An information communications and technology ICT expert has advanced reasons whyfinancial dataof banks is the most prone to cyber-attacks in the world. The expert, Ronke Okeremi, Managing Director and CEO ofArit of Africa, described cyber attackas anyriskoffinancial loss, disruption or damage to the reputation of an organisation

She saidthat identity theft has become rampant, and advised all and sundry, particularly banks and other financial institutions, to be watchful as financialdatais the most attractive likely to be attacked. She said that they should to execute regular vulnerability assessment to determine areas of threat imploring managers of financial and non-financial organisations to improve the levels ofcyber securityawareness asany organisation can be attacked at some point in time.

Ronke Okeremi implored organisations to be aware of real and perceivedcyber threatsand that financial institutions should put in place measures that would allow them to swiftly deal with all or any potential attacks.

“There are solutions that offer early warning threat signals which aims to provide alerts on incoming threats, shutdown and remediate for prevention. These solutions come at a cost to implement but would however prevent firms to a large extent fromcyber-attacks,” she said.

She added that the importance of information security is to protect the companies’ ability to function, enable the safe operation of applications implemented on the organisation’s IT systems, protect the data that establishments’ collect and use, and to safeguard the technology assets in the organisation.

“Information security,” she said,“is crucial to all organisations as it will protect their information and assist them to adequately conduct their businesses. Information security is defined as the protection of information and the system as well as hardware that use, store and transmit that information.

“Businesses should carry out frequent and proactive vulnerability assessment on their infrastructure in order to determine threat areas. There are solutions that offer early warning threat signals which aims to provide alerts on incoming threats, shutdown and remediate for prevention. These come at a cost to implement but would however prevent organisations to a large extent from cyber-attacks.

“It is important for businesses to safeguard sensitivefinancial information, services and products. This further protects their internal and third-party customers from theft, email-borne viruses, worms, trojans, spyware, malware and phishing attacks.”