Fight Against Cyber Criminality Intensifies

The cross border nature of cybercrime has been identified as an obstacle to efforts aimed at curbing the phenomenon, hence requiring international cooperation.

During the opening of the two-day Internet Governance Forum in Central Africa yesterday Tuesday May 29 in Douala, the Director General of the National Agency for Information and Communication Technology, ANTIC, Ebot Ebot Enaw, disclosed that a team has been put in place to monitor the cyberspace on a daily basis to track down hackers.

This idea, he said, will be shared with other countries of the Central African region. "It will be useless to protect our cyber space alone for Internet has no boundary," he told participants. Ebot Ebot further stated that the Internet Governance Forum started in 2005 in Tunisia, has as main objective to discuss Internet-related issues and make recommendations to the international community. The gathering, he continued, brings all Information and Communication Technology, ICT, stakeholders under the same roof to discuss policy issues on an equal footing.

On his part, the Inspector General in the Ministry of Telecommunications who represented the Minister of Telecommunications, Younouss Djibrine, appreciated the presence of the representative of the United Nations Economic Commission as well as the representative of the International Telecommunication Union. He highlighted some of the benefits of the Internet such access to information. However, he mentioned the disturbing issue of Internet hacking which knows no boundaries. On that issue and others, he said, a consensus will be reached in Douala and tabled in the next international conference.

The forum that ends today, May 30, is also addressing development Internet issues such as access, management of critical resources, diversity, Internet as an enabler of socio-economic development, Internet exchange points and the legal and regulatory framework to help create an enabling environment for boosting investments in the sector.