By PRINCE OSUAGWU & KOYINSOLA ADELEYE

At the end of a one week data  security workshop for the public sector in Abuja, organised by Resourcery Plc and its counterparts, Check Point Software Technologies, the Federal Government learned that she was supposed to take the IT security issue as seriously as the national security.

The Data security enlightenment session brought together IT and Data security managers from about ten governmental agencies.

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

According to Uba, 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 organization is to provide them with globally proven problem solving technological solutions because we have gone beyond just Information Technology.

“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 organization’s system without appropriate checks in place.” he added.

Speaking for Check Point, Rommy Okonkwo, Sales Manager Nigeria and West Africa, made reference to a study recently conducted by Check Point 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 71 per cent of businesses believe mobile devices have caused an increase in security incidents which has 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.