Nigeria is expected to experience an alarming 8% rise in banking malware assaults by 2023, according to a recent statement from Kaspersky that provides insight into the cyber security situation in Africa.
The increase in attacks aimed at sensitive data and online banking credentials is a major cause for concern, even if threats have decreased by 10% nationally overall.
The text of the statement said: “Though banking malware attacks aimed at obtaining sensitive data, including online banking credentials, from compromised machines increased by 8%, Nigeria witnessed a 10% overall decrease in all threats.”
The assertion highlights a more general pattern over the African continent. Although total cyber threats decreased by 29% in South Africa, the number of phishing assaults using social engineering techniques increased by 29%.
Kenya, on the other hand, had a decrease in threats overall of 8% but an increase in ransomware assaults (up68%), backdoors (47%), exploits (22%), and phishing (19%).
Kaspersky’s analysis also shows how various countries are affected differently by cyber dangers. With 41.8% of its people afflicted by online threats, Turkiye emerged as the country most affected, closely followed by Kenya (39.2%), Qatar (38.8%), and South Africa (35%).
On the other hand, Oman (23.4%) and Egypt (27.4%) saw lower rates of user effect, with Saudi Arabia (29.9%) and Kuwait (30.8%) following closely behind.
Amin Hasbini, the director of Kaspersky’s META Research Center Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT), credits the region’s growing geopolitical and economic instability as well as the spread of cutting-edge technology like artificial intelligence (AI) for the changing cybersecurity landscape.
When taken as a whole, these elements add to the complexity and diversity of cyberthreats, making cybersecurity measures extremely difficult.
Hasbini stated: “Cyber threats continue to grow in variety and sophistication as the cybersecurity landscape changes.”
“This trend is especially noticeable because of the development of cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and the growing geopolitical and economic unrest in the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa (META) region.”
“The increased complexity of cyberattacks and the rise in cybercrime are both caused by these factors taken together,” he said in his conclusion.
