The National Cyber Security Advisor, Dr. Albert Antwi – Boasiako, has revealed that the Cybercrime/Cyber security Incident Reporting Points of Contact (PoC) has saved over five thousand Ghanaians from being defrauded between January to August 2020.
Addressing participants at the cyber security roundtable forum on the impact of COVID-19 on Ghana’s digitalization agenda in Accra, the Cyber Security Advisor intimated that many of the potential victims during the period called the centre to seek guidance and advisory on resolving potential cyber security incidents including, those who were nearly defrauded by cyber fraudsters as well as, criminals exploiting COVID 19 related themes to target unsuspecting citizens.
Educating the public, Dr. Albert Antwi-Boasiako noted that “Cyber Fraud, Publication of Non-Consensual Intimate Images, Misinformation, Phishing attacks, Online Impersonation and Identity Theft, Child Online Abuse, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks and Ransomware attacks are among the top ten (10) cyber security incidents recorded by Ghana.”
He, however, hinted that all the information gathered was compiled through reports received by the National Cyber Security Centre through the Cybercrime/Cybersecurity Incident Reporting Points of Contact (PoC) and reports received from Sectoral Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) and institutions including the Criminal Investigation Department.
In furtherance, Dr. Antwi-Boasiako elucidated that the National Cyber Security Centre will continue to engage with all relevant stakeholders to ensure the resilience of Ghana’s digital ecosystem.
He also urged businesses to actively support employees to develop a safer cyber culture through awareness creation, education, and training programmes.
Assessing the prevalence of cybercriminals, The Deputy Minister of Communications, George Andah, in an address, posited that the presence of cybercriminals online tends to put critical infrastructures at risk since their Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability (CIA) risk are being compromised and consequently deprive people of critical services, urging leaders to address the situation head on to alleviate cybercrime to its minimum point.
“Many high-ranking Government officials have also been the target for impersonation and identity theft cases. This means that, Government in collaboration with key stakeholders, need to strengthen existing protocols to ensure intensified resilience of various ICT systems used by the public and institutions of the various sectors of the economy.”
Elaborating his point, George Andah intimated that INTERPOL assessment of the impact of COVID-19 on cybercrime has revealed that major corporations, government, and critical infrastructure have become major targets for cybercriminals since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.
Regardless of the seeming challenges bedeviled the cyber security sector, the Deputy Minister noted in high spirit that “digitalization has proven to be the best option for business continuity, normalization, access to educational facilities and materials, and critical operations among other endeavors.”
The Deputy Minister also revealed that the communications sector among others, have been working tirelessly to shoulder the huge responsibility of ensuring seamless interactions within the digital ecosystem.
“In order to make room for these surges, the Government of Ghana, through the Ministry of Communications, granted extra spectrum to some mobile network operators to ease the pressure by the public on data bandwidth.”
