US to assist Ghana fight cybercrime
The United States of America (USA) is providing technical assistance to help Ghana protect its cyber- space and empower the law enforcement agencies.
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Dubbed “The Security Governance Initiative”, the assistance is three-pronged and comes under Ghana’s international cooperation with the US government.
Focal areas
An agreement signed between the two countries last February listed the three-focal areas as the marine security, cyber security and border security.
The Manager of CERT-Ghana, Mr Eric Akumiah, who explained the significance of the initiative to the Daily Graphic in an interview, said the cooperation was part of interventions put in place by the government to ensure that its cyberspace was safe.
Law enforcement deficiency
He said law enforcement was deficient in dealing with cybercrime and, therefore, the security personnel lacked the capacity to prosecute such cases.
“So, you see, law enforcement agencies arrest somebody involved in ‘sakawa’ (Internet fraud), take them to court but they will be released because the security agencies do not even know how to put digital evidence to nail these people down. So, the US arrangement is to give us the capacity,” he explained.
Border and marine security
Mr Akumiah said under the marine and border security, some security officers from Ghana were in the USA to observe how their USA counterparts conducted maritime patrols “as a practical transfer of knowledge.”
He added: “There is an elaborate programme and practical approaches to enable our officers to observe how borders are patrolled and how they monitor the marine in the US. There is going to be a number of field trips,” he told the Daily Graphic.
Cyber security
On cyber security, Mr Akumiah said there was going to be a number of capacity.
Building programmes and field trips for some of the stakeholders to get practical experience.
“There will also be specific training programmes for the media, mobile network operators and government workers to make them aware of cyber security issues,” he said and added that “Cyber security is 30 per cent technical and 70 per cent social engineering.”
He explained that if people became aware of the issues and challenges of cyber security, “then we are 70 per cent secure.”
