First Bank embarks on campaign against cybercrime surge

First Bank of Nigeria Ltd., on Thursday, educated businesses and its customers on how to escape upsurge of cyberspace fraud associated with the last quarter of the year known as “ember months”.

Mr Harrison Nnaji, Chief Information Security Officer of FirstBank, at an information and cyber security quarterly webinar organised by the bank, said there was usually upsurge of cybercrimes during the ember months.

Nnaji explained various tricks hackers adopt and measures to protect the public from loosing their funds to the cyber criminals.

It was reported that the webinar had the theme: “Social Media Savvy: Protecting Yourself from Online Fraud”.

Nnaji said that social media had become different things to different people, adding that, it was wealth creation opportunity for some and tears for victims of fraud.

He explained the concept of cyber security and online fraud; common types of online frauds on social media, steps to adopt when an account is breached and best safety methods on social media.

He warned against too much information sharing on social media and having too many platforms, saying two or three social media handles should be enough.

He added that some people get involved with too many social media platforms that some times they forget where they had deposited their personal information.

Nnaji warned against freebies which usually lured victims, adding that scams will continue until people take measures to guide against hacks.

“Let’s be careful what we do online,” he said.

He said that the cost of recovery of loses were usually as huge as cost of the funds lost, leading to several people ignoring legal or other actions against the cyber criminals.

According to him, AI has made it worse and we need to be more careful than in the past.

“Get the right knowledge, practice what we preach here.

“if you do 10 per cent of what you have heard today, there are chances that you will go through this season without a single loss to cyber criminals,” he said.

He advised customers to approach the bank directed when confronted with issues or situations they were not comfortable with.

He renewed appeals to participants to become ambassadors who would utilise the information from the webinar and pass the knowledge to their communities.

The Guest Speaker, Ifeoma Okoh, listed common scams to include investments scams, dating, jobs, prize and lottery, accounts take over, click jacking, phishing, social engineering, among others.

Okoh who is the Manager and Data Protection Officer, Information Security and Governance, Risk and Control, Advisory Digital Encode Ltd also explained how cyber thieves move with new technologies.

She urged the public to always validate links to clarify that they were not phishing or email scams while reeling out other measures including two factors authentication across all social media handles.

She urged Nigeria to be wary of urgent request, and called for timely and regular updates of devices; education to update knowledge in addition to constant monitoring of accounts across social media handles.

Mr Emmanuel Okoroji, Head, Threat Intelligence and Risk Management, FirstBank, also shared insights on firewalls which could serve as buffer against attacks.