Human Error Accounts for 95% of Data Breaches—Odumuboni

By Sodeinde Temidayo David

The Senior Manager, Cyber Risk Services, Deloitte, Ms Funmilola Odumuboni, has said human error was the primary cause of cybersecurity breaches.

The cyber expert, who was a guest at the 2021 annual conference organised by the Central Securities Clearing System (CSCS) Plc, disclosed that human error accounts for 95 per cent of all data breaches.

Ms Odunmoboni, who said the major principles of cyber-security were confidentiality, integrity and availability, stressed that information meant to be kept secure was indeed secure and kept out of the public domain, while the information at hand was correct and the systems were available to use when one wants to use them.

“Cyber-attack occurs every 39 seconds and cybercrimes increased by nearly 300 per cent following the COVID-19 outbreak.

“Also, human error is the primary cause of cybersecurity breaches, accounting for 95 per cent of all data breaches; 86 per cent of breaches were financially motivated and 10 per cent were motivated by espionage and 36 per cent of breaches involved phishing, 11 per cent more than last year,” she said.

Speaking from the financial markets and investor protection perspectives, the Head of Start-Up Operations at CSCS, Mr Folagbade Adeyemi, stated that the Nigerian market has not been exempted, as fraudsters continue to attempt exploitation of probable vulnerabilities to cause significant investor loss.

According to him, in order to prevent fraudsters from exploiting systemic gaps by assuming an individual identity, investors should take ownership of their identity and increase the effort level for identity theft by carrying out account updates such as contact information, strengthening access controls and periodically reviewing their accounts to ensure safety.

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of CSCS Plc, Mr Haruna Jalo-Waziri, in his presentation, stated that the conference, the third in the series, was timely given the increasing global incidence of cyber-attacks, especially as network compromise arising from remote connections associated with work-from-home presents new forms of cyber security exposures.

Mr Jalo-Waziri added that the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic has increased digitization and adoption of new technologies, even though, still presents new risks to cyber security.

According to him, cyber security is not the responsibility of the IT officers, it is rather a collective responsibility of everyone connected to CSCS the system, including customers, who should have education on best practices so as to prevent them from being the weakest link in the systems.

The event themed Cyber Security was put together to raise awareness on cybercrime in the country and find ways to tackle it.

It was attended by CSCS joint leading industry professionals in information technology and cyber security, including various participants from various sectors of the economy.

This year’s meeting discussed innovative ways of enhancing the security architecture of firms, with emphasis on the role of different stakeholders, especially employees and customers in protecting the integrity of information technology networks and systems.