By Ibukun Emiola, News Agency of Nigeria

An entrepreneur, Mrs Oreofe Aina, very early on a Saturday morning tried to log into her account with a Fintech company but couldn’t. She tried several times and used various means but she was unsuccessful.

This sent a panic signal and she contacted the financial company via email. Her efforts to log back into her account later became successful.

Her fear stemmed from the news of a Fintech company hacked by fraudsters which rented the airwaves sometimes ago.

“My heart was racing. I thought I had lost all my money just like that.

“You can’t blame my initial panic response. I just read about how hackers broke into Opay,” Aina said.

Aina, having gained access, moved all her money to another bank account for fear of hackers.

According to reports, the account of the Fintech company was hacked and cloned. The cloned website was then used to mislead owners of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and entrepreneurs.

At one point or the other over the years many Nigerians have had the same experience and would panic because of activities of fraudulent people and what they perceived as lack of strong cyber security protection.

A Cyber security and Data expert, Mr Oluwaleke Oni, said it was imperative to strengthen cyber security policies in Nigeria, especially with the increasing number of cyber-attacks targeting companies and individuals.

“By combining updated legislation, technological investments, public awareness campaigns, and partnerships, Nigeria can create a robust cyber security ecosystem.

“Building trust requires transparency, swift response to incidents, and ensuring individuals and organisations feel their data is safe in an increasingly digital world,” Oni said.

He stressed the need to encourage digital responsibility and personal accountability.

“Educating individuals about securing personal devices, using strong passwords, and avoiding unsafe websites are also important.

“There is also the need to work with Mobile Network Providers, and indeed, telecom companies to improve SIM card and internet service security,” Oni said.

The cyber security expert stated that promoting cyber security awareness through public education would help.

He said such awareness could be the launch of nationwide campaigns to educate citizens about common threats like phishing, fake investment schemes, and mobile fraud.

“Some Nigerian businesses lack cyber security knowledge. Offering training programmes for small and medium enterprises on data protection practices will be beneficial.

“This awareness can be introduced into school curricula. Cyber security education in schools would build awareness from a young age,” he said.

Oni, however, urged companies and organisations in digital space to invest in advanced technologies.

According to him, organisations should invest in implementing end-to-end encryption, multi-factor authentication, and tokenisation to safeguard sensitive data.

“Intelligence Systems are needed to deploy Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) systems for early threat detection and prevention.

“Also, block chain security should be explored. Block chain can be used to secure transactions, especially in the financial sector,” Oni said.

He stated that establishing Incident Response Teams; some sort of a Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) at state and local levels to provide rapid responses to breaches would help identify and recover digital goods stolen and even deter perpetrators.

Also, Mr Ahmed Olanrewaju, Principal Systems Analyst, Management Information System Unit, University of Ibadan, said the major issue to be tackled is users’ education; both on the part of individuals and organisations.

Olanrewaju noted that often times employees who left an organisation still have some form of access which can later be used to compromise the system of the organisation.

According to him, collaborations that can jeopardise the organisation could be formed by those within and outside any organisation if proper mode of exit protocols were not in place.

Olanrewaju emphasised the need for following standard procedures and best practices in handling hardware gadgets and software of organisations by staffers to ensure there were no loopholes hackers can use to penetrate.

“If hackers break through into a bank system to steal, did it start overnight?

“An official laptop is not supposed to be taken home when you have sensitive data in it. Imagine people with official laptops and they use it for other purposes outside work.

“For some people, their child will need that same official laptop to process their own assignments. The other documents in the system, if they are not encrypted, then compromise has set in already,” Olanrewaju said.

He underscored the need for regular audit by organisations to know who has access to what and frequent change of protocols especially password to sensitive data to deter hackers.

According to him, education is key to reducing the activities of hackers and security digital financial services, digital data management services and other digital public infrastructures processes towards digital transformation.

Olanrewaju said it was alarming the number of people who were always eager to learn about how to safeguard themselves while online or using digital services.

“When you are talking about cyber security, the major factor is these loopholes. If you bring the best cyber security experts in the world, and yet there is no user education, you are wasting your time.

“In Nigeria, there is no education, both on the users side and organisations. It is a very big issue. There should be a law on user education,” Olanrewaju said. (NAN) (www.nannews.ng)

**If used, please credit the writer and the News agency of Nigeria (NAN).

“This report is produced under the DPI Africa Journalism Fellowship Programme of the Media Foundation for West Africa and Co-Develop.”