Telecom
Cyber Security Myths You Must Forget, To Avoid Being Hacked
Cyber security threats are real. The cyber traitors penetrate every facet of the economy.
For instance, the Nigerian Inter-Bank Settlement System, NIBSS), disclosed that the banking industry lost the sum of N12.30 billion to various frauds between 2014 and 2017, with male accounting for 73 percent of the total fraud committed.
Mr Adebisi Shonubi, Managing Director of NIBBS, made the disclosure at the third Annual Banking Security Summit organized by MAXUT Consulting in partnership with OneSpan, a global data security company in Lagos, recently.
Specifically, he noted that 2014 fraud volume stood at 1,461, 10,743 (2015), 19,531 in 2016 and 25,043 in 2017.
Speaking on “Industry fraud overview with focus on mobile & payments related frauds,” Shonubi said the industry lost N6.22 billion in 2014 on attempted fraud value of N7.76 billion.
Thus, because of these trends companies are even falling prey to two myths that often cloud the judgement of business owners when it comes to Cyber-attacks.
Whilst they mostly think they are safe, the myths actually increase their chances of falling in the hands of cyber-criminals and hackers.
The first Cyber Security Myth is that many business owners still believe that all cyber attacks are targeted.
This means that unless they’re specifically selected as the prey of a hacking attack, they won’t fall victim.
It is not uncommon to see businesses that believe they will not be in the sights of cybercriminals, so aren’t at risk from suffering the negative effects of a cyber-attack.
You may even be one of such people with this belief, but if you ask the Western business leaders that were hit by NotPetya in 2017, they would definitely have stories to tell you that would change your mindset about cyber-attacks.
To quickly recap what NotPetya was about – it was a malware campaign launched against Ukraine by Russia, which quickly spread around the world, knocking businesses offline and doing vast amounts of damage to people who weren’t primary targets of the attack in the first place.
The original target of the attack was Ukrainian infrastructure, but it damaged — amongst other things — British advertising and pharmaceutical companies, as well as the shipping giant, Maersk!
The impact of NotPetya forced Maersk to reinstall 4,000 servers and over 45,000 PCs, with losses caused by serious business interruption estimated to amount to over $300m, despite the shipping firm never being the intended target of the attack.
Another example of how unsuspecting organizations can find themselves the victims of a major cyber attack is the incidence of WannaCry Ransomware.
The UK’s National Health Service found itself an unwitting victim of the campaign spread via an aggressive worm-like virus launched by North Korea in an effort to extort ransoms.
Despite the fact that you would wonder about the absurdity of attacking a body like NHS, yet they weren’t spared. This means that when it comes to cyber attacks, there is really no one that can be spared!
The second Cyber Security Myth is that some businesses don’t engage with cybersecurity because they believe it to be too complicated.
This is quite an irony as businesses usually have to deal with complicated issues every day, and it begs the question of why understanding cyber-security should be too complicated to figure out. Actually, it isn’t even complicated!
If your company can deal with complex data, millions of financial transactions, transportation of goods from one end to another, provision of services to diverse customers, or anything at all, cybersecurity is not something you should not be able to comprehend and deploy.
Even simple activities like ensuring systems and software are up to date can go a long way to protecting organizations from cyberattacks.
This approach could have helped organizations around the world avoid becoming victims of Cloud Hopper, a data-stealing espionage campaign, which Western authorities have attributed to China’s state-backed hacking group APT10.
Much of the campaign was based around distributing phishing emails containing malicious Word documents, which — when opened — ran macros that retrieve malware.
If the targeted organizations had applied relevant patches, the vulnerabilities exploited by the attackers wouldn’t have had any effect. And you can only blame this on poor cybersecurity or understanding of it because while the APT in APT10 stands for ‘Advanced Persistent Threat’, the attack wasn’t that advanced.
Dispelling these two cybersecurity myths from your mind can go a long way from keeping you safe against attacks that may put your business data and infrastructure at risk of loss or ransom.
To know about more myths that need to be forgotten, or get exposed to different ways to mitigate cybersecurity threats, make it a date to the Sidmach-Sophos Lunch and Learn event happening this February.
At the event, you will also learn about cost effective security dynamics, get introduced to tools that mitigate latest threats, have complete visibility and control of your IT Infrastructure.
To know how to dispel these myths REGISTER for Sophos/Sidmach Lunch & Learn. Email: corporate@sidmach.com
Attendance is strictly by registration!
African women remain among the most digitally excluded globally, with smartphone affordability and digital literacy among the key barriers. New data from the 2025 GSMA Mobile Gender Gap Report, launched recently, reveals a persistent global gender gap in mobile internet use across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
It further notes that literacy, digital skills, safety, and affordability of data also remain critical barriers. The report highlights that 885 million women across these regions still do not use mobile internet, with nearly 60% of them living in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
While mobile internet is the primary way women in LMICs access the internet, offering critical lifelines to health, education, and financial services, the pace of female adoption has stalled, leaving 235 million fewer women than men connected.
Claire Sibthorpe, head of digital inclusion at GSMA, highlighted that the gender gap had narrowed significantly between 2017 and 2020, but progress flatlined in recent years.
Although 2023 brought a slight improvement, restoring the gap to 15%, 2024 saw minimal change, with the gap settling at 14%.
The disparity is most severe in Sub-Saharan Africa, where women are 29% less likely than men to use mobile internet.
“It’s disheartening that progress in reducing the mobile internet gender gap has stalled. The digital divide is driven by deep-rooted socio-economic and cultural factors that disproportionately impact women,” said Sibthorpe.
GSMA projects that closing the gender gap by 2030 could add $1.3 trillion to GDP across LMICs and deliver $230 billion in revenue to the mobile industry.
The report, funded by the UK FCDO, Sida, and the Gates Foundation, stresses the urgent need for targeted investment and policy action to bridge the digital divide and ensure that no woman is left offline.
“The mobile internet gender gap is not going to close on its own. It is driven by deep-rooted social, economic, and cultural factors that disproportionately impact women,” said Sibthorpe.
Remita, the pioneering Nigerian payment technology platform developed by SystemSpecs, is charting a bold new course with its planned expansion into markets across Africa.
What began as a payroll feature in an HR application has now become a robust ecosystem processing over ₦60 trillion annually—one that stands on the verge of reshaping the continent’s fintech landscape, Mr. Deremi Atanda, Managing Director/CEO of Remita Payment Services Limited, says in an exclusive interview that will grace the cover of eGovernance Nigeria Magazine.
The forthcoming edition of eGovernance Nigeria Magazine, a publication of the Technology Times media brand owned and operated by Digital Transformation Media Limited (DTML), will spotlight this extraordinary journey, and present Remita’s evolution as an inspiring tale that informs, educates, and entertains readers about indigenous innovation making global strides.
“We’ve become an ecosystem of rails, products, and services—robust,” Atanda, Managing Director/CEO of Remita explains during the exclusive interview with eGovernance Nigeria Magazine.
“Layering all of that with the many different customers we’ve had, typically every year we process in excess of maybe ₦60 trillion in transactions in Nigerian Naira. And this can only grow, especially as we begin to think of a vibrant Pan-African expansion. We’re at the fringe of that.”
In a compelling narrative that mixes grit, vision, and innovation, Atanda recounts Remita’s early days. “What many people know today as Remita actually started out as a feature within our HR/payroll application.
“You process salaries, and you just want to pay—so just remit salaries. And by the way, that’s where the name ‘Remita’ came from: Remittance. We just took out one ‘T’ and left it at ‘A.’”
Even the company’s logo carries symbolism of that transformation. “I don’t know if you’ve seen our logo—it has three dots, in ascending size. There are many stories in that logo. It started as a feature, and then we brought it out as a product,” Atanda explains.
Yet the road was not without its bumps. “The first time we brought it out as a product was to bid for the National Pension Commission. This was in 2004, with the PenCom Act.
“We packaged this into a product in less than two weeks to take care of end-to-end pensions as it was conceived. Trust me, that vision is still viable today. But we lost that bid.”
Undeterred, SystemSpecs pivoted. “We went back and said, ‘What do we do with this asset?’ If it’s not going to work for pensions, let it become a product. And that’s how we renamed pensions.com.ng as Remita, and it became a product.”
As demand grew, Remita expanded beyond payroll. “Some people want to do their own payroll and just make payments, so let them have a site to go to. Later, it evolved into not just payroll payments. People wanted to do other types of payments. If you want to do non-salary payments, you go to Remita,” he says.
Today, Remita has fully matured into a standalone company. “So those three things—feature, product, company. That’s been the evolution.” With a Tier 1 licence from the Central Bank of Nigeria, Remita is now a fintech powerhouse. “We do switching, we do payment service provisioning, we do super agency, we do terminals—everything you can think about. We provide some basic services within the payment space, including payment service advisory.”
A lesser-known chapter of Remita’s growth includes building Nigeria’s first account-to-accountswitch. “Before TSA, we had built a rail—Nigeria’s first account-to-account switch, worked with all the banks. Not many people know that story. Account-to-account. The front of it, the application, and the rail—first of its kind.”
On the pivotal Treasury Single Account (TSA) deal with the Federal Government of Nigeria, Atanda reveals, “TSA was a happenstance. The government was looking to solve a problem, and we were looking to get regulated. It’s that term people use—when they say ‘luck,’ it’s just preparation meeting opportunity.”
Reflecting on the journey, he adds, “These have been some of those moments where you feel validated, where the visionary leadership that set the business up feels the vision is being realized.”
Today, Remita employs over 300 Nigerians and looks beyond its home shores. “The vision is huge, and we’re committed to that. So, we see exponential growth, and we’re positioning for that.”
Mr. Shina Badaru, Chairman of DTML, says Remita’s story is an inspirational example of local innovation with global relevance. “Remita’s success highlights the critical role of indigenous technology solutions in redefining Africa’s digital economy,” he says.
“As the cover story of the next issue of eGovernance Nigeria Magazine, we aim to showcase how homegrown innovation is not only solving problems locally but is also poised to transform markets across the African continent.”
According to Badaru, “Remita’s inspiring journey connects seamlessly with our article of faith to continue to showcase Nigeria’s growing contributions to the global technology industry.”
eGovernance Nigeria Magazine is a flagship DTML platform with operations across print, digital, TV, events, and e-commerce channels.
“This feature not only celebrates Remita’s evolution,” Badaru adds, “but also signals a pivotal shift in the narrative of Nigerian and African technology—from survival to scale, from local impact to continental transformation.”
As Remita sets its sights on Africa, it is poised to bring financial inclusion, digital infrastructure, and innovative fintech solutions to new and underserved markets. With a strong foundation and visionary leadership, the company is ready to deliver the next phase of its remarkable journey.
Nigeria may bring back a 5per cent excise tax on telecom services, according to the 2024 Finance Bill passed by the Senate last week.
Gbenga Adebayo, chairman, ALTON
The tax would apply to data transmission and voice calls.
First introduced in 2020 under the Mohammadu Buhari administration to widen the tax base, the measure was suspended in 2023 by President Bola Tinubu due to rising inflation.
With the budget under pressure, the government is now considering reinstating it.
Telecom operators warn that the tax would raise service costs and make it harder to close Nigeria’s digital divide, which still leaves more than 40% of the population without internet access.
Gbenga Adebayo, chairman, Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), said the proposal lacks detail and would increase the financial burden on users.
“We’ve had no clarity on how the 5% tax would be implemented, but the burden will fall on the consumer. Telecoms should be treated as a social good, not taxed like luxury items. No one taxes telecoms like this in countries where infrastructure is taken seriously,” he said.
ALTON also noted that operators are already subject to 54 different taxes nationwide.
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has not yet received the official version of the bill for review.
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