cyber criminals’ activities in Nigeria and other parts of the globe worries me – Dr. Isa Pantami

Speaking at a virtual cybersecurity conference organised by the American Business Council (ABC) in partnership with the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy and the United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA), Pantami said cyber-attacks are growing at a rapid rate with more malware being launched than ever before.

Pantami noted the growing impact of cybercrime across the globe, especially with a large percentage of engagements that have been moved to online platforms as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

He called for concerted efforts to curb the rising influence of the menace in Nigeria and other parts of the globe.

At the meeting, it was disclosed that a new piece of malware is released every day within 4.2 seconds. It was stressed that one of the problems that Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) face is how to combat the sheer volume of malware bombarding the public.

It was further noted that the resulting damages of cyber-attacks are not only increasing, but are unfortunately projected to lead to a loss of approximately $5.2 trillion across the globe by 2023, according to Accenture.

The meeting noted that this is over 35 per cent of the GDP of China, 137 per cent the GDP of Germany or over 173 per cent to GDP of the entire African continent.

According to the gathering, the loss to global economies is expected to reach $10.5 trillion by 2025, as such, “cyber losses” economy would be the third largest economy, after the United States and China.

President of the ABC and CEO of IBM West Africa, Dipo Faulkner, pointed out that the increase in Internet users inevitably brought with it an increase in cybercrime.

Faulkner said the coronavirus pandemic which forced an increase in the percentage of work done in cyberspace caused a huge shift, stressing that in Nigeria alone, mobile Internet users grew from 68.5 million in 2019 to 85.26 million in 2020.

According to him, Nigeria, ranked number 16 out of the top 20 international countries affected by cybercrime on the FBI’s Internet crime report published 2020. He said this shows that urgent attention needs to be directed to the sector.

In a bid to tackle this growing problem, Faulkner said the ABC has developed local talents to create innovative solutions to cybersecurity issues at a cyber hackathon that commenced in August 2021