Stakeholders in Cameroon’s nascent digital economy - financial institutions, mobile telephone companies and the public sector have been groomed on data protection – a practice which Cameroon’s ICT development promoter – ANTIC considers as the bedrock for the growth of the country’s digital economy.

During a two-day workshop recently organised by ANTIC in Douala – Cameroon’s economic capital, under the theme “Data protection: a necessity for the development of the digital economy;” ANTIC’s Director General, entreated stakeholders in the sector to insulate their data in a bid to minimize the economic, social and reputational damage that can result from external data breaches.

The case of Wikileaks, founded by Julian Asange in 2006, which has already published huge volumes of classified media provided by anonymous sources endangering the stability of religious, military, diplomatic and economic institutions, tells in graphic terms the risks that go with unprotected private or sensitive data.

It was in a bid to put such malicious attacks on check that that the cybersecurity Agency –ANTIC, sought to raise awareness of stakeholders in the data management ecosystem about the necessity to protect data from unauthorised access during the workshop, 25-26 September 2019.

 "Data should be secured to prevent unintended uses, including the security of the channels by which the data is collected; the places, virtual or physical, where the data is stored; and of the tools used to exchange data between entities in or out of organisations," Prof. Ebot recommended.

The workshop equally permitted ANTIC to raise awareness of  participants on some routine activities and services offered by the Agency with regard to data security notably security audit of information systems, security watch and the provision of digital certificates by the Public Key Infrastructure to moral and physical persons. It is worth mentioning that digital certificates guarantee the confidentiality, integrity and non-repudiation of data exchanged in online transactions.