Ghana’s top government security agencies are attending a five day workshop on cyber crime in Accra. The agencies include the Ghana Armed Forces, the Ghana Police Service, the Ghana Prisons Service and National Security Service. The workshop also attracted some personnel from the banking, insurance and telecommunication institutions in Ghana.

The workshop, which is aimed at equipping these government agencies and some information and communication technology (ICT) personnel with pre-emptive measures against cyber crime, will also educate participants on how criminals use ICTs to commit crimes.

The Deputy Minister of Information, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, said at the workshop that there was a  need for such a regular forums for personnel especially from the country’s security agencies to update and upgrade their knowledge and skills regarding cyber crime, since it is a fast-growing problem in Ghana and the world over.

The Information Minister also cited incidents in which the official website of the Vice President John Dramani Mahama was hacked; he also mentioned recent developments in the United States of America where classified documents were leaked by wiki leaks, creating chaos and anarchy in some part of the world.

He gave the government’s full supports for such a program and urge the organizer Rhythx Consulting Limited to continue with their good work to help reduce cybercrime in the country.

The Executive Director of Rhythex Consulting, Raphael Ugbodu, told the workshop that cyber crime has become a threat to economies of highly industrialised, middle-income and developing nations, adding that computers around the world were systematically being victimised by rampant hacking. He said: “hacking is not only widespread, but is also being executed so flawlessly that attackers have been known to compromise systems, steal everything of value and completely erase their tracks within 20 minutes”

Ugbodu said given that e-commerce was just about taking  off in Ghana with ICT infrastructure still in its nascent stage, it was alarming that a significant number of people applying that technology of the future chose to operate on its wrong side of the law.

Source: biztechafrica