The reported leakage of personal details of over 60 officials of the State Security Service caused ripples in security circles on Friday, as other security agencies have started strategising on how to further protect their classified information.
SUNDAY PUNCH authoritatively gathered that the SSS incident fired up the police, Customs and Immigrations to improve on their Information and Communications Technology systems to guard against a similar occurrence.
Part of the strategies that the agencies would adopt, our correspondent learnt, was the purchase of sophisticated software to make hacking of their data base almost impossible by hackers and terrorist groups.
The Associated Press had reported that the Director-General of the SSS, Ekpeyong Ita, and other agents had their names, mobile phone numbers, contacts and bank accounts information listed on the Internet by persons suspected to be members of the Boko Haram sect.
This development, it was learnt, caused panic among the affected SSS operatives and other employees who felt that the leakage might have compromised their safety and that of their families.
The Force Deputy Public Relations Officer, Frank Mba, confirmed to our correspondent on Friday that the police were working on strengthening their ICT department.
Mba, who refused to divulge the software applications the police were adopting to address the challenge however, said, “We are up to the task to secure our classified information even though we are not a secret organisation.
“We have an ICT department whose head is a Deputy Inspector General of Police. The DIG is experienced and competent to supervise all IT related matters. Putting someone of such rank in the position tells you that we are not joking.
“We are also improving our website and will put as much information as we can on it. We have a democratic information system and we are working on giving as much information as we can to the public.
“However, we have classified information and we have a method of keeping them. Yes, we are strengthening our ICT department because of the revolution in the ICT world but I can’t tell you our mechanisms or the software packages we are adopting.”
At the Force Headquarters, Abuja on Friday, policemen were seen discussing the matter in hushed tones just as another senior police boss told our correspondent that the exposure of the SSS officials was “embarrassing, sad and disheartening.”
The security chief who pleaded anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the matter, said contrary to claims that the details of the SSS officials were leaked by an insider, anyone with expert IT skills could have hacked the database of the SSS to get the information.
“The talk about someone in the SSS being the one that leaked the information or cracked the data base may not be true. An IT wizard can sit in any part of the world and hack into a data base or website. Some security agencies in other parts of the world have had their information system hacked.”
Just as the police, the Nigeria Immigration Service said its IT department had started working on ensuring that its classified information were not hacked into.
NIS spokesman, Joachim Olumba, told SUNDAY PUNCH that, “We are discussing it. The appropriate desk officers are taking care of that and ensuring that it does not happen.”
Similarly, the Nigeria Customs Service said it was taking “practical steps” to ensure that it did not become a victim of cybercrime.
The Public Relations Officer of the agency, Mr. Wale Adeniyi, said though the customs hardly carry covert operations and encourages the public to come forward with information, some information in its system were well-protected.
“I read about the SSS leakage in the newspaper. Hacking, all forms of cybercrimes are serious offences. We are working to ensure that we keep our systems safe.”
The SSS deputy Director of Media and Public Relations, Marilyn Ogar, had however, said it was false that the information of its personnel leaked on the Internet.
Ogar said, “The report is false because the AP reporter that filed the story failed to give me the link to the website that allegedly published the personal data of our personnel.
“How come it was only the AP reporter that saw the website? Besides, he had published his story before calling me for reactions. That is what he did the other time when he published a false report that government planned to build a special prison for Boko Haram suspects in Lagos; I don’t know where he gets these unsubstantiated stories that he published.”
The information leak reportedly came in two postings earlier this month on a website that provides rewritten news on Nigeria.
The first posting threatened to kill agents of the SSS on behalf of Boko Haram, while the second offered a block of text containing biographical and other details about the agents.
AP reports that the details were accessible to all for days and that though the details had been deleted and the stream of comments removed, it refused to “identify the website involved as cached versions of the comments remain online.”
via Punch
