As the country joins the globe in celebrating Cyber Security Awareness Month this October, the President of the Cyber Security Expert Association Ghana (CEAG), Abubakar Issaka, has advised businesses across the various sectors in the economy to be proactive in implementing cyber security measures.
He noted that having a preventive mind-set in dealing with cyber-attacks is not only cost effective but critical in creating and ensuring a safe cyber space for all and sundry.
“I always advise that institutions should start thinking preventative and not reactive. Once we are actually thinking about preventive measures, it will save us more than being reactive only when we are being attacked,” he advised.
“In this country, institutions only knock on the doors of cyber security experts when they experience cyber-attacks. Oftentimes they call to report cyber-attacks to us saying, our institution has been attacked, how do you resolve this issue with immediate effect? How do we keep this information silent so that our members or our customers do not know of this? Once we solve the problem for them, they don’t get back to us again until they encounter another challenge,” he noted.
Explaining further, he bemoaned how expertise is being underappreciated despite experts’ readiness to work and make suggestions to companies to avert cyber security issues.
“It saddens my heart that as experts who have the ideas, knowledge about the sector and the certification to work, we are only appreciated by institutions when they have a challenge. They do not see the need for our expertise but only rush to us when they are been attacked and when we make some recommendations to them, they do not follow,” he said.
While he lauded the contributions of the Cyber Security Authority (CSA), he maintained that there is the need to go beyond awareness creation in the month of October and collaborate with the private cyber security experts to collectively mitigate cyber security threats in the country.
“This is the time we need to collaborate, and I urge the government institution to open up for this collaboration to actually work. I want to state on record that the CSA is doing their best but then, they can’t do it all. They need to collaborate with the experts to ensure that we collectively execute a cyber security initiative that will benefit the entire citizens,” he noted.
Additionally, he mentioned investment in the sector and training of staff as another solution in mitigating cyber security threats saying “We need to actually make sure that we educate ourselves, train staff to ensure that they are safe because they are the frontline defenders in any institutions. You can install the best antivirus, install the best firewall in your office but if your staff are vulnerable, then your institution is prone to cyber-attacks”.
Cyber Security Awareness Month is celebrated annually in the month of October to highlight the importance of cyber security. This year marks the 20th edition of the awareness campaign.
