The Bank of Ghana (BoG) is intensifying its crackdown on rising cyber security threats across the financial sector as digital payments continue to expand rapidly.
Acting Head of Information Security at the Central Bank, Daniel Klu, says regulators are tightening oversight and rolling out stronger safeguards to counter increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks.
He was speaking on behalf of Governor Dr. Johnson Asiama at the Visa–Bank of Ghana Cyber security Summit.
“Our strategy moving forward is multi-pronged. Strengthened governance through the ongoing enforcement and refinement of our Cyber and Information Security directive which if you have monitored, we have issued a draft and probably by January a new directive is going to come out. Expanding and enhancing the Financial Industry Command Security Operations Centre (FICSOC) range to ensure real time sector wide threat monitoring.
“To date, we have successfully connected 24 banks to the Financial Industry Command Security Operations Centre (FICSOC), savings and loans companies and the financial regulators to it infrastructure. Promoting global standards by encouraging the adoption of frameworks like the ISO270001 and other risk based cyber security framework to continue to elevate our collective cyber security maturity. We in Bank of Ghana will continue our work to empower our institutions, to strengthen customer verifications and prevent fraud,” Daniel Klu said.
Meanwhile, Country Manager of Visa Ghana, Fabrice Konan, believes shoring up cybersecurity across the financial system will sustain public trust in the country’s digital economy.
“Ghana really wants to accelerate digital payment so there is going to be more digital transaction and we need to ensure that Ghanaians keep the trust in the digital payment ecosystem. We know with the surge of transaction is also a surge in associated risk. How do we ensure we continue to provide the convenience to Ghanaians to pay digitally while safeguarding the ecosystem. That is why we think it is a collective effort,” he added
Irene Auma, Visa’s Head of Risk for Sub-Saharan Africa, on her part said the company has invested more than $3 billion over the past five years to combat fraud and will continue to scale its efforts to safeguard customers and partners across the region.
“We are investing heavily in ensuring that we are staying in step with what we call smarter fight against fraud. Fraud is becoming much smarter in the network across the globe especially with advance GenAI. Over the last 5 years, VISA has invested over $3 billion dollars on GenAi capabilities to fight against advanced fraud. We are ensuring our consumers and partners remaining secure in the network,” she remarked.
