By Kingsley I. Ilechukwu, Correspondent Lagos

The Co-Founder and the Chief Operating Officer of Digital Encode Limited, Dr. Peter Adewale Obadare has said that no company is totally immune against cyber attacks.

The Information Technology expert noted that the high dependency on the internet and adoption of digital transformation has led to the increase in cybercriminal activities.

Addressing this issue, Dr. Obadare stressed that cyber security readiness and resilience is therefore a journey not a destination.

The Digital Encode Boss stated this at the 2020 National Information Technology Reporters’ Association (NITRA) Virtual Innovative Tech Webinar held recently.

According to him, cybercrime damages were projected to cost the world over US6 trillion annually in 2021, up from US3 trillion in 2015.

Speaking on the biggest threat to enterprise organization, Dr. Obadare stated that findings had shown that at every 11 seconds, businesses would fall victim to a ransomware attack in 2021.

“More than 90 per cent of successful hacks and data breaches steam from phising scams. Most frequent attack methods are social engineering, advanced persistent threats, unpatchedransomware,” he said.

Dr. Obadare also stressed that cybersecurity/fraud was a discussion topic for the board and not for the data center alone. Backing up his claim, he explained that 60 per cent of small businesses that suffered cyberattack were out of business within 6 months.

He also highlighted that 53 per cent of security personnel believed that their enterprise would experience a cyberattack in the next 12 months.

While urging vigilance, he said the survey revealed 87 per cent believed that the rapid shift to work from home would increase the risk of data privacy and protection issues.

According to him, 54 per cent believed they would take advantage of the pandemic to disrupt their organisations. However, he said 51 per cent (only half) were highly confident in their security team to detect and respond to cyber threats during the pandemic.

Although much is at stake, the Digital Encode Boss lamented that the confidence level was low.

Speaking further, he urged and advised organizations to invest in people and process and not only in technology, in an effort to collectively combat the looming threat.

Dr. Obadare recommended that for safety in the cyberspace, organizations must address cybersecurity readiness and resilience on a number of dimensions so as to understand the big picture while integrating and coordinating all operational risk management activities.

In addition, he said it was important that the executive team developed a risk intelligence quotient and also build an Intelligent Security Operations Center (SOC) based on AI & Machine Learning.