Need for collaboration in addressing rising cyber-attacks

To achieve a safer cyber ecosystem, organizations must embrace synergy, information sharing and full disclosures of attacks.

This was the consensus opinion of stakeholders and industry experts at the annual Information Security Society of Africa – Nigeria (ISSAN) Cybersecurity Conference, held recently in Lagos.

Ade Bajomo, president of FinTech Association of Nigeria (FinTechNGR), said to adequately address the rising rate of cyber-attacks, organizations should embrace collaboration and information sharing on cyber breaches.

According to him, keeping silence on the part of organizations that had been attacked would not help others, stressing that full disclosure, synergy and information sharing on reported cyber-attacks and how it was managed would guide other organizations to put preventive and counter measures in place.

He called on organizations to constantly upgrade their technology to counter cyber-attacks, urging them to have data backup.

Adewale Peter Obadare, co-founder/chief visionary officer of Digital Encode, while expressing his views at the panel session, made a case for collaboration amongst stakeholders, noting the need to strike the balance between the investments in people, technology, and processes to fight cyber-attack and fraud.

He further stated the need to build cybersecurity intelligence quotient, which will comprise Augmented Intelligence to check what is happening on the system real time, Anticipatory Intelligence to analyse what could happen, and Assistive Intelligence to determine what needs to be done.

He recommended that digitization, digitalization and digital transformation should be addressed.

In a paper titled: ‘Understanding and Addressing Data Privacy in the Banking and Financial Services World’, Austine Ohwobete, managing director, CyberTechNX, spoke about vendor risk assessment and individual management, while taking a holistic look at the organization’s environment as a means of identifying and curbing cyber threat incidences.

In his welcome address, David Isiavwe, ISSAN president, said the conference was devoted to further expose the new threats and trends in the cyber security space and also offer practical steps on what businesses and individuals need to know and do to check the rising tide of the activities of cyber-criminals.

He observed that cyber attackers are getting more sophisticated globally, which is an aftermath of Covid 19 pandemic, stressing that greater awareness must be created to minimize attacks on businesses that may result in losses by various organizations.

Hope Moses-Ashike

Hope Moses-Ashike is an Associate Editor, Banking and Finance, with more than a decade of experience reporting on Nigeria’s financial system and broader economy. She closely tracks market movements, monetary policy decisions, company disclosures, regulatory actions, economic indicators, and global developments, and interprets what they mean for businesses, investors, policymakers, and households. Her reporting helps readers understand complex issues such as inflation trends, foreign exchange market dynamics, interest rate decisions, bank performance, and investment risks. She also covers major international events and periodically travels to Washington, D.C., to report on the World Bank/IMF Spring and Annual Meetings. Her dedication to financial journalism has earned her multiple recognitions and invitations to high-level professional development programmes. She is an alumna of the International Visitors Leadership Programme (IVLP) in the United States and holds an Advanced Financial Journalism Certificate from the Press Association Training in London, UK. Her other notable achievements include completing the Lagos Business School CMC Programme, the Bloomberg Media Africa Initiative Programme, and a Master Class in Journalism at Rhodes University in South Africa.