431 cyber security incidents in third quarter of 2022

 

The acting Director General of the Cyber Security Authority (CSA), Dr. Albert Antwi-Bosaiako says Ghana recorded 431 cybersecurity incidents out of a total of 9,769 contacts at the end of the third-quarter of 2022. 

Dr. Antwi-Boasiako made this statement at the launch of the National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM) on Monday, 3 October 2022 in Accra, and further said the top-five most reported incidents include online fraud, unauthorized access to protected systems, online blackmail, online impersonation and publication of non-consensual intimate images.

“Most of these attacks are perpetrated through social media using social engineering and phishing techniques. Lack of awareness on cyber risks as well as inadequate cybersecurity control measures are the main vulnerabilities being exploited by perpetrators,” he stated.

He added that, of the total number, 5,389 of the attacks are classified as direct advisories, a situation Dr. Antwi-Boasiako explains: “It means that over 5,000 incidents which could have caused various degrees of loss to victims were prevented and various amounts of money saved”.

Touching on collaborations, Dr. Antwi-Boasiako acknowledged that cybercrimes and cybersecurity-related matters are borderless and thus local and international collaborations are paramount in tackling them.

He added that, heightening collaborations with various stakeholders will play a significant role in ensuring the CSA executes its mandate successfully.

And it is for this reason that the Authority is committed to working closely with the Joint Cybersecurity Committee (JCC), which was inaugurated in July this year in accordance with sections 13 and 14 of Act 1038 for the implementation of effective cybersecurity measures, he stated.

Touching on this year’s NCSAM on the theme ‘Regulating Cybersecurity: A Public-Private Sector Collaborative Approach’, he said the multifaceted nature of cybersecurity requires collaborative efforts to ensure security of the country’s cyberspace.

“The nature of cyberspace and associated technologies, including the internet, requires international collaboration for effective responses to cybersecurity incidents. Consequently, this year’s celebration is to highlight the need for such collaborations and encourage the needed partnerships as we implement Act 1038,” he stated.

He, therefore, implored stakeholders to honour their obligation to invest in cybersecurity, saying: “It is my expectation that organisations will dedicate a minimum of between 15 percent and 25 percent of their ICT budget to cybersecurity if we are to make any meaningful and sustainable progress in addressing our cybersecurity challenges”.

According to the World Economic Forum, cybercrime cost the world at least US$6trillion in 2021 and could lead to over US$10trillion in annual damages by 2025. Research by IBM also indicates that it takes 280 days to find and contain the average cyberattack, while the average attack costs US$3.86million.

On her part, the Deputy Communications and Digitalisation Minister, Ama Pomaa Boateng who represented sector minister Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, expressed the ministry’s commitment to full enforcement of the Cybersecurity Act.

The ministry, she further noted, is committed to NCSAM and urges the public-private sector institutions and Civil Society Organisations to participate fully in the activities this October by organising awareness programmes for their stakeholders and constituents.

Citizen Journalism Opening Up Political Space in Africa

Anyone with a mobile phone can call a radio station in Ghana now to question a government minister about the promises he made election time.

The communication revolution has broken through the earlier world in which official information was offered through government-controlled radio or television. This has brought greater transparency and accountability in the governance process, says Aida Opoku-Mensah, director of information and communication technologies at the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The role of citizen journalism as a new tool for democracy in developing countries was discussed at a seminar called Tuesday this week by child welfare and international humanitarian organisation Plan, the ministry for foreign affairs in Finland, and the Union of Finnish Journalists (SJL).

"Citizen journalism has not yet been brought to discussions on development policies," Riitta Weiste, director of Plan Finland said at the seminar.

"Today we ask, does ICT guarantee the success of citizen journalism, and what are the challenges to the work and development policies of governments and NGOs? How could we use the tools of citizen journalism in reducing poverty and contributing to democracy?"

"Citizen journalism is the newest version of an old idea that there should be a different interaction between news producers and recipients," said Heikki Heikkilä, senior lecturer in the department of journalism and mass communication at the University of Tampere in Finland. "There shouldn't just be freedom to express oneself per se but also the freedom to participate."

In developed countries with high access to the Internet, citizen journalism is increasingly expressed in activities such as blogging and distribution of content through own-created web sites.

"Journalism has been facilitated by development of new technology of communication that has made publishing so easy and relatively cheap," Heikkilä told IPS.

Citizen journalism has emerged largely because of the need for journalism to revise its working practices in the face of recognition that it has become far removed from people and their everyday lives, Heikkilä said.

In a sharp departure from its past practices, Time magazine at the end of last year awarded its annual person of the year to Internet users.

The basis of the award was that Internet users had grown enormously within the previous year, mainly frequenting sites where people can participate through their own writings or photographs.

In African countries however, citizen journalism still takes place largely within the context of radio broadcasting -- and it is being used to great effect, says Opoku-Mensah.

"The written word is limited, and has been traditionally limited to cities and to a very narrow group of the elite because it is always in English, French or Portuguese -- the language of former colonial rulers," she said. In such circumstances, she said, it is mainly through radio that political discourse takes place in Africa.

"The first impact that hits you is that the political space has become public -- creating transparency and accountability not witnessed previously. Political leaders fear they will be embarrassed if their actions get publicised."

In Ghana, in West Africa, nearly 60 local radio stations have sprung up within the last decade, and are now spread across the country.

The proliferation of the radio stations has come alongside wide availability of mobile phones, Opoku-Mensah told IPS. "It is no longer fashionable for a journalist to sit down and question politicians, because the citizens do it so well."

The marriage between radio and the mobile phone in Africa has also made it difficult to rig elections, she said, because journalists at polling stations can quickly report anything going wrong.

Opoku-Mensah pointed to elections in Kenya and Senegal where the outcome was influenced by active participation of citizens using modern communication technology.

But there is a flipside, said Lewis Friedland, professor at the School of Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin in the United States. "It can be used in a way that siphons off the civic and public content of a good newspaper." Mainstream newspapers and media organisations must actively try to co-opt citizen journalism, Friedland said.

Another consequence can be "hyper-localism" -- an increasing return to content driven by neighbourhood news and people's personal lives, and produced by individuals, Friedland said. "This can happen when local newspapers turn more and more to 'what people want', and avoid covering difficult policy issues."

This trend is starting to emerge in the United States, he said, and warned that it could also emerge in Europe. The populist equivalent of hyper-localism could "lower the content of journalism as a whole," he said. "Even though the trivial can co-exist with the serious, it is problem worth taking note of." (END/2007)

 

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