The National Agency for the Fight against Cybercriminality (ANCy) and Cyber Defense Africa (CDA) organized on Tuesday March 26, 2024 training for webmasters of different press organizations to equip them to deal with hacking and takeover attempts of the organs online press. Many of them benefited from this capacity building.
Cybercrime is becoming more and more widespread and among the most recurring victims are online press outlets. A hacked press site has serious consequences in terms of information manipulation, detrimental to the preservation of social peace. To counter this risk and avoid disastrous consequences, the National Agency for the Fight against Cybercrime brought together the webmasters of online press organizations to hone their experiences in terms of data protection of the sites they manage.
The initiative of the ANCy and the CDA responds to the grievances of the press organizations during a meeting in December 2023 to equip their technicians with efficient technologies for defending their sites.
Several modules furnished the work. On the program, the introduction to cybercrime and the operational framework in Togo, domain names, advertising content, content management systems (CMS), security plugins and secure administration of websites. The Director of training and capacity building of the ANCy and the trainer of the CDA took turns talking to the webmasters about the different effective techniques to protect the sites from any attack. Note that the session was exclusively practical for a concrete overview of the training.
Col Gbota GWALIBA, Director of the ANCy stressed the urgency of this training which falls within the guidelines of the agency’s action plan. All press outlets having information sites these days, the security of these sites, according to the Director “becomes a crucial issue because if the design of these sites is not done according to security standards, there has risks of misinformation and also risks of diversion of these sites for other purposes, or even redirection links to unsavory sites. A cybercriminal who takes control of a widely followed news site, you can imagine if he publishes fake news, the consequences, particularly during this election period. It is important to invite the webmasters who design and administer these sites to this training.”
Geraldo Malik Arnold, the Director of Training and Capacity Building informed the participants that the ANCy remains open and available to support the bodies that feel the need after the training. “We are also ready to receive requests for other training modules that webmasters find useful,” he said.
The session was very well appreciated by webmasters who expressed the wish that such training be more regular and above all continuous. Mr. Seyram, site administrator of a well-known local press organ, is very satisfied: “It was a very rich training course in which I participated. I congratulate the ANCy for this initiative and I admit that I did not expect such a level of training on the practical side with simulations. Looking forward to other training in the future and our cyberspace in Togo will be truly secure.”
The Director wanted to thank the participants at the end and promised proximity of his agency with the webmasters of the sites of online press organizations to carry out its mission of making our country a reference in terms of cybersecurity.
It should be noted that each participant is provided with a certificate which proves that they have actually followed ANCy training on site management in terms of security.
Christian PALLEY