E-Business
Social Media Becomes Biggest Data Breach Threat – Report

Social media incidents accounted for over 56% of the 4.5 billion data records compromised worldwide in the first half of 2018.
This is according to Gemalto’s latest Breach Level Index, a global database of public data breaches.
Gemalto says over the first six months of this year, there were 945 data breaches. Just six social media breaches accounted for over half of all records compromised. This included the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook incident, where the personal information of up to 87 million users may have been improperly shared with the political consultancy.
In April, Facebook revealed that almost 60 000 South African Facebook users could have been impacted by the social network’s data leak. Last month, Facebook announced another breach affecting 50 million of its global users.
“Obviously, this year social media has been the top industry and threat vector for the compromise of personal data, a trend we can expect to continue, with more and more sectors leveraging these platforms to reach key audiences, especially political teams gearing up for major elections,” says Jason Hart, VP and CTO for data protection at Gemalto.
Just this week, Google announced it was shutting down the consumer version of its social network Google+ and revealed that data from up to 500 000 users may have been exposed to external developers by a bug that was present for more than two years in its systems.
Closer to home, South African data centre operator Hetzner yesterday disclosed a “security incident” involving account information; this after it previously revealed it had been hacked almost a year ago.
Rising risk
Compared to the same period in 2017, Gemalto found the number of lost, stolen or compromised records increased by 133%, though the total number of breaches slightly decreased over the same period, signalling an increase in the severity of each incident.
According to the Breach Level Index, almost 15 billion data records have been exposed since 2013, when the index began benchmarking publicly disclosed data breaches.
“During the first six months of 2018, more than 25 million records were compromised or exposed every day, or 291 records every second, including medical, credit card and/or financial data or personally identifiable information,” the report reads.
“This is particularly concerning, since only 1% of the stolen, lost or compromised data records were protected by encryption to render the information useless, a percent-and-a-half drop compared to the first six months of 2017.”
Breach sources
Gemalto says malicious outsiders caused the largest percentage of data breaches (56%), a decrease of almost 7% over the second half of 2017, and accounted for over 80% of all stolen, compromised or lost records. Accidental loss accounted for over 879 million (9%) of the records lost this half, the second most popular cause of data breaches, representing over one-third of incidents.
Identity theft continues to be the leading type of data breach, as it has been since Gemalto first started tracking in 2013. While the number of identity theft breaches increased by 13% over the second half of 2017 to just over 64%, the number of records stolen through these incidents increased by 539%, representing over 87% of all records stolen.
“Financial access incidents show a disturbing trend in the escalation of severity,” Gemalto says.
Although it found that overall incident numbers are on the decline, 171 in the first half of 2017 compared to 123 in the same period in 2018, the number of records breached in the six-month period increased from 2.7 million in 2017 to 359 million this year.
Most sectors saw an increase in the number of incidents compared to the previous half. The exceptions were government, professional services, retail and technology, though both government and retail saw an increase in the number of records breached through fewer events.
Healthcare continues to lead in number of incidents (27%), with the largest such incident, 211 LA County, exposing 3.5 million records through accidental loss.
Social media ranks top for number of records breached due to the high-profile customer data compromises at Facebook and Twitter, although the number of incidents is the lowest, making up less than 1% of the total.
E-Business
FG Mulls Fibre Optic Layout to Bridge Internet Gaps

President Bola Tinubu said that his administration has initiated a project to install fibre optic cables across the country, aimed at enhancing the socio-economic development of Nigeria.
His plans were contained in a speech he delivered at a joint session of the National Assembly in commemoration of Democracy Day on Thursday, June 12.
He said the fibre optic layout is part of other projects being embarked on.
“In addition, we have embarked on an ambitious project to lay fibre optic cables across the nation, a transformative step toward bridging the digital divide and fostering greater connectivity.
“This initiative promises not only to enhance the speed and reliability of internet access but also to revolutionise how businesses operate, how students learn, and how communities stay connected,” Tinubu stated.
He maintained that by extending this critical infrastructure, his government is empowering entrepreneurs, enabling digital education, and providing the tools for our youth to compete in a globalised world.
In a most recent report on Internet connectivity, The ICIR pointed out how Nigeria has faced setbacks in its deployment of fibre optic cables and needs a transformation.
The challenges revolve around vandalism, inadequate coordination between road construction and telecom infrastructure, and varying right-of-way (RoW) charges across states.
Among industry experts, these issues impact network outages, increase repair costs, and hinder broadband expansion efforts.
It has also further threatened the digital economy, leading to slower Internet speeds, dropped calls, and unreliable connectivity among others.
E-Business
African Startups Raised $345m in Funding in May

African startups raised more than $345 million across 65 deals in May, more than double the amount raised in the same period of last year, according to a report by Briter, a research and business intelligence firm.
The report disclosed that both the number of deals and participating companies declined, confirming a growing trend of fewer companies raising funds in larger sizes.
It said fintech attracted the highest share of funding in May, accounting for 34 percent of the total, while cleantech followed closely, driven by a debt deal from Sun King. The company raised $80 million (in local currency) to expand clean energy access in Nigeria.
“Equity remains the primary instrument in terms of total value. There’s no doubt about it; in fact, equity deals with disclosed amounts captured more than half of the total funding volume in May.
“However, debt financing is increasingly proving its weight. Although it accounted for only 8 percent of all deals, it represented 32 percent of the total funding, highlighting the typically larger size of debt transactions. With the rise of specialised vehicles targeting early-stage businesses, debt is becoming an increasingly important part of Africa’s innovation funding landscape,” it said.
Briter’s report added that grants continued to play a vital role in early-stage support, especially in the education technology (EdTech) sector. The Mastercard Foundation led the pack in grant activity, funding a new cohort of EdTech innovators in Nigeria and Kenya. Each selected startup is set to receive $100,000 in grant funding, in addition to mentorship and business development support.
Multilaterals also made a strong showing in May, it said. The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), a World Bank Group member, issued a $179.6 million guarantee to CleanTech firm KOKO Networks. The support will help scale its clean energy solutions across Kenya.
“This deal not only demonstrates growing international confidence in African climate ventures but also signals a promising pathway for other asset-intensive startups in clean cooking, agriculture, and renewable energy,” the report said.
From a geographic perspective, Egypt emerged as the continent’s fundraising powerhouse for the month, contributing 51 percent of all funding raised. The country recorded 12 deals across equity, debt, and bond instruments. Notably, FinTech platform MNT-Halan raised $50 million through a bond issuance, further illustrating the diversification of capital-raising mechanisms in the region.
Outside Egypt, funding was distributed across Africa’s three other key markets, which are Egypt, Nigeria, and Kenya, with limited activity recorded in countries such as Ghana, Tunisia, Morocco, and Uganda, each registering between one and three deals.
In terms of exits, the African tech landscape continues to mature. Three companies—Baobab+, Qardy, and Shopa—were acquired in May, bringing the total number of exits this year to 22. This already surpasses last year’s count for the same period. Qardy was acquired by Catalyst Partners Middle East (CPME) in a disclosed deal valued at $23 million, the report added.
E-Business
Human Hacking: When Cyber Criminals Target You

By Nancy Werteen
When you get anti-hacking advice, you’ve probably heard “Don’t use a simple password,” or “Don’t plug in that USB you found on the ground.”
But there’s one form of hacking that doesn’t always require a computer, and it costs businesses about 4.88 million dollars a year.
Modern hackers aren’t trying to get into your computer; they’re trying to get into you.
“They’ll try to learn about you a little bit, and they’ll try to use that information against you to try to get you to complete some action, maybe to send somebody some money,” said Kevin Moran, PhD, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Cyber Security and Privacy Cluster, University of Central Florida.
IBM calls this human hacking, because it exploits human error instead of system error.
“With people just being busy and maybe not very carefully checking some of the emails or the phone calls that they get, can be something unfortunately that people can fall victim to,” said Moran.
Also known as social engineering, this often takes the form of phishing, where the hacker tries to “fish” the information out of you by impersonating family, friends, or even your bank.
There’s also baiting, where the hacker baits you with something of value. Remember the Nigerian prince scam?
That’s a famous example of baiting. There’s also pretexting, where the hacker will claim the victim has already been hacked, and that the hacker can fix it if you just send over your passwords. So, what can you do?
“Just as a rule of thumb, instead of clicking on links and emails, just go to the website yourself. And that will prevent, a lot of these types of attacks from happening,” explained Moran.
Phishing can take many forms.
Spear phishing targets people with access to confidential information, often to get access into an entire business, and whale phishing targets CEOs or political figures.
Search engine phishing is when hackers create fake websites promising services or goods you’ll never receive.
Angler phishing is when hackers create fake social media accounts impersonating famous people or companies.
Finally, vishing and smishing is phishing done through phone calls and texts respectively.
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