About N6.2 billion was lost to cyber crimes in Nigeria in 2014, according to an official.
Mr Ibrahim Shazali, an official of the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission (EFCC), Bank Fraud Section, disclosed this in Ilorin on
Tuesday at the ongoing Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC)
workshop for financial journalists.
He said the figure was grossly higher than the N485 million that was lost through the same channels in 2013.
Shazali identified Point of Sales (PoS), ATMs and mobile banking as
the major avenues where the cyber crimes were being committed.
He, however, said that while the value of cyber crimes had been
growing exponentially, it was comforting that the value of fraudulent
transactions was less than one per cent of the total transactions.
“This should not, however, lead to premature sighs of relief as the
success rate of attempted fraudulent transactions rose from a mere three
per cent to 80 per cent in the space of just one year.”
Shamal said that although banks experienced more external than
internal frauds, the actual loss to internal frauds was always far
higher than those of external frauds.
He said the lack of a well-defined legal framework for prosecuting
cyber crimes and financial frauds had led to poor success rate in the
fight against the crimes.
The EFCC official said of the 1,461 suspected fraud cases reported in
2014 only fraudsters in 41 or three per cent of the cases were
apprehended.
Shazali said that it had finally dawned on global financial and
business leaders that cyber crime was not merely a technology issue, but
at the heart of it.
“For the fight against electronic attacks to be effective, it is
necessary to determine where exactly we need to focus our energies.
“In other words, it is not enough to have the tools to fight the problem, we must also know where and how to use them.
“Cyber crime is especially devastating because many times victims are
completely unaware of the fact that they are being targeted and they do
not only lose money, but also sensitive customer or organisational
data,” he said.
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