Acquisition of Nigeria’s Digital Economy: Eradication of Cyber theft happening through the internet

Introduction

The Africa’s largest economy assumed to be Nigeria is largely becoming a home for people involved in Cyber theft and this has cause the payment of approximately $500 million annually from the nation on this regard. The rising and trending of this act does not only cause problems that affects the country’s economy but also brings about lack of trust from other countries even when carrying out financial transactions. In the midst of these issues, the importance and the roles of web developers has been more needed now than ever. This article fosters and aims at educating and empowering web developers with the adequate knowledge and tools needed to eradicate these cyber threats in Nigeria. The induction and implementing of the best and effective practices in web advancement shouldn’t be overlooked as developers can indeed significantly foster the cyber security positioning in Nigeria businesses, as well as looking after the digital economy and bringing back the confidence around digital transactions for those who engage in them.

A great understanding of the threats encountered.

In Nigeria as a whole, cyber theft tend to be a very grievous threat to various businesses and the Nigerian Cybercrime Report has showed a result indicating the alarming and skyrocketing increase of incidents and events leading to a huge financial loss incurred and how data integrity has been largely compromised.

In the year 2020, it was reported that Nigerian businesses and organizations experienced about 25% increment in cyber attacks, bringing about the rise in urgency towards addressing these attacks. There was a 7% increase in ransomware software attacks attempts in the first half of the year 2023 in Nigeria on the masses and also corporate bodies unlike the the first half of the year 2022, and this was shown in a study done by Kaspersky. A large number of people accumulated as seventy-one percent of Nigerian organizations got hit by ransomware in the year 2021, which shows the skyrocketing of this threat as it was previously recorded in the earlier year to be at 22%, Sophos further reported. Web developers can further play a vital and major role to this regard. The architectural structure and security measure of business websites for their organization, which is first often implemented at the first point of coming in face with the digital economy falls majorly and directly under their influence. The creation and use of robust, secured web amenities and infrastructures, could help developers to not only protect their business organization from cyber thefts and it’s threats but also bring about a safe, trustworthy and accountable digital market space in Nigeria as a whole.

Their proficiency in bringing about updated secure coding practices, encryption of data and vulnerability check and assessment of companies website and servers is very important in protecting and preventing the websites against tactics deployed by cyber theft criminals.

Important and major security steps and practices for web developers.

In Nigeria, emphatically for web developers taking note crucially about the foundational security guidelines can not be negotiated and looked away in the course of fighting against cyber theft. These principles further include a very secured coding to eradicate and solve vulnerability problems, and data encryption can be created to protect vital and sensitive information from cyber theft criminals and also the bring up of consistent and advanced updates to fill in the security lapses.

Here are some great steps for developers and they include:

The use of HTTPS: Data transmission from and to websites can be secured using this to ensure all communications are well encrypted.

Various Authentication: Make use of strong authentication means that can’t be easily breached such as two-factor authentication (2FA) to further advance the security of users account.

Security Auditing and documentation: Carry out a periodic security check and also vulnerability assessments to notice and rectify alarming security lapses.

Use of Data Protection: Make use of strict and rigid data protection measures, and this includes the secure storing and transferring of protocols to help safeguard the user’s data.

Making use of SQL and Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) injection protection: Inculcate the doing of sanitization and the ensuring of input validation to protect user’s data against common attack vector and mechanisms like XXS and SQL injection.

Expert notions and their perspectives and standards.

A large number of top voices in Nigeria’s tech and cyber security bodies give strong emphasis on the vitality and importance of large security practices. They further state that “In the midst of cyber threats evolving around the globe, and importance and compliance of security standards cannot be overemphasized,” and this was made mention by Nigeria’s Minister of Communications and Digital Economy by the name Dr. Isa Ali Pantami. He further champions and spells out the following guidelines and directives set by the authoritative bodies to ensure digital assets are greatly and effectively protected.

There have been a strong advocation for the sticking to the guidelines of cyber security for developers by the  National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) and also the Nigerian Computer Society (NCS) on this matter to help make sure that Nigeria’s Digital landscape is being safeguarded at all cost. We have the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) who has also similarly provided a universally accepted and recognized framework to enable a firm security around the web by giving important resources for the use of developers to help them in the further building of a website protection against all these cyber threats. An important foundation has been laid down for web developers through these standards and perspectives to serve as a guide for them to provide a secure, effective platforms on the web in Nigeria’s distinct digital economy.

Practically implementing

However, the use of wide range of security measures within the space brings about grievous problems which includes complexity and difficulties around the use of security protocol, constraints,  and always keeping track of the problems around the evolvement of cyber threats out there and it’s notable growth to help them address it. So it’s as though for many developers they have found it quite difficult to balance creating user-friendly and very usable websites and the need to provide adequate security around it tedious.

Here are some basic practical solutions:

The use of open Source tools: Ensure to make use of free and well-recognized open-source tools as well as libraries that offers good and proficient security features at no cost.

Continually Educating Yourself: Always try as much as possible to stay updated around the threats being created by the day and teach yourself more on how to solve them through the use of studying online course, forums and also teachable webinars.

Make Security Processes quite simple: Ensure to work on the security aspect from the start while developing on a project, add it from the root making the development process quite easier than rather burdensome with so much complications afterwards.

There are success stories around this and here is one amidst others:

We can see the success story around Paystack, a Nigerian company that helps in the processing of payments. They had prioritized the use of cyber security from the onset using one of the best practices like HTTPS, regular checking around security and working on them, using of a wide range of data encryption. Paystack has shown the nation that it is a very reliable and trustworthy platform for carrying out online transactions, and they have have further proven it with the effectiveness of the strong cyber security measures they had put in place. 

But another example is an e-commerce platform Jumia. They have strongly and effectively built a safe user authentication protocols and guides around their web and they don’t overlook the need to consistently carry out vulnerability assessments to protect their consumer’s data, an earning for themselves a good standard and reputation around Nigeria’s e-commerce sector. This further shows how a good cyber security being put in place in an organization can bring about successful, effective and well-secured web projects that could help in bringing about positivity to Nigeria’s Digital Economy.

Conclusion

They’re great and very important roles web developers play in the safeguarding of Nigeria’s Digital Economy against the infiltration of cyber theft. The use of the best and effective cyber practices which have been made available in so many varieties ranging from coding and data encryption to consistent security audits and further the use of robust user’s authentication which have become a well-recognized guideline for the achieving of digital integrity.

There is a great call to action for Web developers, the urge for them to include these security guidelines and measures into their day-to-day workflows, making their jobs beyond just creators but also protectors. These joint efforts and commitments towards the availability of these practices embedded in the web would not only help bring about security to individuals around website usage but also bring about the strength and confidence of the web all over Nigeria’s Digital landscape against the cyber security thefts which has been an overall threat. Developers are like frontline defenders and it’s best they see themselves as such because they have the power to shape the security sectors to bring about a secure, confident and effective digital economy in Nigeria.

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Hilary Utuke is the CEO of Korlod Works, a top Digital Marketing firm in Lagos. He’s authored four books including “Digital Strategies for Online Brand Visibility” and created Digital Luminary Pro (TM), a model helping Nigerian Thought Leaders connect with Millenials and GenZ audiences.