As part of the directive, all banks are required to seek the approval of the regulator before signing up with certain information and communication service providers, especially cloud service providers.

The First Deputy Governor of the BoG, Ms Elsie Addo Awadzi, who disclosed this yesterday, said all banks would appoint a cyber and information security officer (CISO) who would have direct access to senior management and set up a security sub-committee at the board level.

Workshop

Ms Awadzi was speaking at Peduase, near Aburi in the Eastern Region at the opening session of a workshop for experts in the banking sector and law enforcement bodies to find solutions to the increasing risk of cyber crime on the financial services sector.

The three-day sensitisation programme is being organised by the Bank of Ghana (BoG), in collaboration with the Committee for Cooperation between Law Enforcement and Banking Community (COCLAB).

The participants include representatives from the banking sector, crime watch institutions, the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), National Communications Authority (NCA), the Judicial Service, Ghana Police Service, National Security and policy makers.

The deliberations are also expected to enhance public confidence in Ghana's banking system.

Cyber crime

In a speech read on her behalf at the opening session, Ms Awadzi said statistics showed an increase in cyber attacks in the financial sector, hence there was the need for banks to put in place measures to ensure that they were cyber-resilient.

She said the banking sector was the most targeted sector for cyber crime because they were the custodians of large volumes of funds.

Ms Awadzi said the Bank of Ghana also continued to receive data on a number of attempted cyber incidents, including unauthorised access to bank servers, card cloning, phishing and ransomware attacks.

"The fraudsters are getting more sophisticated with the advancement in technology and we need to develop the necessary systems and cultures throughout the sector to deal with this risk," she said.

Ms Awadzi said a research done in November 2016 by the African Union Commission, in partnership with Symantec, found that Ghana was among the top 10 most attacked countries in Africa, while on October 19, 2019, the Criminal Investigations Department of the Ghana Police Service reported that Ghana lost over $200 million between 2016 and 2019 to cyber crime.

To deal with the risk, the deputy governor said there was the need to nurture talents capable of addressing cyber security threats through prompt detection of suspected cases of cyber fraud, investigation, reporting of cases, prosecution of perpetrators and putting in place measures to prevent the practice.

Collaboration

Additionally, Ms Awadzi said the various units of financial institutions, such as the information and communications technology (ICT), operations, security, credit control, anti-money laundering, judicial and fraud investigations departments, must collaborate to fight cyber crime in their institutions.

She commended the government for setting up an Inter-Ministerial Advisory Committee and a National Cyber Security Secretariat mandated to implement the National Cyber Security Policy and Strategy.

More to go

Yet, Ms Awadzi said, "Regardless of the measures taken at both the national level and by Bank of Ghana, there is still more to be done. The fast-paced attempts by the attackers require an equally swift response from policy makers."

Technology

The Head of Financial Stability at the Bank of Ghana, Dr Joseph France, said the banking sector continued to be highly exposed to cyber fraud.

He said information technology currently permeated all aspects of life and globally, stakeholders were making efforts to mitigate the risk of cyber crime in the financial sector.

Dr France expressed the hope that the participants would come up with effective recommendations that would reduce the risk of cyber crime.

During the three-day workshop, the participants will be taken through the cyber crime trends in the country and will have an overview of the monthly fraud reports the various banks submitted to the Bank of Ghana.