A workshop on how to secure information in a website took place recently in Yaounde.

Nowadays, many website owners encounter defacement in which malicious individuals replace the content of their home page with information which has not been installed by them. There are also those whose identities have been stolen by cyber criminals and used for dubious purposes.

In an era when date theft and security breaches are daily occurrences, the Director General of the National Agency for Information and Communication Technologies (ANTIC), Dr Ebot Ebot Enaw says data storage is a key component of any security infrastructure. It is within this backdrop that ANTIC on November 12 gathered Information Technology (IT) specialists within ministries and other structures to enable them acquire the skills and capabilities required to effectively keep all information systems and applications within ministries secured from cyber-attacks who often gain access to critical information as well as gain control of internal systems.

While opening the workshop, the Secretary General of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, Armand Ndjodom, said with the putting in place of a structure like ANTIC and the numerous decrees signed by the Head of State as far as securing Cameroon's cyber space is concerned, he cannot over emphasise the importance of the workshop which plays a key role in the process of securing Cameroon's information space. The Secretary General said absolute vigilance on Cameroon's information space is important for an emerging Cameroon.

The objective of the workshop is to help administrative officials develop a common understanding of all aspects of security audit. ANTIC first launched security audits late last year in some ministries, but the operation was not successful because most people did not understand the idea behind a security audit which aims to identify vulnerabilities and flaws that exist in communication and telecommunications networks and take curative measures to address these ideas that have been identified before they get exploited by cyber criminals to gain unauthorised access into any communication system. IT experts are now armed to tackle loopholes in their systems before they get exploited by cyber criminals.