Cyber security solution company, Symantec has ranked Nigeria 59th on its latest internet security report. Besides, Nigeria ranked 66th position at the same period in 2011.
The Symantec Internet Security Threat Report is one of the most comprehensive sources of Internet threat data in the world. Sheldon Hand, Territory Manager, Symantec Pty Limited in-charge of Indian Ocean Islands, West, East and Central Africa (IWECA), told news men in Lagos at the weekend that with this ranking, Nigeria’s has become more vulnerable to cyber attacks.
This, according to him is due to the growing number of underwater cable systems on the Nigeria’s shores.
Stressing that Nigeria’s position had actually increased on the list of countries vulnerable to cyber attacks, he further explained that the way the ranking works is that if a country is ranked first, it means it’s the most country with security threats.
Hand also adduced some reasons for the Nigeria’s position, listing the booming economy, advent of more bandwidth routes and explosion in mobile devices. For him, Internet security threats have actually tripled, due to avalanche of technologies, especially mobile devices.
According to him, Symantec recently released a report which is an analysis of all the threats on the internet, based on its deployment systems to scan over 8 billion electronic mails (emails) per day.
“We have more than 240,000 censors in 200 countries. These censors are networks in strategic places, and what this allows us to do, is gather a tremendous amount of information and intelligence about the threats that are happening in the world on the internet,” he said.
Hand also affirmed that Symantec has specific statistics for Nigeria, which show that in 2011 Nigeria was ranked the 66th, which means that it is the 66th highest country with internet threats, but this has increased.
He explained that this does not mean that security threat ranking of Nigeria has gone down. “No, If you ranks number 1, it means you have the most security internet threat, so Nigeria has gone from 66 to 59 which means security threats have increased,” Hand said.
As said by him, the reason for the aforementioned ranking based on Symantec perception are in three-fold, namely, the first one “is Nigeria’s economy is booming, it is estimated that about 2015 Nigeria’s economy will be bigger than South Africa’s economy, this is estimated by Morgan Stanley Research.”
He pointed out that over a couple of years, there have been an increase in the broadband capacity in Nigeria. “So, the internet with broadband is a platform for malicious activities for security threats in one of two ways,” he said. Lastly, he said, there is an increased security threat in Nigeria because of the adoption of mobile devices which has increased significantly as there is a lot of people using android, iPhone, blackberry, tablets and many others.
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