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Mrs Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, Minister for Communications and Digitalization, has reiterated government’s commitment to activities geared towards strengthening Ghana’s cyber security framework.

“The Government as a cybersecurity enabler will continue to make the necessary efforts, including relevant budgetary allocations to support our national cybersecurity development activities,” she said.

The Minister gave the assurance on Friday at the official launch of the National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM) 2021, Cyber Security Authority (CSA) and the Critical Information Infrastructure (CII) Directive.

The theme for this year’s National Cyber Security Awareness Month is “Ghana’s Cybersecurity Act 2020: Its Implications and the Role of Stakeholders.”

Mrs Owusu-Ekuful said World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2020 stated that cybercrime damages might reach US$6 trillion— an amount that would be equivalent to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the world’s third-largest economy.

She said it was, therefore, important that Ghana had taken adequate steps towards safeguarding its cyber ecosystem and urged stakeholders to play their part to ensure achievement of the goal.

According to the World Economic Forum, cyberattacks against CIIs rated the fifth top risk in 2020.

Mrs Owusu-Ekuful said Ghana was part of the few African countries formalizing the protection of CIIs— a step that would protect the country’s investments in digitalization developments and ensure it reaped the full digital dividends associated with digital transformation.

The Minister said the fact that Ghana was embarking on that new journey did not imply the nation’s immunity to cyber-attacks and that the nation was more prone to cyber-attacks more now as it expanded the various digital channels and platforms – both in the public and the private sectors.