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President Nana Addo Akufo-Addo has reiterated the commitment of Government to creating a safe and secure cyber society for the country.

Speaking at the 2018 National Cybersecurity Awareness Month event, on Monday, 22nd October, 2018, at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC), President Akufo-Addo noted that whilst his Government is putting in place measures to digitise Ghana’s economy, it is also mindful of the dark side of digitisation.

“As we scale up e-connectivity, as part of government’s digitalization agenda, we will, certainly, witness an upsurge of criminal activities, if we do not put in place precautionary measures to forestall such eventualities,” he said.

With 10 million Ghanaians connected to the internet, of which 4.9 million are Facebook users alone the impact of any cyberattack on the nation’s e-business platforms or on mobile telephony, he said, would impact negatively on businesses and on the lives of Ghanaians.

As a result, President Akufo-Addo noted that Government is increasing efforts at increasing public sensitisation, capacity building and investment in a fit-for-purpose cybersecurity infrastructure, to help make the country’s digital experience safe and secure.

As part of measures to make the country’s digital experience safe, the President, later on Monday, launched the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) for the telecommunications sector to co-ordinate incident response within that sector.

“Also, a Security Operations Centre (SOC) has been set up at the Bank of Ghana to facilitate cybersecurity incident monitoring and cyber threat information sharing amongst players in the financial sector,” the President said.

He continued, “The Bank of Ghana, working hand-in-hand with the Ministry of Communications and the Ghana Association of Bankers, will, this afternoon, launch a Cyber and Information Security Directive for the financial sector, in view of the persistent cyber-attacks targeted at this sector.”