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RIYADH: The world needs almost 3.5 million more cybersecurity professionals to combat the rise in online crime, according to Isa Ali Ibrahim, Nigeria’s minister of communications and digital economy.
Speaking at the Global Cybersecurity Forum in Riyadh, on Nov. 9, Ali Ibrahims said that governments have a huge role to play to ensure safe cyberspace for individuals, private and public entities.
“In July, a report suggested that we need 8.1 million cybersecurity professionals globally this year. Today, we have around 4.7 million professionals, and still, we have a vacancy of 3.4 million,” said Ali Ibrahim.
Ali Ibrahim also noted that malware is being released every 4.2 seconds.
“If you compute this 4.2 seconds for one week, you will discover that every week, 144,000 malware applications are being released. It is the responsibility of the government to set standards and guidelines to ensure that there is no compromise to cybersecurity,” he added.
Citing a UN report, Ali Ibrahim said that the world population will hit 8 billion by Nov. 15, and added that the rise in population is demanding a rise in funds for cybersecurity initiatives by governments.
“According to Accenture, by 2023, the total amount that will be lost through cybercrime could be more than $5.3 trillion, and it is more than 35 percent of the entire gross domestic product of a country like China with a population of 1.44 billion. It is more than 173 percent of the entire GDP of Africa with 53 countries,” added Ali Ibrahim.
He also added that the total amount that will be lost through cybercrime will reach $10.5 trillion by 2025.
Citing a report from Accenture, the Nigerian minister went on and said that a cyberattack takes place in the world in every 39 seconds.
“These attacks may be either targeting individuals, sometimes private sectors or public sectors. Because of this, governments are spending a huge percentage of their wealth on cybersecurity,” he further said.
He added: “In addition, what I think is critical here is the need to attain cybersecurity maturity, and most importantly to attain cybersecurity immunity. We must be in a situation, where people, even when they attack, what they are going to lose from the attack is even higher than the damage or costs to the institution which they attacked.”
The minister also added that cybersecurity methods need a proactive approach as technology is advancing every day.
Fahad Al-Jutaily, CEO at sirar by stc, used his appearance at the forum to warn about the huge increase in the number of cyber attacks during this year compared to previous years.
“In the previous year, there was an attack every 40 seconds, today we are talking about around somewhere attack that is been initiated every 11 seconds so that is an a huge increase for initiating such type of attacks,” he added.
Al-Jutaily explained that the trend we are seeing now is the adaptation that today's cybercrime is causing to new economic business models.
“Today the cyber attacks it’s been offered as a service, so there is an a huge evolution in that part for sure this will bring more challenges and these challenges we start seeing the outcome of it,” Al-Jutaily said.
He added: “The professional cyber criminal and the expert they start building their capabilities as a services and they start offering it to the market to the black market.”