We’ve conducted over 200 cybersecurity audits across Nigerian businesses in the past three years. Manufacturing companies, banks, insurance firms, tech startups, professional services—the industries vary widely, but the security gaps? Those remain remarkably consistent.
Every single audit reveals at least five of the seven critical vulnerabilities we’re about to share. These aren’t theoretical risks or hypothetical scenarios. They’re real security gaps actively exposing Nigerian businesses to attacks, data breaches, and operational disruption right now.
The frustrating part? Most of these vulnerabilities are completely fixable. Organizations don’t have security gaps because they don’t care about security. They have them because security requirements evolved faster than their infrastructure, budget constraints forced difficult prioritization decisions, or nobody realized specific configurations created exposure.
Here’s what we consistently discover during cybersecurity audits—and more importantly, what you can do about these findings before attackers exploit them.
Why Cybersecurity Audits Reveal the Same Patterns
Before we detail the specific gaps, understanding why these patterns persist helps contextualize the findings. Nigerian businesses face unique challenges that contribute to common vulnerabilities.
Power infrastructure instability forces organizations to prioritize keeping systems running over implementing ideal security configurations. Internet connectivity variations push businesses toward solutions that work reliably rather than solutions that are most secure. Rapid business growth often outpaces security infrastructure updates, leaving legacy configurations that made sense for smaller operations but create risks at scale.
The Nigeria Data Protection Act raised compliance stakes significantly, yet many organizations haven’t fully adapted their security posture to meet these requirements. This creates dual exposure—both to cyber attacks and regulatory penalties.
Gap 1: Outdated Firewall Rules Creating Security Vulnerabilities
This appears in 95% of our audits. Firewall configurations accumulate rules over years of operations, and almost nobody systematically reviews whether those rules remain necessary or appropriate.
Here’s how it happens: Your team needs temporary access for a project. They create a firewall rule allowing specific traffic. The project ends, but the rule remains. Multiply this pattern across years and dozens of projects, and you’ve got firewalls with hundreds of rules—many opening unnecessary access that security teams forgot existed.
We recently audited a Lagos-based financial services company with firewall rules dating back six years. Forty per cent of their rules allowed access for systems and services no longer in operation. Each unnecessary rule represented a potential attack vector that vigilant monitoring wouldn’t even flag because the access was technically “authorized.”
The fix: Conduct quarterly firewall rule reviews. Document business justification for every rule. Remove rules for decommissioned systems immediately. Implement rule expiration policies requiring annual reauthorization for exceptions.
Gap 2: Unmonitored Privileged Accounts in Nigerian Businesses
Privileged accounts with administrative access represent your highest-value targets for attackers. Yet 89% of audited organizations have inadequate monitoring of how these accounts get used and by whom.
The typical scenario: Multiple IT staff members share administrator passwords. Service accounts run with elevated privileges that nobody’s reviewed in years. Former employees’ admin accounts remain active months after departure because deactivation processes focus on regular user accounts.
Modern zero trust security frameworks specifically address privileged account risks through continuous verification and monitoring. Without these controls, you’re essentially trusting that everyone with administrative access will always use it appropriately and that credentials will never get compromised.
The fix: Implement privileged access management (PAM) solutions that require authentication for each administrative session. Enable detailed logging of all privileged account activities. Conduct monthly reviews of who has elevated access and why. Eliminate shared administrative credentials entirely—every admin should have individual, traceable accounts.
Gap 3: Missing Multi-Factor Authentication on Critical Systems
This finding appears in 82% of audits, and it’s perhaps the most frustrating because the solution is straightforward and relatively inexpensive. Organisations protecting millions in assets with single-factor authentication (just passwords) invite compromise.
According to Microsoft security research, multi-factor authentication blocks 99.9% of automated account compromise attacks. Yet we consistently find critical systems—email, VPNs, financial applications, administrative portals—accessible with passwords alone.
The rationalization is always similar: “Our users find MFA inconvenient” or “We’re planning to implement it next quarter.” Meanwhile, attackers systematically test stolen credentials against these systems, and eventually they’ll find ones that work.
Comprehensive endpoint security best practices mandate MFA as baseline protection, especially for remote access scenarios increasingly common in Nigerian business operations.
The fix: Deploy MFA immediately on all remote access systems, email, and administrative interfaces. Phase it to other applications based on data sensitivity and business criticality. Use app-based authentication (like Microsoft Authenticator or Google Authenticator) rather than SMS when possible—SMS-based codes can be intercepted through SIM swapping attacks that are increasingly common in Nigeria.
Gap 4: Unpatched Systems Exposing Your Infrastructure
Security patches exist because vulnerabilities get discovered and exploited. Yet 78% of our audits find critical systems running software versions with known, exploitable vulnerabilities—sometimes vulnerabilities that are years old.
The OWASP Top 10 security risks consistently include exploitation of known vulnerabilities, because attackers know that many organizations struggle with patch management.
Why does this happen? Patching requires downtime that business operations resist. Testing patches before deployment takes time that busy IT teams lack. Some legacy systems can’t accept updates without extensive compatibility testing. Whatever the reason, unpatched systems remain your most obvious entry points for attackers.
We recently found a Port Harcourt manufacturing company running server software with vulnerabilities publicly disclosed three years prior. Exploit code for these vulnerabilities is freely available online. Any moderately skilled attacker could compromise these systems within hours of identifying them.
The fix: Implement automated patch management that tests and deploys critical security updates within 72 hours of release. For systems that can’t patch immediately, implement compensating controls like network isolation or additional monitoring. Maintain an accurate inventory of all systems so you know what needs patching. Schedule regular maintenance windows specifically for security updates rather than waiting for convenient timing that never arrives.
Gap 5: Poor Network Segmentation Risks
Flat network architectures, where any device can communicate with any other device, appear in 71% of our audits. This means compromising one system—say, a receptionist’s computer through a phishing email—provides attackers with network access to everything else, including your financial systems and customer databases.
Effective network segmentation strategy isolates critical assets from general network traffic and prevents lateral movement when breaches occur. Yet most organizations never implemented segmentation or implemented it years ago without updating it as their infrastructure evolved.
The consequence? One compromised endpoint becomes an organisation-wide security incident instead of an isolated event that security teams can contain quickly.
The fix: Identify your most critical systems and data repositories. Implement network segmentation that isolates these assets behind additional security controls. Use VLANs and firewall rules to control traffic between network segments. Monitor inter-segment traffic for unusual patterns. Start with the most sensitive assets and expand segmentation systematically across your infrastructure.
Gap 6: Inadequate Backup Testing and Recovery Plans
Here’s the pattern we see constantly: Organizations diligently back up their data. Backup jobs run nightly. Status reports show green checkmarks. Everyone assumes backups work perfectly. Then disaster strikes—ransomware, hardware failure, accidental deletion—and they discover their backups are corrupted, incomplete, or can’t actually restore operations.
In our audits, 68% of organizations can’t prove their backups would successfully restore operations if needed because they haven’t tested full recovery procedures in over a year.
Following guidance from our article on disaster recovery testing, organizations should validate backup integrity and recovery procedures regularly, not discover problems during actual emergencies when every minute of downtime costs thousands in lost revenue.
The fix: Implement quarterly recovery testing that goes beyond verifying backup files exist. Practice complete system restoration from backups. Document how long recovery actually takes versus your Recovery Time Objectives (RTO). Test recovery to alternate locations to verify you’re not dependent on primary infrastructure. Fix backup gaps immediately when testing reveals them.
Gap 7: Shadow IT—The Hidden Security Threat
Employees adopt cloud services, collaboration tools, and applications without IT approval or security vetting. This “shadow IT” appears in 85% of audits and represents one of the fastest-growing security gaps in Nigerian businesses.
The typical discovery: During network monitoring analysis, we identify traffic to dozens of cloud services IT teams didn’t know existed. Marketing uses a project management tool that nobody secured properly. Sales adopted a CRM that nobody integrated with their security infrastructure. Finance shares sensitive documents through consumer file-sharing services outside organizational controls.
These services often have weak security configurations, lack proper access controls, and operate completely outside your security monitoring. When breaches occur through shadow IT, you might not discover them for months because nobody’s watching these systems.
Managing multi-cloud security becomes impossible when you don’t even know which cloud services your organization uses.
The fix: Implement cloud access security broker (CASB) solutions that identify shadow IT across your network. Create approved application lists and streamlined processes for evaluating new tools—employees adopt unauthorized services when official channels are too slow or restrictive. Educate staff about shadow IT risks and provide secure alternatives that meet their needs. Monitor network traffic for connections to unapproved cloud services.
How to Address These Security Gaps in Your Organization
Reading this list probably feels overwhelming, especially if your organization has several of these gaps simultaneously. The good news? You don’t need to fix everything at once.
Start with your year-end IT security audit to identify which gaps exist in your specific environment and their relative severity. Prioritise based on your actual risk profile rather than trying to address everything simultaneously.
High-risk gaps exposing critical systems or sensitive data demand immediate attention. Medium-risk gaps need remediation plans with specific timelines. Even low-risk findings should have documented decisions about acceptance or future remediation.
Security improvements happen incrementally. Organizations that consistently address vulnerabilities over time build strong security postures. Organizations that attempt everything at once usually accomplish nothing because the scope overwhelms available resources.
The most important step? Actually starting the process. Every week you delay addressing known vulnerabilities is another week attacker have to discover and exploit them.
Manifold’s Comprehensive Security Audit Services
Manifold Computers Limited conducts thorough cybersecurity audits for Nigerian businesses that identify these seven critical gaps alongside other vulnerabilities specific to your infrastructure and operations. Our certified security professionals bring 20+ years of experience securing organisations across banking, telecommunications, manufacturing, and enterprise sectors.
We don’t just identify problems—we provide prioritized remediation roadmaps with specific, actionable recommendations aligned with your business constraints and budget realities. Our audit approach recognizes Nigerian business environments and delivers practical solutions that work under real-world operating conditions.
Our security audit services examine network security, system configurations, application vulnerabilities, data protection, user access controls, and database security. We test actual security effectiveness rather than just reviewing documentation that might not reflect reality.
Contact Manifold to schedule your comprehensive cybersecurity audit. Discover your specific security gaps while you can still fix them proactively rather than reactively after incidents occur.
Don’t let your business become another statistic in next year’s data breach reports. The security gaps exist right now—address them before attackers do.