Technology
How Businesses Can Prevent and Combat Cyber Threats
By Otori Emmanuel
Online business may have its benefits, but there is also a greater chance of hoaxes and cyber threats. The credibility of your business could be negatively affected by a successful cyber-attack. Therefore, safeguarding your business against cyber-attack is a crucial concern. That, if not prevented, may require a re-establishment of the business.
In extreme scenarios, it may even force you out of business permanently because you won’t be able to make up the lost revenue and customer loyalty, as clients want to feel safe in transactions. The good news is that you may take preventative action and safeguard your company before it’s too late by choosing from a selection of cyber insurance alternatives.
Preventive measures against cyber threats
- Installation of Devices and Network Security Software
Verify that your operating system and security applications are set to update automatically. Updates might include vital security upgrades for recent malware and threats. Most updates allow you to schedule them at a time that is more convenient for you, typically after office hours. It’s imperative to consistently follow update prompts since updates frequently fix serious security issues. Install security software to help prevent infection on business PCs and mobile devices. To prevent compromise on business laptops, desktops, and mobile devices, the software should have anti-virus, anti-spyware, and anti-spam filters. Setting up a firewall between your working devices and the internet acts as a gatekeeper for traffic entering and leaving. Maintain a robust firewall by regularly updating to the newest patches.
- Passphrase use and setting up several authenticators
If possible, take extra precautions to make your security more difficult to access because you do not want to lose your company to hackers. Instead of using passwords, use passphrases to secure your networks and devices that house sensitive company data. Passphrases are phrases or collections of words that are used as passwords. Humans find them easy to memorize, but computers find them challenging to decipher. A secure passphrase needs to be at least 14 characters long and includes a mix of capital and lowercase letters, digits, and special characters. For each of your accounts, use a different passphrase. If you are serious about protecting your company, changing passwords to passphrases is insufficient. To ensure that the legitimate owners are granting access, multi-factor authentication (MFA) is used in this situation. Before you can access your account, two or more forms of identification must be shown. Additional security for your accounts is provided by two-factor or multi-factor authentication.
- Protect sensitive information
The data that will be sent into and out of your company system needs to be encrypted after you’ve configured your authenticators. Before sending your data over the internet, encryption transforms it into a hidden code. Make sure your network encryption is enabled and that all data received or stored online is encrypted. This lowers the danger of theft, destruction, or tampering by limiting data access to parties that possess the encryption key. When utilizing a public network, you can enable network encryption by adjusting the settings on your router or by setting up a virtual private network (VPN) program on your computer.
- Backup your data
Data backup is one of the cheapest ways to guarantee that your information can be retrieved in the event of a cyber-incident or computer issue. Additionally, it is a less demanding technique to prevent future attacks. Although firewalls, antivirus software, and other security measures may malfunction, keeping a backup provides you with an advantage over attackers. To assist ensure the protection of your data, use a range of backup techniques, like routine incremental backups to a mobile device or cloud storage. Include weekly, quarterly, and yearly server backups as well. It should be regularly checked to see if this data is functioning properly and can be recovered. Store several copies of your backup offline, if possible.
- Your business’s safety is your employees’ safety
Your staff and device operators are responsible for your company’s security. Businesses should have clear cyber security policies that inform staff on what is appropriate while sharing data, using computers and other devices, and visiting websites. Your personnel should receive internet safety instructions making them aware of the dangers they can encounter and their responsibility for keeping your company safe. Hackers might have their access restricted by creating a culture of awareness. This is why it is so important to teach them how to recognize, avoid, and handle a cyber-attack and use strong passwords and passphrases.
Keep track of all the computing hardware and applications that your company employs. All the hardware and software that your company employs must be documented. Any software and hardware that are no longer in use should be disconnected from the network, and sensitive data should be deleted. Older, inactive hardware and software won’t likely be updated, and they could be exploited as a “backdoor” by thieves to attack companies. In a similar vein, you ought to deny access to former workers and people who have switched roles and no longer need it.
- Business continuity is based on customers’ safety
It’s crucial that you protect the information about your clients. Your company’s reputation will suffer if you misplace or compromise their information, and you risk legal repercussions. Make sure your company invests in a safe online transaction environment and protects any stored personal customer data. Find out what your payment gateway provider can do to stop online payment fraud if you accept payments online. Consider purchasing cyber insurance to safeguard your company. Dealing with a cyber-attack may cost far more than simply replacing computers, enhancing security, or repairing databases. Your company may benefit from the cost savings provided by cyber liability insurance coverage for attack recovery.
By Adedapo Adesanya
Nigerian startup, Decide, has emerged as the fourth most accurate Artificial Intelligence (AI) agent for spreadsheet tasks globally, according to results from SpreadsheetBench, a widely referenced benchmark for evaluating AI performance on real-world spreadsheet problems.
According to the founder, Mr Abiodun Adetona, the ranking places Decide alongside well-funded global AI startups, including Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic.
Mr Adetona, an ex-Flutterwave developer, also revealed that Decide now has over 3,000 users, including some who are paying customers, a signal to the ability of the startup to scale in the near future.
SpreadsheetBench is a comprehensive evaluation framework designed to push Large Language Models (LLMs) to their limits in understanding and manipulating spreadsheet data. While many benchmarks focus on simple table QA, SpreadsheetBench treats a spreadsheet as a complex ecosystem involving spatial layouts, formulas, and multi-step reasoning. So far, only three agents rank higher than Decide, namely Nobie Agent, Shortcut.ai, and Qingqiu Agent.
Mr Adetona said SpreadsheetBench measures how well AI agents can handle practical spreadsheet tasks such as writing formulas, cleaning messy data, working across multiple sheets, and reasoning through complex Excel workflows. Decide recorded an 82.5% accuracy score, solving 330 out of 400 verified tasks.
“The result reflects sustained investment in applied research, product iteration, and learning from real-world spreadsheet workloads across a wide range of use cases,” Mr Adetona told Business Post.
For Mr Adetona, who built Decide out of frustration with how much time professionals spend manually cleaning data, debugging formulas, and moving between sheets, “This milestone highlights how focused engineering and domain-specific AI development can deliver frontier-level performance outside of large research organisations. By concentrating on practical business data problems and building systems grounded in real user environments, we believe smaller teams can contribute meaningfully to advancing applied AI.”
“For Decide, this is a foundation for continued progress in intelligent spreadsheet and analytics automation,” he added.
By Adedapo Adesanya
A global biometric authentication technology company specialising in secure, mobile-first identity verification, Identy.io, has announced its expansion plans into Africa with a pilot focus on Nigeria and Kenya.
The firm disclosed in a statement that it has appointed a regional leadership team to engage with key stakeholders across the government, financial services, telecommunications, and other regulated sectors in both countries.
These include Mr Olajide Olasiyan-Ola as Regional Head for West Africa, Mr Edwin Mutisya as the Senior Sales Manager, and Mr Matus Kapusta as the Product Director for Identy.io’s Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) product portfolios.
Amid the need for effective identity solutions becoming increasingly urgent, countries like Kenya and Nigeria are making significant investments in public digital infrastructure by integrating identity systems with public services, financial access, and mobile connectivity as part of their broader economic development agendas. This is helping to implement national digital identity systems to improve service delivery, promote financial inclusion, and develop digital public infrastructure.
The World Bank’s ID4D data indicates that approximately 80 per cent of adults in Sub-Saharan Africa possess basic identification. However, there are significant disparities between countries, with many having coverage below 70 per cent. These gaps hinder access to essential services and economic opportunities.
With Identy.io coming into the fold, its regional leadership team will collaborate with clients across the public and private sectors to support responsible, scalable identity implementations aligned with national digital transformation priorities.
After Nigeria and Kenya, the firm plans to expand into additional African markets as part of a phased regional growth strategy.
According to Mr Antony Vendhan, Co-founder of Identy.io, “We are transforming the traditional industry model, which often relies on expensive and inflexible digital infrastructure. Instead, Identy.io adopts a software-first approach, minimising reliance on specialised biometric hardware. Our technology supports biometric capture using standard smartphones, processes identity documents, issues digital identities to individuals lacking formal identification, and facilitates large-scale biometric verification and deduplication.”0
“This innovative yet simplified approach allows our clients to reach underserved communities by providing individuals with multimodal access to secure their digital identities and explore new economic opportunities,” he stated.
As part of Identy.io’s industry validation strategy, the company’s ABIS system has completed MOSIP’s partner compliance process and is listed on the MOSIP Marketplace. This platform offers compliant technologies that governments and ecosystem partners can evaluate for MOSIP-aligned deployments. MOSIP helps governments conceive, develop, implement, and own foundational digital ID systems tailored to their unique needs.
By Dipo Olowookere
A $2 million pre-seed round to automate compliance in real time, unlocking business velocity while giving compliance teams infrastructure to scale oversight has been received by ZeroDrift.
The fresh capital was pumped into the firm by a16z speedrun. It is to support the company’s go-to-market launch, product expansion across communication channels, and continued development of its AI-driven compliance engine.
The organisation plans to deepen its coverage across financial services before expanding its rule-based compliance engine into other regulated sectors, including insurance, healthcare, ESG disclosures, and AI governance.
The long-term vision is to become the universal trust layer for any system that communicates, ensuring that as AI and automation scale, trust, safety, and compliance scale with them.
ZeroDrift is an AI-native communication firewall that validates and fixes content before it is sent, giving compliance teams control at scale and business teams the speed to execute.
The platform encodes SEC, FINRA, and firm-specific policies into machine-readable rulepacks, then enforces them at the point of creation.
ZeroDrift integrates directly into tools teams already use, including email, browsers, CRMs, websites, social platforms, and AI systems.
Content is checked instantly, issues are flagged with suggested fixes, and compliant messages move forward without delay. Compliance teams retain full visibility through centralised dashboards, audit trails, and exam-ready evidence generated automatically.
ZeroDrift is launching initially in financial services, serving registered investment advisors, asset managers, broker-dealers, and wealth platforms.
The market includes more than 15,000 RIAs, 3,500 asset managers, and hundreds of thousands of registered representatives in the United States alone.
Early use cases include faster campaign launches, higher sales velocity, safe deployment of client-facing AI, and instant exam readiness without last-minute scrambles.
“People do not want to be non-compliant. They have no way to know if what they are writing is acceptable until it is too late.
“Compliance should be a guardrail that lets teams move faster, not a gate that slows everything down. Our goal is to make compliance happen automatically at the speed of work,” the chief executive of ZeroDrift, Kumesh Aroomoogan, said.
A representative of a16z speedrun, Troy Kirwin, said, “Compliance has quietly become a limiting factor for how fast regulated companies can operate. ZeroDrift flips that dynamic by preventing violations before they happen and making compliance a built-in part of everyday workflows.”
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