OVERVIEW

The Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) has revealed that in 2020, Nigeria’s financial institutions lost over Five Billion Naira to cybercriminals within a nine-month period.

Financial institutions are the leading targets of cyber-attacks. These institutions are where the money is, and for cybercriminals, attacking these organizations offers multiple avenues for profit through extortion, theft, and fraud. At the same time, nation-states and hacktivists also target the financial sector for political and ideological leverage.

In Nigeria, the financial and insurance sectors have revolutionized banking and financial services and payments systems. Improved means of banking transactions continue to emerge from the emergence of web payments and gateways to the development of mobile payments to introduce new payment methods with the aid of technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and contactless cards. Technology has continued to disrupt payment systems.

As a result of this technological advancement, financial institutions (commercial banks, investment banks, insurance companies and fintech) are susceptible to cyber-attacks and data breaches now more than ever. These attacks can occur from within the organization and externally.

THE CHALLENGE: DATA BREACH

Data breaches are costly for an organization as it leads to stolen or lost data, customers distrust, legal and criminal investigations, and efforts to recover lost or stolen assets.

As a consequence, the financial costs of a data breach can dramatically damage or destroy a company. In the last five years, the average cost of a data breach has risen by 12%, i.e. $3.92 million per company.

NDIC’s Executive Director, Mrs. Omotola Abiola-Edewor, in an interview, stated that although  ATM/Card-related crimes had the highest frequency at 49.78% web-based internet frauds had 21.02% frequency and the highest value of losses.

Our clients in the financial service sector who were faced with data leaks challenges consulted with Infodata Professional Services to acquire a solution that will:

• Identify and prevent insecure outbound transmissions of confidential & sensitive client data.
• Detect, monitor, and ensure all internal communication exchanges involving client data are performed securely.
• Monitor user endpoints and ensure that sensitive client information files are not kept locally, as they should reside on an encrypted file server.

OUR APPROACH

Proactive:  Our clients wanted to be more proactive and enhance their ability to detect and prevent data leakage. Infodata recommended and implemented Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Endpoint to monitor, detect, and prevent data leakage.

Reactive: Our clients, whose data systems had been compromised, needed to discover where these breaches occurred. Infodata implemented Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention Discovery to spot data leaks in various systems and servers.

Data Loss Prevention does not have to get in the way of business productivity. Forcepoint’s Data Loss Prevention focuses on unified policies, user risk, and automation making data security frictionless and intuitive. This approach secures your data while enabling productivity.

The Forcepoint DLP product with Infodata’s local support provides security that is focused on people’s interaction with data, including creation, storage, email, webmail, personal devices, and cloud applications.

Some key features of Forcepoint DLP include:

• Incident risk ranking
• Office 365 support
• Integrated incident workflow
• Pre-defined policy templates for industries and regulations (including the EU GDPR)
• Advanced detection and integrated data protection and insider threat security

THE RESULT

 Regulation Compliance

Our clients are compliant with Nigeria Data Protection Regulation 2019 as issued by  the National Information Technology Development Agency (“NITDA”)  

Protected Data

Our clients are now able to control all use and movement of critical or sensitive data.

Risk Diversion

The implementation of Forcepoint DLP has reduced the risk of accidentally released information and exposure to virtually zero.

CONCLUSION

As their reliable organization that offers value-driven IT solutions, major players in Nigeria’s financial sector trust Infodata’s capability to deliver expected results. Infodata’s local support and technical expertise in implementing the Forcepoint DLP Endpoint and Discovery solution greatly improved the cybersecurity posture of these financial institutions.

At Infodata, we provide leading-edge technology innovation and deployment in collaboration with best-in-class solution providers, ensuring that businesses leverage information technology capabilities globally to increase efficiencies, drive innovation and elevate the bottom line of any organization.

Let’s discuss ways your organization can get value from our security solutions