With statistics showing that crypto losses in Q1 2022 alone saw a 695% (Y-o-Y) spike from the previous year, there is so much to be done in equipping the industry to effectively withstand the growing threats and minimise losses.
Consequently, the Fintech Association of Nigeria, zeroed in on this issue at its Intercontinental Webinar tagged ‘Protecting Digital Investments in the Age of Cyber Threats’.
The webinar which held on the 21st of July, 2022, was an extensive conversation on the varying concerns of cybersecurity as it had to deal with digital investments.
It also examined a few global breaches in the space as well as how losses were contained, optimized approaches to developing policies and innovative solutions, in addition to recommendations on reporting and evaluations.
Yigal Unna, former Director General of the Israel National Cyber Directorate (INCD), Dmitry Galov, Security Researcher (Global Research & Analysis Team), Kaspersky, and Moses Munguti, Pre-Sales Engineer, Kaspersky, were the industry leaders on the panel and the session was moderated by Seun Folorunso, Assistant General Manager, FintechNGR. Here are some of the insights they shared;
- Africa needs to pay attention to systemic Information Sharing and Mapping; building nodes, tools and resources that allow operators to show and report requisite security data in real-time; which can be scaled up on demand across national systems in the face of an attack.
- The industry should not wait for regulation as regulation is mostly trying to keep up with innovation and cannot meet up with the speed and misuse of technology. Hence, industry partnerships and collaborations must be leveraged.
- There is a shortage of cybersecurity expertise globally. Hence, an industry collective needs to be set up to create and allocate funds to training and equipping professionals in the space.
- Beyond psychology and internal system breaches, cybercriminals also work with sophisticated tools and are continuously improving on their technology. As a result, the industry has to rise to the challenge of making more efforts in the area of innovation, AI, ML and Big Data.
In general, the panelists saw eye to eye that the issue of huge losses of digital investments is a growing concern that in the end only affects the direct trading or asset hosting platform, but cuts across every player in the space.
They also weighed in heavily on the need to improve collaboration as well as develop and deploy security models targeted to the different verticals of digital investments.
If you missed the webinar, catch a replay here.
