E-Business
Securing Your Organization Against Ransomware Attacks

Nigerian businesses continue to reap immense gains from deploying contemporary digital technologies in the design and execution of their processes. But these tools aren’t always insulated from potential sabotage. Malicious actors may find vulnerabilities in those technologies, and exploit such weaknesses to wreak havoc on the organizations that use them.
One way that cybercriminals do this is by targeting their victims with ransomware. Over the past decade, cyberattacks involving ransomware have grown in number, and have become more sophisticated. These attacks hit SMEs and large corporations, and even public sector agencies, and costs them tens of millions of naira.
If you are a business or an institution in Nigeria, you should be concerned about ransomware and the damage it could cause you.
Ransomware: A Brief Introduction
Ransomware is a program that blocks access to its victim’s files until the victim pays a ransom. Cybercriminals infect a target’s computer with it, aiming to extort a specific amount of money from that target in return for restored access, in a manner akin to a kidnap-for-ransom.
Typically, the perpetrator would send ransomware disguised as a harmless file to victims. If the target downloads or opens the file, it infects their system. The program may be spread through email attachments, malicious URLs, remote desktop protocol, and even malicious advertising.
Newer ransomware types can self-propagate across a network, potentially infecting every system used in an organization. They are capable of shutting down entire businesses.
Ransomware Attacks Are Fairly Common
Reports on the state of IT and the contemporary business environment reveal that ransomware attacks are fairly common across the globe. Not surprisingly, they are usually concentrated on businesses.
In 2020 alone, there were an estimated 304 million ransomware attacks worldwide. This was up 62% on the previous year. According to the Singapore Computer Emergency Response Team, there was “a seven-fold jump” in the number of reported ransomware incidents in the first half of 2020.
Some of that spike in activity was attributed to cyber criminals trying to exploit lapse IT security during the COVID-19 pandemic; their targets were predominantly remote workforces. However, these incidents have numbered in the hundreds of millions per year since 2016.
Nigerian organizations have been affected. A report by the Sophos Group, a UK-based security software and hardware security firm, revealed that 53% of the Nigerian businesses it surveyed had been victims of ransomware in 2019.
Of the businesses hit, about 38% of them admitted to paying the attackers to regain access to their files. However, the Sophos report indicated that these payments didn’t always result in the victims recovering all their resources.
A Few Well-Known Ransomware Attacks
In 2019 and 2020, many companies worldwide were targeted by ransomware called Ryuk. It is spread via malicious emails that contain dubious links or attachments. If successfully deployed on an organization’s computers, it can request a ransom of more than $300,000. As of January 2021, cybercriminals had reaped more than $150 million from Ryuk.
Three years before this, another ransomware, Petya, began infecting computers in several countries. It denied users access to their Operating Systems and demanded a $300 ransom from them. A later version did not unlock the infected system even after the ransom was paid.
The most infamous ransomware attack to date involved the WannaCry program, which infected more than 200,000 computers in over 150 countries. In May 2017, it spread across the world fairly rapidly, affecting both businesses and public institutions. The global cost of the attack is believed to have exceeded $4 billion.
Since the first known ransomware was created in 1989, several more have been designed and deployed, to devastating effect.
Organizations Incur Significant Costs from Ransomware Attacks
The cost of recovering from a ransomware attack has doubled in the past year. The cumulative global cost was well over $1 billion in 2020 alone.
Sophos says that these incidents cost mid-sized businesses an average of $133,000 annually. Some companies incurred several million dollars in recovery costs. In many cases, this expenditure racks up from multiple incidents.
The most hard-hit sectors included media, IT and telecoms, and energy/oil and gas utilities. The public sector was the least frequently targeted. Regardless, organizations in these domains have spent large amounts of money on damages inflicted by ransomware.
Unfortunately, many SMEs are unable to bear the financial weight of recovery. At least 1 in 5 of these businesses shut down within a year of suffering an attack. Bigger companies are better able to cope, but they too aren’t immune from the burden that such events bring.
How to Protect Your Organization Against Ransomware
The threat of a ransomware attack is ever-present. You will do well to prepare for an attempted strike against you.
Map your assets and note the degrees to which each one is vulnerable to an attack. Work with your IT team to prepare a resilience plan, complete with data backup, business continuity, and recovery strategies.
Also, ensure that the latest Operating Systems patches are applied when they become available, and update critical software as soon as is possible. Carry out penetration tests to determine where the weak points are, and fix them.
Adopt enhanced passwords and multi-factor authentication for staff at your organization. Train them to verify emails and other messages before engaging with them, and not to open websites unless they have a URL that begins with ‘HTTPS’ (Hypertext Transfer Protocol). The last ‘s’ is crucial; it indicates a secure site.
A Partner You Can Trust
Ransomware attacks have grown more sophisticated and precise over time. If you have sensitive data to protect, you will want to work with IT security experts to set up a strong defense for your organization.
Layer3 provides this expertise through its cybersecurity services. With our IT risk vulnerability and management, email authentication, and network access solutions, you can build a strong buffer against various kinds of cyber threats, including ransomware.
To find out more about our IT security offerings, or the other services we provide, you can contact us here.
E-Business
Huawei Unveils AI Computing System to Challenge Nvidia’s Flagship Product

China’s Huawei Technologies unveiled an AI computing system on Saturday that an industry expert said rivals Nvidia’s most advanced product, as the company aims to expand its footprint in the country’s booming AI sector.
The CloudMatrix 384 system made its public debut at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), a three-day event in Shanghai, attracting a large crowd to Huawei’s booth with its showcase of cutting-edge AI innovations.
The system has attracted significant interest from the global AI community since Huawei (HWT.UL) first introduced it in April. Industry analysts see it as a direct challenger to Nvidia’s GB200 NVL72, the most advanced system-level offering currently available from the U.S. chipmaker.
In an April article, Dylan Patel, founder of semiconductor research firm SemiAnalysis, stated that Huawei now possesses AI system capabilities that could surpass those of Nvidia.
Huawei staff at its WAIC booth declined to comment when asked to introduce the CloudMatrix 384 system.
A spokesperson for Huawei did not respond to questions.
Huawei has become widely regarded as China’s most promising domestic supplier of chips essential for AI development, even though the company faces U.S. export restrictions.
Nvidia CEO, Jensen Huang told Bloomberg in May that Huawei had been “moving quite fast” and named the CloudMatrix as an example.
The CloudMatrix 384 system features 384 of Huawei’s latest 910C chips and, according to SemiAnalysis, surpasses Nvidia’s GB200 NVL72 in certain performance metrics, despite the latter using 72 B200 chips.
SemiAnalysis attributes this performance advantage to Huawei’s strong system design, which offsets the lower power of individual chips by leveraging a greater number of them and incorporating system-level innovations.
Huawei describes the system as utilizing a “supernode” architecture that enables ultra-high-speed interconnectivity between chips.
In June, Zhang Pingan, CEO, Huawei Cloud confirmed that the CloudMatrix 384 was already operational on Huawei’s cloud platform.
E-Business
Transcorp Hotels Delivers Stellar H1 Results, Declares Over ₦1Bn Dividend

Transcorp Hotels Plc has delivered a stellar performance in the first half of 2025, recording a 60% year-on-year surge in revenue to ₦47.57 billion, up from ₦29.72 billion in H1 2024. Gross profit climbed 71% to ₦36.21 billion, maintaining a strong 76% margin despite inflation and operational headwinds.
The hospitality giant, a subsidiary of Transnational Corporation Plc, also announced an interim dividend payout of ₦1.024 billion — offering ₦0.10 per 50 kobo ordinary share to shareholders.
In a bold move, the company unveiled Nigeria’s largest corporate venue — the 5,000-seat Transcorp Centre — staking its claim as the new leader in event hospitality. Chairman Emmanuel Nnorom described the results as proof of Transcorp Hotels’ transformative strategies and unwavering investor commitment. MD/CEO Uzo Oshogwe attributed the success to relentless execution and a resilient business model.
Transcorp Hotels, renowned for iconic assets like Transcorp Hilton Abuja and its digital platform Aura, says it isn’t just leading Nigeria’s hospitality sector — it’s redefining excellence across Africa.
E-Business
Microsoft Servers Hacked by Chinese Groups

Chinese “threat actors” have hacked Microsoft’s SharePoint document software servers and targeted the data of the businesses using it, the firm has said.
China state-backed Linen Typhoon and Violet Typhoon as well as China-based Storm-2603 were said to have “exploited vulnerabilities” in on-premises SharePoint servers, the kind used by firms, but not in its cloud-based service.
The US tech giant has released security updates in response and has advised all on-premises SharePoint server customers to install them.
“Investigations into other actors also using these exploits are still ongoing,” Microsoft said in a statement.
The firm said it had “high confidence” the hackers would continue to target systems which have not installed its security updates.
It added that it would update its website blog with more information as its investigation continues.
Microsoft said it had observed attacks in which hackers had sent a request to a SharePoint server “enabling the theft of the key material by threat actors”.
Charles Carmakal, chief technology officer at Mandiant Consulting firm, a division of Google Cloud, told reporter, it was “aware of several victims in several different sectors across a number of global geographies”.
Carmakal said it appeared that governments and businesses that use SharePoint on their sites were the primary target.
A number of adversaries who stole material encoded by cryptography were then able to regain ongoing access to the victims’ SharePoint data, he said.
“This was exploited in a very broad way, very opportunistically before a patch was made available. That’s why this is significant,” Carmakal said.
Carmakal said the “China-nexus actor” was deploying techniques similar to previous campaigns associated with Beijing.
Microsoft said Linen Typhoon had “focused on stealing intellectual property, primarily targeting organizations related to government, defence, strategic planning, and human rights” for 13 years.
It added that Violet Typhoon had been “dedicated to espionage”, primarily targeting former government and military staff, non-governmental organizations, think tanks, higher education, the media, the financial sector and the health sector in the US, Europe, and East Asia.
Meanwhile, Storm-2603 was “assessed with medium confidence to be a China-based threat actor”.
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