By Nnamdi Ojiego
The need for the Nigerian lawmakers, the financial crimes investigators, the lawyers and regulatory agencies, the media, among other stakeholders to be Information Technology, IT compliant has been stressed

An IT professional Mr Peter Ejiofor who dropped this hint in a chat with Vanguard Hitech said this has become necessary following the incessant cases of data loss and cyber threats from cyber criminals as well as isolation of Nigeria from on- line transaction by some countries and state organisations.

He said legislators who promulgate laws that regulate the practices of ICT, on- line financial crimes investigators like Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, regulatory agencies like Standard Organization of Nigeria, SON and the Nigerian Information Technology Development Agency, NITDA, government IT directors who were implementing government IT policies, journalists who cover IT beat needed regular IT trainings to be well equipped to handle issues concerning cyber matters.

“They all need to understand technology because, if they don’t know how technology is being deployed, they will be short- sighted when they are debating or treating issues concerning computer crimes”, he stated adding that his organisation was organising a training on information security to educate and equip stakeholders on the best way to tackle cyber issues.

Mr Ejiofor who is the Chief Executive Officer, CEO of Priceworth Business Connection Limited (PBCL) said the training summit tagged “InfoSecurityUK 2010″ with the theme, “Data Loss Prevention & Information Security Best Practices”scheduled to hold in October at Slough Berkshire, United Kingdom was an awareness as well as skill development programme.

“It is purely training, not just a conference. we have brought in some of the global experts because, we want to create a platform for networking between Nigeria and these global experts so that we can be able to say Nigerians are trained and are capable of protecting their environment. We also want our people to become globally competent in information security. So we need them to be trained in these areas so that they can make the argument and tell their foreign training partners that we are capable of protecting ourselves”, he opined

The IT expert expressed worries over the increasing rate of cyber crimes in the country saying that data has become the most expensive assets in the market globally leading to what is known today as black market, where people go to buy credit cards, pin numbers, among others.

Continuing, he said lack of adequate legislation against cyber crime has made some countries and international organisations to isolate Nigerians from on-line transactions by bouncing out any payment with credit card from Nigeria. “The truth is that there are more crimes in America and some other countries than they are in Nigeria but the difference is that Nigeria does not have enough regulations that can protect people from cyber threats.

“I’m not aware if you can prosecute anybody who commit cyber crimes. So Nigerian govt has not done enough to checkmate the menace of cyber criminals in terms of regulations and legislation.

This is one of the reasons we are putting up this training summit to look at regulations and compliance. Government has to be responsible for deploying security infrastructure and technology because, I am yet to see a govt agency that has a detailed information security policy documentation”, he averred.

Speaking further, the PBCL boss he ventured into information security to protect government and organisations from data loss and cyber criminals. “We do information security because we believe that security has become the biggest issue currently on a global agenda. we are talking of strategy to secure the infrastructure and cyberspace .

We offer information security solution on products and services to ensure that government and organisations are better secured against cyber threat.” According to him, “there are many things criminals are interested in. Sometimes, they are not just stealing your data but they want to shut down your data base.