By Silas Onuoha
To stop the huge financial losses to cyber crimes,the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) has assured its commitment to standardise the nation’s Information Technology (IT) sector.
According to reports, Nigeria loses over N200 billion yearly to cyber crimes. Restating its commitment to sanitise the IT industry,
The Director-General, Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), Mallam Farouk Salim, gave the assurance during a recent validation exercise for the ISO 27001 Information Security Management Systems Course organised by the SON in Abuja and Lagos.
According to statement issued in Lagos, SON stated clearly that it was committed to sanitising the IT industry through training and the implementation of the International Organisation for Standardisation’s (ISO) Standards.
Speaking further
the Director General, who was represented by the Director Training Services Engr. Timothy Abner, disclosed that the validation of the ISO 27001 ISMS course was part of the organisation’s effort to guarantee confidence in its ability to offer full training and certification packages to the Nigerian IT Industry.
His words. “The validation course would amongst others provide the organisation with a holistic and strategic training package, when deployed and would address standardisation and regulatory deficits in the Information Technology sector, in a bid to boost reliability and efficiency in the sector of the nation’s economy especially through the regulatory agencies and the professional bodies.
He went on. “The training would also ensure that SON could commence offering ISO 27001 Information Security Management Systems Courses for institutions and businesses that wished to secure their information away from hackers and other cybersecurity threats.
The training will also increase SON’s pool of qualified auditors in pursuant of the execution of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between SON and the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), the nation’s foremost supervisory body for Information Technology.”
“At the end of the capacity building training, it is expected that the training package developed will be implemented successfully in the training. SON has scheduled for staff of the Nigerian Communications Satellite Limited (NIGCOMSAT) to be facilitated by the SON Training Services (STS) Directorate in the coming week,” the DG said.
To achieve these objectives, the SON trainees, who participated in the validation were drawn from Policy, Research and Statistics (PRS) Directorate, and Information Technology Departments of SON.
