Nigeria Loses N78b/$391m To Cyber Criminals Each Year. See Some Of The Methods They Use Here

At a time when cyber theft is at an all time high, Nigeria which has a fairly robust financial sector is not immune to this. Last year, hackers stole data belonging to 76 million households and 7 million small businesses from JP Morgan. Other big institutions also have recorded similar incidents as well. But just how does Nigeria fair when it comes to cyber thefts?

A DataGroupIT report says Nigeria loses 78 billion/$391m to cyber criminals yearly. In a paper titled: Unified Intelligence: Authentication and Fraud, it says financial institutions are the hardest hit followed by associations and government institutions. Breaking it down further, the financial institutions lose about 50 billion Naira, associations lose 11billion Nair, Government establishments 10 billion Naira, epayment companies 3billion and Telecom companies about 4.5 billion.

The CBN which is the regulatory body for financial instructions says it seeks collaboration from the private sector especially in the cash flow management within Nigeria.

The recent mandatory Bank Verification Number exercise is expected to address issues such as elimination of fraud in the system. According to a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) report, financial cyber thefts may occur in one or more of the following ways;

1. Account Takeovers
2. Third Party Payment Processor Breaches
3. Securities and Market Trading Exploitation
4. ATM Skimming and Point of Sale Schemes
5. Mobile Banking Exploitation
6. Insider Access
7. Supply Chain Infiltration
8. Telecommunication Network Disruption
9. Financial Estimates of Damages
10. Addressing the Threat
11. Partnerships
12. Information Sharing

Additionally from the DataGroupIT report, social engineering, malware and SQL injection are other ways through which cyber criminals carry out their actions. Of the three, social engineering is the best known method with 83% while malware and SQL injection and spoofing with 42% and 23% respectively.