ACDRO reiterates importance of cybersecurity education
Africa Cybersecurity Digital Rights Organisation (ACDRO) has reiterated the importance for continued education, coordination and collaboration to create awareness on the significance of cybersecurity among the citizenry.
Mr Kenneth Adu-Amanfoh, Executive Director, ACDRO, said cybersecurity is important because effective cybersecurity reduces the risks of cyber-attacks by protecting against the unauthorized exploitation of systems, networks and technologies.
He said cybersecurity prevents theft to personal identifiable information and identity theft.
He said humans are one of the biggest risk to cybersecurity; declaring that “the easiest way to access a system is through people, rather than finding ways through security barriers, and one of the most common and successful methods of attack is phishing”.
He urged corporate entities to always ensure that all their employees undergo regular cybersecurity content and awareness training.
Mr Adu-Amanfoh said this in his presentation at the second Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) Cybersecurity Workshop in Accra.
The workshop was organized by ACDRO in partnership with the Global Partners Digital (GPD) on the theme: “Making Our National Cybersecurity Policy and Strategy Citizen-Centre”.
The objective of the workshop was to equip CSOs with expert knowledge to enable them to contribute meaningfully to National Cybersecurity Policy and Strategy to be more citizen-centric as well as promote the digital rights of the citizenry.
This second CSOs workshop follows the successful organization of the maiden one in February this year, which focused on awareness creation.
Mr Adu-Amanfoh said it is important for the healthcare industry to have a good cybersecurity as it helps to prevent patient information from leaking.
“If the information gets leaked, the cost of law proceedings could spell the end of a health care entity, so it is vital to have a cybersecurity for healthcare data.”
He cautioned that the lack of focus on cybersecurity could be greatly damaging to a business; saying “there is the direct economic cost of such attacks to the business, such as theft of corporate information, disruption to trading or even having to repair affected systems all resulting in financial loss”.
Mr Adu-Amanfoh said the threat of cybercrime to businesses was rising fast; stating that “according to one estimate, by McAfee, the damages associated with cybercrime now stands at over $400 billion, up from $250 billion two years ago”.
On the need for national cybersecurity strategy, he said in a constantly changing cyber threats environment, there is the need to have flexible and dynamic cybersecurity strategies to meet new global threats.
National Cybersecurity Strategy is a plan of actions designed to improve the security and resilience of national infrastructures and services.
He said in formulating a National Cybersecurity Strategy, there is the need for CSOs to make input into the document in order to promote digital rights of the citizenry.
Source: GNA