Technology
Nigeria Has Only 3,500 Cyber Security Experts—Report
**As Telcos, Financial Firms, Govt Agencies Lose N288bn to Cyber Frauds
By Adedapo Adesanya
A report by the Africa Cyber Security Report on Nigeria has revealed that various entities and individuals collectively lost a total of $800 million (N288 billion) to cyber-attacks in 2018.
According to the report, which was unveiled Monday in Lagos, financial services companies, government institutions, telecommunication firms and financial technology companies operating in Nigeria, among others were the major victims of various Internet criminal activities.
This figure showed an increase of 27 percent in cyber crimes trend in 2018, compared with $649 million lost in the previous year in 2017.
The report was launched by Demadiur Systems Limited at a Nigeria Cyber Security Summit in Lagos on Monday which focused on the theme “Combating the Global E-fraud.”
Highlight of the report indicated that in Nigeria, during the period under review, had just 3,500 skilled cyber security professionals and this amounted to a shortage of necessary skilled force at senior management and mid management levels.
The report also showed that 70 percent of companies in the country are going to face talent shortage of cyber security professional in 2019 and beyond as the human resources arms of these companies face the constraints of lack of technical experience and lack of certifications in cyber security on the part of those they intend to employ.
The report also revealed that organizational spending in cyber security increased by 17 percent from 2017 as respondents spent above $500 million dollars in 2018.
While presenting the report at the cyber security summit, President, Demadiur Systems Limited and President, Medallion Communications Limited, Mr Ikechukwu Nnamani, noted that the money spent by most of the companies were for corrective measures and not for preventing attacks.
According to him, “Most of the companies did not take security serious until after they are hit. Then, they start taking remedial actions with fire-brigade approach, and when vendors show up to arrest the situation, they charge them huge sum.”
Meanwhile, the report further shows that there was a 21.3 percent increase in the number of reported cyber-crime incidents to the police in 2018, noting however that only 2.6 percent of such cases led to successful prosecution of culprits.
According to Mr Nnamani, despite the increase, the reported cases were still small given that there was a large amount of cyber security perpetrators in the country.
He noted that findings by the report hinged victims’ apathy to report cyber-attacks on factors such as feeling of shame, especially by financial institutions, lack of confidence in the judicial system, ignorance, greed which automatically makes the victim guilty of his own action, lacking trust in the forensic investigation system in the country, among others.
The 2018 report also showed that during the year, locally engineered malwares were on the rise, fraud through mobile platforms multiplies and targeted phishing attacks took to the high side.
Since most companies can now see the handwriting on the wall that the cyber-attacks on their operations are not ready to subside anytime soon, they recorded about 50 per cent increase in involvement of their board members on matters of cyber security.
Mr Nnamani said, “To ensure that the result of our survey and research provide a nationwide representation of the state of the cyber security, we interviewed several people within Nigeria, who numbered 300.
“The respondents included those in legal advisory, government, financial services, telecommunications, banking, manufacturing, healthcare services, cyber security, insurance and academia, all represented at randomly varying percentages,” he noted.
By Aduragbemi Omiyale
One of the players in the Nigerian gaming industry, Secure Electronic Technology (SET) Plc, has appointed Ms Leticia Otomewo as its acting secretary.
This followed the expiration of the company’s service contract with the former occupier of the seat, Ms Irene Attoe, on January 31, 2026.
A statement to the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) Limited on Thursday said Ms Otomewo would remain the organisation’s scribe in an acting capacity, pending the ratification and appointment of a substantive company secretary at the next board meeting.
She was described in the notice signed by the Managing Director of the firm, Mr Oyeyemi Olusoji, as “a results-driven executive with 22 years of experience in driving business growth, leading high-performing teams, and delivering innovative solutions.”
The acting secretary is also said to be “a collaborative leader with a passion for mentoring and developing talent.”
“The company assures the investing public that all Company Secretariat responsibilities and regulatory obligations will continue to be discharged in full compliance with the Companies and Allied Matters Act, applicable regulations, and the Nigerian Exchange Limited Listing Rules,” the disclosure assured.
Meanwhile, the board thanked Ms Attoe “for professionalism and contributions to the Company during the period of her engagement and wishes her well in her future endeavours.”
By Adedapo Adesanya
The Russian government on Thursday confirmed it has blocked the WhatsApp messaging service, as it moves to further control information flow in the country.
It urged Russians to use a new state-backed platform called Max instead of the Meta-owned service.
WhatsApp issued a statement earlier saying Russia had attempted to “fully block” its messaging service in the country to force people toward Max, which it described as a “surveillance app.”
“Today the Russian government attempted to fully block WhatsApp in an effort to drive people to a state-owned surveillance app,” WhatsApp posted on social media platform X.
“Trying to isolate over 100 million users from private and secure communication is a backwards step and can only lead to less safety for people in Russia,” it said, adding: “We continue to do everything we can to keep users connected.”
Russia’s latest move against social media platforms and messaging services like WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram comes amid a wider attempt to drive users toward domestic and more easily controlled and monitored services, such as Max.
Russia’s telecoms watchdog, Roskomnadzor, has accused messaging apps Telegram and WhatsApp of failing to comply with Russian legislation requiring companies to store Russian users’ data inside the country, and of failing to introduce measures to stop their platforms from being used for allegedly criminal or terrorist purposes.
It has used this as a basis for slowing down or blocking their operations, with restrictions coming into force since last year.
For Telegram, it may be next, but so far the Russian government has been admittedly slowing down its operations “due to the fact that the company isn’t complying with the requirements of Russian legislation.”
The chat service, founded by Russian developers but headquartered in Dubai, has been a principal target for Roskomnadzor’s scrutiny and increasing restrictions, with users reporting sluggish performance on the app since January.
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.
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