By Aminata Kuyateh
Gambia Telecommunication and Multimedia Institute (GTMI) in collaboration with Gamtel/Gamcel over the weekend ended a six-week ICT boot camp training on ICT security specialist course for 80 participants, drawn from various institutions.
The course which targets cyber security, CCNA security, ethical hacking, Cisco switched Networks, Cisco Routing, Cisco Troubleshooting and implementation of Cisco IP, was held at the GTMI campus in Kanifing from 19 June to July 28, 2017.
Speaking at the event, Permanent Secretary Ministry of Information and Communication Infrastructure, Lamin Camara, said: “The government through MOICI has formulated its cyber security strategy and implementation has begun, very soon Gambia will have its Computer Emergency Response team (CIRT) established”.
He said ensuring cyber space security is a top priority of government and as the policy objective of the NICI-II, “to promote cyber security initiatives that ensure secure access to the nation’s public and private ICT infrastructure, systems and service including those related to national security, law and order, to other public and private sector organization and establishments”.
“Cyber security cannot be underemphasized because the policy’s direction is to move away from ICTs consumption to more adoption, production and resell of ICT services which cannot be achieved without securing our cyber space and open access regime in the telecoms sector,” he said.
He said the government of The Gambia, through the ministry will not relent in encouraging and providing the enabling environment for any institution or organization to play their part in ensuring that the nation is secured from such unwarranted attacks.
“For this reason, MOICI since 2015 has been facilitating and investing in capacity building related to cyber security.”
Lecturer, Dr Barra Touray said it is high time that the Gambia and Africa started harnessing the expertise of their own people. “What GTMI and Gamtel have done is a step in the right direction in line with the new government of the Gambia that we all fought to establish. In this formative days of the Gambia, we need all hands on deck in order to build the Gambia we are yearning for,” he said.
Participant Modou Njie said during the course of the boot camp, “we have been able to learn skills that will equip us further secure and manage our networks. The knowledge acquired from this training will be made into good use to benefit the company, boot camp training was very successful and we hope to be having similar programs in the future.”
