E-Business
Cyberoam Unveils New Firmware CyberoamOS 10.6.2

Cyberoam, a leading global network security provider, has announced a new firmware -CyberoamOS 10.6.2 for its UTM and NGFW security appliances.
Among many updates included in the new firmware are the increase in Firewall throughputs by up to 430%, IPS throughputs by up to 210% and UTM throughputs by up to 190%; inclusion of User Threat Quotient (UTQ) offering security intelligence to spot risky users in network; availability of Cyberoam in Discover mode (popularly known as TAP mode) to help partners and customers evaluate Cyberoam security; and Application Visibility & Controls for HTTPS-based Micro-Apps.
Evolving IT trends like BYOD, application explosion, virtualization, and more, are putting tremendous pressure on today’s network security solutions to deliver higher throughputs and performance in order to keep networks secure and not let security become a bottleneck in network performance.
CyberoamOS 10.6.2 meets these requirements of small offices, mid-market to large and distributed enterprises, with this performance advantage becoming available for the entire family of Cyberoam security appliances.
Speaking on the new offering, Mr. Abhilash Sonwane, SVP – Products & Technology, Cyberoam, said, “We moved many notches up in offering high-performance security at the time of launching our NG Series security appliances. With CyberoamOS 10.6.2, we have touched even higher scales by further leveraging the fast path technology over Cyberoam’s multi-core platform. Our new performance breakthroughs will help Cyberoam customers boost network security performance without changing their existing hardware”.
The higher performance and faster throughputs coming with CyberoamOS 10.6.2 will offer Cyberoam customers maximum protection out of Cyberoam security features (firewall, IPS, AV, UTM).
The enhancements inCyberoamOS 10.6.2 also offer following new functionalities to customers on their security appliances:
User Threat Quotient (UTQ): Available as a report, UTQ harnesses information derived out of web traffic and offers patterns of user behavior to determine risky users in a network. UTQ is available on Cyberoam’s Next-Generation Firewall and UTM appliances.
Application Visibility and Control for Micro Apps:Provides deep-scanning for HTTPS based applications, allowing granular control over various micro-apps within the larger app ecosystems such as Facebook, Google and the like.
Among other key features becoming available include Radius Single-Sign-On (RSSO), IPv6 Traffic Load-balancing support in HA, Secure SMTP and availability of Discover Mode (popularly called TAP mode) that makesPoCevaluation of Cyberoam security appliances simpler, easier and faster.
Cyberoam continues to invest and focus on product innovation and development with important releases and updates to ensure continued success for its customers and partners.
Staying steadfast in its product strategy, Cyberoam is committed to deliver the highest competitive advantage that its technology has, to yield the best possible combination of performance and price.
Underscoring the same strategy, the new CyberoamOS ensures that large and small customersbenefit from the performance improvements of its security appliances.
Cyberoam Technologies, a Sophos Company, is a global Network Security appliances provider, offering future-ready security solutions to physical and virtual networks in organizations with its Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFWs) and Unified Threat Management (UTM) appliances.
The virtual and hardware Cyberoam Central Console appliances offer Centralized Security Management options to organizations, while Cyberoam iView allows intelligent logging and reporting with one-of-their-kind, in-depth reports.
Cyberoam is accredited with prestigious global standards and certifications like EAL4+, CheckMark UTM Level 5 Certification, ICSA Labs, IPv6 Gold logo, and is a member of the Virtual Private Network Consortium.
This blog is adapted from a post that first appeared on NextBillion.
E-Business
AI Slows Down some Experienced Software Developers, Study Finds

Contrary to popular belief, using cutting-edge artificial intelligence tools slowed down experienced software developers when they were working in codebases familiar to them, rather than supercharging their work, a new study found.
AI research nonprofit METR conducted the in-depth study, on a group of seasoned developers earlier this year while they used Cursor, a popular AI coding assistant, to help them complete tasks in open-source projects they were familiar with.
Before the study, the open-source developers believed using AI would speed them up, estimating it would decrease task completion time by 24%. Even after completing the tasks with AI, the developers believed that they had decreased task times by 20%. But the study found that using AI did the opposite: it increased task completion time by 19%.
The study’s lead authors, Joel Becker and Nate Rush, said they were shocked by the results: prior to the study, Rush had written down that he expected “a 2x speed up, somewhat obviously.”
The findings challenge the belief that AI always makes expensive human engineers much more productive, a factor that has attracted substantial investment into companies selling AI products to aid software development.
AI is also expected to replace entry-level coding positions. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, recently told Axios that AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white collar jobs in the next one to five years.
Prior literature on productivity improvements has found significant gains: one study found using AI sped up coders by 56%, another study found developers were able to complete 26% more tasks in a given time.
But the new METR study shows that those gains don’t apply to all software development scenarios. In particular, this study showed that experienced developers intimately familiar with the quirks and requirements of large, established open source codebases experienced a slowdown.
Other studies often rely on software development benchmarks for AI, which sometimes misrepresent real-world tasks, the study’s authors said.
The slowdown stemmed from developers needing to spend time going over and correcting what the AI models suggested.
“When we watched the videos, we found that the AIs made some suggestions about their work, and the suggestions were often directionally correct, but not exactly what’s needed,” Becker said.
The authors cautioned that they do not expect the slowdown to apply in other scenarios, such as for junior engineers or engineers working in codebases they aren’t familiar with.
Still, the majority of the study’s participants, as well as the study’s authors, continue to use Cursor today.
The authors believe it is because AI makes the development experience easier, and in turn, more pleasant, akin to editing an essay instead of staring at a blank page.
“Developers have goals other than completing the task as soon as possible,” Becker said. “So they’re going with this less effortful route.”
E-Business
Firm Uncovers $500K Crypto Heist Through Malicious Packages

Kaspersky GReAT (Global Research and Analysis Team) experts have discovered open-source packages that download the Quasar backdoor and a stealer designed to exfiltrate cryptocurrency. The malicious packages are intended for the Cursor AI development environment, which is based on Visual Studio Code — a tool used for AI-assisted coding.
The malicious open-source packages are extensions hosted in the Open VSX repository that claim to provide support for the Solidity programming language. However, in practice, they download and execute malicious code on users’ devices.
During an incident response, a blockchain developer from Russia reached out to Kaspersky after installing one of these fake extensions on his computer, which allowed attackers to steal approximately $500,000 worth of crypto assets.
The threat actor behind these packages managed to deceive the developer by making the malicious package rank higher than the legitimate one. The attacker achieved this by artificially inflating the malicious package’s downloads count to 54,000.
After installation, the victim gained no actual functionality from the extension. Instead, malicious ScreenConnect software was installed on the computer, granting threat actors remote access to the infected device.
Using this access, they deployed the open-source Quasar backdoor along with a stealer that collects data from browsers, email clients, and crypto wallets. With these tools, the threat actors were able to obtain the developer’s wallet seed phrases and subsequently steal cryptocurrency from the accounts.
After the malicious extension downloaded by the developer was discovered and removed from the repository, the threat actor republished it and artificially inflated its installation count to a higher number – 2 million, compared to 61,000 for the legitimate package. The extension was removed from the platform following a request from Kaspersky.
“Spotting compromised open-source packages with the naked eye is becoming increasingly difficult. Threat actors are using increasingly creative tactics to deceive potential victims, even developers who have a strong understanding of cybersecurity risks — particularly those working in the blockchain development field.
As we expect adversaries to continue targeting developers, it is recommended that even experienced IT professionals deploy dedicated security solutions to safeguard sensitive data and prevent financial losses,” commented Georgy Kucherin, Security Researcher with Kaspersky’s Global Research and Analysis Team.
The threat actor behind the attack published not only malicious Solidity extensions but also another NPM package, solsafe, which also downloads ScreenConnect. A few months earlier, three additional malicious Visual Studio Code extensions were released — solaibot, among-eth, and blankebesxstnion — all of them have already been removed from the repository.
E-Business
NITDA Reaffirms Commitment to 95% Digital Literacy by 2030, as UBEC Pledges Collaboration

Kashifu Inuwa CCIE, the Director General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), has reaffirmed the Federal Government’s unwavering commitment to achieving 95% digital literacy across Nigeria by the year 2030, with an ambitious milestone of 70% by 2027.
This disclosure was made in total alignment with the present administration’s priority areas of reforming the economy for sustained inclusive growth and accelerating diversification through industrialisation, digitisation, creative arts, manufacturing, and innovation.
Making this known during a collaborative meeting hosted by the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Inuwa highlighted the government’s strategic prioritisation of human capital development as central to its national transformation agenda.
“We started this journey in 2023 when President Bola Ahmed Tinubu came on board and he made it clear that economic diversification and inclusivity are part of the administration’s agenda,” he noted.
“And the president outlined this in 8 priority areas to achieve the vision, with priority number 7 specifically focused on accelerating industrialisation, digitisation, creative arts, manufacturing, and innovation,” he added.
Recognising the importance of digital fluency in achieving this agenda, he stated that NITDA is committed to investing in the digital empowerment of citizens through the development of the National Digital Literacy Framework (NDLF), a strategic blueprint aligned with international best practices.
He added that to tailor the framework to Nigeria’s specific needs, 6 core competency areas were incorporated to include device and software operations, information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, content creation, safety, and problem solving.
He explained that the framework would address all levels of digital fluency, from basic, intermediate to advanced levels, to make digital skills accessible to every Nigerian, from primary school pupils to working professionals.
According to Inuwa, despite data limitations, NITDA estimates that Nigeria’s digital literacy rate currently stands at 50%, up from 44% in 2021, based on extrapolations from the World Bank’s Better Life Report.
The NITDA DG disclosed that the agency has been working closely with the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) in developing a curriculum for digital literacy, which can be infused into formal education. Stating that the visit is a continuation of NITDA’s ongoing engagements with key education stakeholders, including the Federal Ministry of Education, the National Universities Commission (NUC), and the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC), all aimed at advancing digital literacy across all levels of learning.
Inuwa also revealed ongoing collaborations with global platforms such as Coursera to train teachers using AI-powered lesson generation tools and provide scalable online training.
It is worth recalling that late last year, NITDA partnered with the Nasarawa State University in collaboration with CISCO in launching the Digital Learning for NSUK (DL4NSUK) initiative to enhance digital literacy in tertiary institutions, and equipping graduates with the skills needed to be digitally proficient and globally competitive.
While stressing that the entire process, from curriculum development to classroom delivery, would require a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach, Inuwa said, “This is not a journey we can walk alone; we must bring everyone on board, education stakeholders, technology providers, state governments, and international partners.”
In response to the DG’s remarks, UBEC Executive Secretary, Hajiya Aisha Garba, confirmed that the Commission has officially received the digital literacy curriculum developed by NITDA and NERDC and has commenced internal review processes.
She acknowledged the curriculum as robust and forward-looking but stressed the need for simplification to suit early learners and teachers, citing challenges such as curriculum overload, limited teacher capacity, and inadequate infrastructure as key barriers to effective implementation.
She pledged that UBEC, in partnership with the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), will lead efforts to equip schools with computers and solar-powered infrastructure to support real learning.
“We’re committed to working with NITDA and NERDC to refine the curriculum, train teachers, and ensure effective delivery. Let us align the technical vision with grassroots realities to make a lasting impact,” she concluded.
To formalise the implementation of the meeting’s resolutions, a joint inter-agency committee was established to develop strategic plans that will ensure the effective rollout of the digital literacy initiative, to equip young Nigerians with the essential digital skills required to thrive in an increasingly dynamic and technology-driven global landscape.
- Broadcasting3 days ago
EFCC Re-Arraigns Echefu, TStv CEO for Allegedly Defrauding Ex-Minister of N1Bn, $1.3m
- Telecom3 days ago
4 Dead, 20 Others Injured as Fire Engulfs Cairo Data Centre
- General News3 days ago
FG Declares Admissions outside CAPS Illegal
- General News3 days ago
BRICS Leaders Seek Inclusive Access to AI
- News3 days ago
Nigeria Loses over N200Bn from SSB Tax Annually – CAPPA
- E-Financial2 days ago
GOEs’ Remit Over ₦2tn to FG in 2024
- Telecom3 days ago
SiBAN Applauds Interstellar’s Groundbreaking Role in Africa’s Blockchain Future
- Telecom3 days ago
Globalcom Thrills Subscribers with 3 New Digital Products