internet fraudsters and used to defraud banks, gain unauthorized assess activate ransom advantage, or can be simply modified for use in future cybercrime.

“As such, organizations must therefore ensure that their remote work communications channels including Wifi, radio, web portals etc, are protected with strong encryption technologies and intrusion detection systems.

“Secondly, data leaks associated with insecure teleworking systems could become rampant due to poor access control mechanisms. The resulting privacy breaches have a long-term negative effect on the reputation of the organization and could trigger costly litigations, operational disruption, or negative impact on business survivability.

“As a remedy, prior to adopting remote work systems, corporate organizations must provide strong identity authentication systems to forestall impersonation and to enforce multi-layered verification of legitimate personnel authorized to access classified data.

“More so, with slow networks, remote working could become a nightmare that will affect the prompt availability of data at the point of need. Delayed access to data could impose life-threatening impacts on organizations that rely on the timeliness of data access for services such as banking transactions, emergency healthcare, aviation control, and crime forensics.

“To this end, a holistic Coordinated Continental Cybersecurity Agenda (CCCA) to prevent, detect and mitigate the COVID-19 induced cybersecurity breaches is proposed, including benchmarking, idea sharing, cybersecurity legislation and attribution, capacity development, and technology transfer.


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E-Business

NIMC Says NIN Services Back Online

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National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has announced the restoration of its National Identification Number (NIN) verification services nationwide.

NIMC Says NIN Services Back Online

This, according to the commission, follows the completion of a system maintenance exercise.

In a statement issued on Friday, the NIMC confirmed that all previously disrupted services have resumed.

“NIMC wishes to inform the general public that the recent technical maintenance has been completed and all services have been restored,” the statement read.

The NIMC urged Nigerians seeking to enroll for NIN to visit the its official website to locate the nearest enrollment centers.

The agency also encouraged individuals to make use of its self-service portal for tasks such as data modification, including name changes.

To further ease the verification process, the Commission recommended downloading the NIMC NameAuth app (oath.app) from the Google Play Store or Apple App Store for quick and secure NIN authentication.

NIMC expressed appreciation for the public’s patience during the service disruption, which had impacted banks, telecom providers, and government agencies that rely on NIN verification for their operations.

 


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Report Reveals African Organizations Dangerously Overestimating Cyber defences

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Many businesses are overestimating their defence against cyber attacks, which creates a significant human risk blind spot. A new KnowBe4 report exposes a worrying disconnect between what leaders think about their cyber security readiness and what employees experience.

According to the KnowBe4 Africa Human Risk Management Report 2025, based on insights from cyber security decision-makers across 30 African countries, despite high awareness, a critical gap exists in turning that awareness into actual readiness and resilient behaviour.

Key findings from the KnowBe4 Africa Human Risk Management Report 2025:

Confidence vs awareness: While cyber security awareness is high, leaders express uncertainty about their workforce’s ability to act on that awareness. Many feel employees may overestimate their capabilities in recognising, reporting and mitigating threats.

The need for adaptive and personalised security awareness training: Many companies fail to personalise security awareness training to specific roles or risk exposures.

Widespread BYOD usage: A large percentage of employees (between 41% and 80%) use their personal devices for work.

AI policy development is lagging: Many companies (46%) are still in the process of developing policies for using AI tools in the workplace.

Regional variation: Southern Africa trains more, East Africa governs AI better and West/Central Africa sees the most human-related security incidents.

This gap is significant because Africa has become an attractive target to cyber criminals, especially those that launch AI-powered attacks. A LexisNexis Risk Solutions study found 60% of South African organisations have seen an increase in AI-facilitated financial crime – above the 56% global average.

Kehinde Popoola, regional manager and key representative for West and East Africa at Rubrik, said digital transformation is gaining momentum in Africa and companies are more exposed to cyber risk. The Rubrik executive adds that amid an increase in threats, it is crucial that organisations adopt an assumed breach mindset.

The KnowBe4 research shows that cyber security preparedness and the actual structures required to support secure behaviour seem misaligned.

The report highlights that just 10% of cyber security leaders are fully confident that staff would report a phishing attack or other cyber threat, despite rating employee security awareness of cyber threats at four out of five or higher.

There is also a significant perception gap between decision-makers and general employees in Africa regarding security awareness training, with 68% of leaders believing that training is tailored to roles, compared to only a third of employees feeling adequately trained.

KnowBe4 asserts that many organisations only conduct annual or biannual training that is too generic to effectively change behaviour, contributing to uncertainty about its effectiveness.

According to another report, the KnowBe4 African Cybersecurity and Awareness Report 2025, which focuses on end-user based responses, only 43% of African respondents felt confident in their ability to recognise a cyber threat, and just one in three believed their security awareness training was adequately tailored to their role. This comparison suggests the development of a dangerous perception gap in many organisations.

“There’s a disconnect here – between what leaders think is happening and what employees are actually experiencing,” says Anna Collard, SVP content strategy and evangelist at KnowBe4 Africa. “The data shows that without procedural and cultural follow-through, awareness simply doesn’t translate into readiness.”

“The continent’s cyber security posture may be more confident than it is truly resilient,” Collard adds.

 


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Domain of Deception as Attackers Deploy Spyware Under Guise of Legal Threats

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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.

 


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