IGP, Mohammed Abubakar


Emma Okonji
Resourcery, a Systems Integrator in West Africa, and CheckPoint Software Technologies, a network security company has concluded a one week data security workshop for the public sector in Abuja. The Data security enlightenment session brought together Information Technology (IT) and Data security managers from about ten governmental agencies.

Speaking on the importance of the week long programme, Business Solution Manager, in charge of Enterprise Network Infrastructure for Resourcery, Mr. Bisike Uba, noted that the essence of the programme was to enlighten IT managers in government agencies on the need to protect sensitive data in their organisation. This, Uba added,  had become imperative owing to current physical security challenges in the country.

“Data security in the public sector is a task that cannot be handled with levity. Government agencies like EFCC, NNPC, CBN, Galaxy and their likes cannot afford to have their data compromised either from within or from an outside source. Our task as an organisation is to provide them with globally proven problem solving technological solutions because we have gone beyond just Information Technology,” he said.

According to him, Uba, “In this age of smartphones and other technological devices proliferated all over the place, there is a need for IT managers in government agencies to access and filter what information is available to who or certain cadre of employees. There is a clear need to ensure that employees and visitors alike cannot just bring in media devices like flash drives or hard drives to copy confidential information from the organisation’s system without appropriate checks in place.”

Sales Manager in charge of Nigeria and West Africa for CheckPoint, Mr. Rommy Okonkwo, made reference to a study recently conducted by CheckPoint, which found out that the number of personal mobile devices connecting to the corporate network has more than doubled in the past two years, with nearly half of such devices storing sensitive data.

The report, he said, revealed 71per cent of businesses believed mobile devices had caused an increase in security incidents which had led to significant concerns about the loss and privacy of sensitive information stored on employee devices which he noted include corporate email, customer data and network login credentials.

Regional Manager in charge of Northern Region for Resourcery, Mr. Victor Tanko, said he trusted that the sessions had re-enforced the need for government agencies to re-access their current data security status with the view to improving on them.

He noted that from the interactions during the course of the workshop revealed that most of the agencies have either implemented some data security measures or at the verge of doing so.