Nigeria Ranks 16th in Cyber-Related Crimes

Quarterly analysis of the global Threat Index by Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. has revealed that Nigeria ranked 16th among countries with the highest cyber-crime related attacks at the end of the first quarter of 2016.

The report revealed that Nigeria moved two places from 18th position in the preceding and now surpassed by other African countries including Namibia and Malawi in second and fourth spots respectively.

Area Manager for East and West Africa at Check Point Software Technologies,Rick Rogers, says Nigeria’s worsening ranking may be due to a dramatic increase in threats targeting mobile devices specifically, while Kenya’s improvement by 24 places, moving from 45th position at the end of 2015, to 69th at the end of the quarter could reflect a growing maturity in security awareness.

Rogers noted that: “It’s not immediately clear why the East and West African hubs are experiencing such different moves in terms of cyber-attacks, and we are generally seeing a lot of volatility month to month for many of the countries on the index. But this quarter, mobile malware ranked as one of the ten most prevalent attack types affecting corporate networks and devices for the first time ever.”

He further said, “With Africa being the ‘mobile-first’ and often ‘mobile-only’ continent, this new wave of threats is likely to have a strong impact on the number of attacks evidenced in the region.

“Individuals who run their businesses off mobile devices, as well as organisations who have a bring-your-own-device policy, will need to prepare for this in their security strategy. It is necessary to apply the same level of security to mobile as required by traditional networks and PCs, and security professionals must have a coherent, over-arching threat management approach that addresses this,” he concluded.

Check Point is the largest global pure-play network cyber security vendor, and their Threat Index provides a data-based breakdown of new and prevalent threats, as well as the relative rankings of countries’ risk profiles globally – the higher the ranking the greater the threat of cyber-attack.

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