Nigeria: Over 25 Million Payment Cards in Nigeria At Risk

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://allafrica.com/stories/201407300373.html

BY PRINCE OSUAGWU
AllAfrica.com
30 JULY 2014

Unless quick measures are put in place, your digital wallet, particularly 
the payment cards which you so much treasure, may sadly be like the 
proverbial basket used to store water. If recent developments are anything 
to go by, only God will prevent hackers from being smarter than you.

Do you know why? Microsoft server 2003 and 2003 R2, which supports the 
platform, will come to the end of their life circles by July 2015. This is 
a normal support life cycle policy for Microsoft.

The implication of this expected development is that over 25 million 
electronic payment cards issued by 23 Nigerian banks could be at risk of 
malicious and targeted attacks by cyber criminals.

With unconfirmed reports that banks in Nigeria, already lost N40 billion 
to online fraud cases in 2013 alone, when Microsoft's extended support 
period for these products cuts off, next year, which means that there may 
not be updates and patches for combating security issues, loss of 
compliance and regulatory certifications for banks, vulnerability may 
widen.

Industry practitioners have also expressed fears that the end of support 
period will also mean that support on applications and programmes will 
come to an end for any organisation, datacentre or server running this 
Operating System (OS) after the stipulated date.

This lack of compliance, according to them, may come with a huge risk for 
local financial services partnership with global Payment Platforms like 
Visa, MasterCard among others.

Meanwhile, of the 25million e-payment cards in circulation, 18 million 
were issued by Verve, a local card operator, which has over the years 
built up strategic partnerships with MasterCard and Visa, for various 
co-branded cards.

However, all hope is not lost for organisations that are proactive. Chief 
Executive Officer, Wragby Business Solutions & Technologies Limited, Mr 
Gbenga Iluyemi, admitted that the end of Windows 2003 support life circle 
will impact on payment platforms that run on the Operating System, but 
added that it is only if they did not quickly migrate to the latest 
version.

[...]



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