Technology
The Latest Trends and Best Practices in Cybersecurity: Ensuring Secure Software Development
In today’s digital landscape, cybersecurity remains a top priority for organizations worldwide. As cyber threats evolve and become more sophisticated, staying updated with the latest trends and adhering to best practices is crucial. This article explores the current trends in cybersecurity and outlines the software development requirements necessary for organizations to align with the trends and industry standards.
Latest Trends in Cybersecurity
- Zero Trust Architecture: Traditional perimeter-based security models are becoming obsolete. Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) is a security model that assumes no user or device, whether inside or outside the network, can be trusted by default. Verification is required from everyone attempting to access resources on the network. This model helps prevent data breaches by implementing strict identity verification processes.
- Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: AI and ML are being leveraged to enhance threat detection and response. These technologies can analyze vast amounts of data to identify patterns and anomalies that may indicate a security threat. AI-driven cybersecurity solutions can provide real-time threat intelligence and automate responses to mitigate risks quickly.
- Extended Detection and Response (XDR): XDR integrates multiple security products into a cohesive security operation system. It provides a holistic view of threats across the entire IT environment, including endpoints, networks, and servers. XDR improves threat detection and response capabilities by correlating data from various sources and providing actionable insights.
- Cloud Security: As more organizations migrate to the cloud, securing cloud environments has become a top priority. Cloud security trends include the use of cloud-native security tools, encryption of data at rest and in transit, and robust identity and access management (IAM) solutions to protect cloud resources.
- Supply Chain Security: Cyberattacks targeting supply chains have increased, highlighting the need for robust supply chain security measures. Organizations are now focusing on assessing and managing risks associated with third-party vendors and ensuring that their security practices are up to par.
- Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs): PETs are designed to protect individual privacy by minimizing the amount of personal data processed. Techniques such as differential privacy, homomorphic encryption, and federated learning are gaining traction to ensure data privacy while still allowing valuable data analysis.
To take advantage of these trends, organisations should prioritise innovation abiding by the following best practices:
Best Practices in Cybersecurity
- Implement Strong Access Controls: Utilization of multi-factor authentication (MFA) and role-based access control (RBAC) limits access to sensitive information and systems. Ensure that access permissions are regularly reviewed and updated.
- Regularly Update and Patch Systems: Keeping software and systems up to date is crucial for protecting against known vulnerabilities. Implement automated patch management processes to ensure timely updates.
- Conduct Regular Security Audits and Assessments: Perform regular security audits, vulnerability assessments, and penetration testing to identify and remediate potential security weaknesses.
- Educate and Train Employees: Human error is a significant factor in many security breaches. Regular cybersecurity training and awareness programs can help employees recognize and respond to potential threats effectively.
- Develop an Incident Response Plan: Prepare for potential security incidents by developing and regularly updating an incident response plan. Conduct drills to ensure that the response team is ready to act swiftly in the event of a breach.
- Encrypt Sensitive Data: Use encryption to protect sensitive data both at rest and in transit. This ensures that even if data is intercepted, it remains unreadable to unauthorized parties.
In addition to the recommendations above, tech-enabled organisations should consider the following requirements when developing software for enhanced cybersecurity.
Software Development Requirements for Enhanced Cybersecurity
- Secure Coding Practices: Adhere to secure coding standards and guidelines such as OWASP’s Top Ten. Conduct code reviews and static code analysis to identify and fix security vulnerabilities during the development process.
- Integrate Security into the DevOps Process (DevSecOps): Incorporate security practices into the DevOps workflow to ensure that security is considered at every stage of the software development lifecycle. Use automated security testing tools to identify and remediate vulnerabilities early.
- Use Secure Development Frameworks and Libraries: Leverage well-established and secure development frameworks and libraries. Ensure that these components are regularly updated to address any newly discovered vulnerabilities.
- Implement Continuous Monitoring and Logging: Enable continuous monitoring and logging of applications and infrastructure to detect and respond to security incidents in real-time. Use security information and event management (SIEM) systems to aggregate and analyze log data.
- Conduct Threat Modeling: Perform threat modeling to identify potential security threats and vulnerabilities in the design phase. This proactive approach helps in building security measures into the architecture from the outset.
- Automate Security Testing: Use automated security testing tools such as static analysis, dynamic analysis, and interactive application security testing (IAST) to identify vulnerabilities throughout the development lifecycle. Automated tests should be integrated into the CI/CD pipeline to ensure continuous security validation.
Conclusion
Staying ahead in the ever-evolving field of cybersecurity requires organizations to be proactive and adopt the latest trends and best practices. By implementing robust security measures and fostering a culture of security awareness, organizations can significantly reduce their risk of cyber threats.
Software Development Companies like Nerdbug integrate security into product development lifecycles, aligning with global best practices. Embracing technologies like AI and cloud security, alongside following best practices such as zero trust and continuous monitoring, will help organizations safeguard their digital assets and maintain trust with their customers and stakeholders.
By Adedapo Adesanya
Lagos State’s representative, Team Nevo, won the 3 Million Technical Talent (3MTT) South-West Regional Hackathon, on Tuesday, December 9, 2025.
The host state took the victory defeating pitches from other south west states, including Oyo, Ogun, Osun, Ekiti, and Ondo States.
This regional hackathon was a major moment for the 3MTT Programme, bringing together young innovators from across the South-West to showcase practical solutions in AI, software development, cybersecurity, data analysis, and other key areas of Nigeria’s digital future.
Launched by the Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy, the hackathon brought together talented young innovators from across the Southwest region to showcase their digital solutions in areas such as Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning, software development, data analysis, and cybersecurity, among others.
“This event not only highlights the potential of youth in South West but also advances the digital economy, fosters innovation, and creates job opportunities for our young people,” said Mr Oluwaseyi Ayodele, the Lagos State Community Manager.
Winning the hackaton was Team Nevo, made up of Miss Lydia Solomon and Mr Teslim Sadiq, whose inclusive AI learning tool which tailors academic learning experiences to skill sets of students got the top nod, with N500,000 in prize money.
Team Oyo represented by Microbiz, an AI business tool solution, came in second place winning N300,000 while Team Ondo’s Fincoach, a tool that guides individuals and businesses in marking smarter financial decisions, came third with N200,000 in prize money.
Others include The Frontiers (Team Osun), Ecocycle (Team Ogun), and Mindbud (Team Ekiti).
Speaking to Business Post, the lead pitcher for Team Nevo, Miss Solomon, noted, “It was a very lovely experience and the opportunity and access that we got was one of a kind,” adding that, “Expect the ‘Nevolution’ as we call it, expect the transformation of the educational sector and how Nevo is going to bring inclusion and a deeper level of understanding and learning to schools all around Nigeria.”
Earlier, during his keynote speech, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Sterling Bank, Mr Abubakar Suleiman, emphasised the need for Nigeria’s budding youth population to tap into the country’s best comparative advantage, drawing parallels with commodities and resources like cocoa, soyabeans, and uranium.
“Tech is our best bet to architect a comparative advantage. The work we are doing with technologies are very vital to levelling the playing field.”
By Aduragbemi Omiyale
One of the high points of the 2025 re:Invent was the unveiling of Graviton5, the fifth generation of custom Arm-based server processors from Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Many tech enthusiasts believe that the company pushed the limits with Graviton5, its most powerful and efficient CPU, frontier agents that can work autonomously for days, an expansion of the Amazon Nova model family, Trainium3 UltraServers, and AWS AI Factories suitable for implementing AI infrastructure in customers’ existing data centres.
Graviton5—the company’s most powerful and efficient CPU
As cloud workloads grow in complexity, organizations face a persistent challenge to deliver faster performance at lower costs and meet sustainability commitments without trade-offs.
AWS’ new Graviton5-based Amazon EC2 M9g delivers up to 25% higher performance than its previous generation, with 192 cores per chip and 5x larger cache.
For the third year in a row, more than half of new CPU capacity added to AWS is powered by Graviton, with 98 per cent of the top 1,000 EC2 customers—including Adobe, Airbnb, Epic Games, Formula 1, Pinterest, SAP, and Siemens—already benefiting from Graviton’s price performance advantages.
Expansion of Nova family of models and pioneers “open training” with Nova Forge
Amazon is expanding its Nova portfolio with four new models that deliver industry-leading price-performance across reasoning, multimodal processing, conversational AI, code generation, and agentic tasks. Nova Forge pioneers “open training,” giving organizations access to pre-trained model checkpoints and the ability to blend proprietary data with Amazon Nova-curated datasets.
Nova Act achieves breakthrough 90% reliability for browser-based UI automation workflows built by early customers. Companies like Reddit are using Nova Forge to replace multiple specialized models with a single solution, while Hertz accelerated development velocity by 5x with Nova Act.
Addition of 3 frontier agents, a new class of AI agents that work as an extension of your software development team
Frontier agents represent a step-change in what agents can do. They’re autonomous, scalable, and can work for hours or days without intervention. AWS announced three frontier agents—Kiro autonomous agent, AWS Security Agent, and AWS DevOps Agent. Kiro autonomous agent acts as a virtual developer for your team, AWS Security Agent is your own security consultant, and AWS DevOps Agent is your on-call operational team.
Companies, including Commonwealth Bank of Australia, SmugMug, and Wester Governors University have used one or more of these agents to transform the software development lifecycle.
Unveiling Trainium3 UltraServers
As AI models grow in size and complexity, training cutting-edge models requires infrastructure investments that only a handful of organizations can afford.
Amazon EC2 Trn3 UltraServers, powered by AWS’s first 3nm AI chip, pack up to 144 Trainium3 chips into a single integrated system, delivering up to 4.4x more compute performance and 4x greater energy efficiency than Trainium2 UltraServers.
Customers achieve 3x higher throughput per chip while delivering 4x faster response times, reducing training times from months to weeks. Customers including Anthropic, Karakuri, Metagenomi, NetoAI, Ricoh, and Splash Music are reducing training and inference costs by up to 50 per cent with Trainium, while Decart is achieving 4x faster inference for real-time generative video at half the cost of GPUs, and Amazon Bedrock is already serving production workloads on Trainium3.
By Adedapo Adesanya
The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has issued an advisory on new vulnerabilities in ChatGPT that could expose users to data-leakage attacks.
According to the advisory, researchers discovered seven vulnerabilities affecting GPT-4o and GPT-5 models that allow attackers to manipulate ChatGPT through indirect prompt injection.
The agency explained that hidden instructions placed inside webpages, comments, or Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) can trigger unintended commands during regular browsing, summarisation, or search actions.
“By embedding hidden instructions in webpages, comments, or crafted URLs, attackers can cause ChatGPT to execute unintended commands simply through normal browsing, summarization, or search actions,” they stated.
The warning followed rising concerns about AI-powered tools interacting with unsafe web content and the growing dependence on ChatGPT for business, research, and public-sector tasks.
NITDA added that some flaws allow the bypassing of safety controls by masking malicious content behind trusted domains.
Other weaknesses take advantage of markdown rendering bugs, enabling hidden instructions to pass undetected.
It explained that in severe cases, attackers can poison ChatGPT’s memory, forcing the system to retain malicious instructions that influence future conversations
They stated that while OpenAI has fixed parts of the issue, Large-Language Models (LLMs) still struggle to reliably separate genuine user intent from malicious data.
The Agency warned that these vulnerabilities could lead to a range of cybersecurity threats, including unauthorised actions carried out by the model; unintended exposure of user information; manipulated or misleading outputs; and long-term behavioural changes caused by memory poisoning, among others.
It advised Nigerians, businesses, and government institutions to adopt several precautionary steps to stay safe. These include limiting or disabling the browsing and summarisation of untrusted websites within enterprise environments and enabling features like browsing or memory only when necessary.
It also recommended regular updates to deployed GPT-4o and GPT-5 models to ensure known vulnerabilities are patched.
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