RIMAN calls for enhanced cyber security risk management

Ezekiel Oseni, president Risk Management Association of Nigeria (RIMAN) has called for more vigilance by corporate bodies and Individuals to intensify cyber security risk management citing the heightened emergence of cyber risk.

Oseni said this in his opening remarks over the weekend at the 2022 membership induction where a total of 107 members were inducted into RIMAN as senior associate members and associate members. Building the Competency for Cybersecurity Risk Management in an Organisation’.

He noted that as the business world has continued to evolve, it is important for risk managers as well as organisations to evolve with the emergence of dramatic shifts in the landscape of risks faced by businesses.

In alluding to this year’s theme: ‘Building the Competency for Cybersecurity Risk Management in an Organisation’ he said: “In today’s computerised world, new risks emerge every hour of every day. Cybercrime is becoming big business and cyber risk is a focus of organisations and governments globally.”

“The world will continue to experience increasing data breaches in the face of emerging technologies, the dawning of the 4.0 industrial revolution and increasing unemployment rates among the youths worldwide.”

“Threats such as ransomware, targeted phishing attacks, and Advanced Persistent Threats (APT), have become prevalent already, demanding organisations to take proactive steps to secure their critical information assets including customer information that are accessible from cyberspace.”

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“Cybersecurity risk is considered a significant business risk and should be placed at the same level as compliance, operational, financial and reputational risks. Therefore, Policy Makers, Corporate Bodies, and Individuals must learn the importance of implementing excellent cyber security risk management.”

He added that it is a positive sign that regulators like the CBN have made it mandatory asides from other measures for all the industry players to have a functional and well-staffed cybersecurity department in the institutions.

He added: “However, much more than this is also for risk managers in every organisation to be savvy in ICT, deploy operational core and support applications and always be ahead of the cybercriminals to make our systems impenetrable to the criminals.”

Furthermore, he urged new inductees and guests to key into RIMAN’s various capacity building citing that they educate themselves evolving with emerging risks trends.

He added: “RIMAN, as most of you already know, has been at the forefront of risk advocacy and providing excellent capacity building to its members. We have completed the tenth diet of the CRM professional examination and so far, the turnout for the programme has been very good, notwithstanding the harsh economic condition.”

The PGD Risk Management programme in collaboration with The University of Lagos is in good progress as well. As a future-oriented professional body, we will continue to broaden our scope and understanding of risk, and its management and provide timely support to our members in the form of training, conferences, publications etc., for the challenges ahead. I urge you to take full advantage of the various training and capacity building programs organized by this institution.”