The Ghana National Coordinator of the Global Action on Cybercrime extended (GLACY+) programme has advocated a shared Reporting System to combat the menace of cybercrime in the country.
The National Coordinator, Mr Joe Anokye, made this call at a three-day International Workshop on Criminal Justice Statistics on Cybercrime and Electronic Evidence in Accra.
Mr Joe Anokye, who is also the acting Director General of the NCA said with Ghana’s total mobile data subscriptions at 20,064,110 and with a penetration rate of 70.90% at the end of January 2017, Cybercrime cases are expected to escalate.
He went on further to say that as new technologies and strategies are being developed daily to advance network security, they sometimes have the effect of preventing Law Enforcement and Justice Agencies from securing the much needed electronic evidence.
He, therefore, called for the development of a shared system which would enable all relevant institutions to upload cases and share information to avoid duplication of efforts and ensure data and statistics integrity.
Giving the keynote address, the Minister for Communications Mrs Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, also agreed to the call of a concerted effort by all users of the cyberspace.
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She also spoke of Government’s strategic plans to combat e-crime; these include the establishment of a National Cyber Security Council and a Cybersecurity Centre to oversee Cyber Security Incident Reporting and the establishment of a Forensic Laboratory in place to support investigations and prosecutions.
The National Coordinator for the GLACY+ project in Ghana, is responsible for coordinating the efforts of the various law enforcement agencies and judiciary to protect Ghanaians from the threat of cybercrime on the platform of the Budapest Convention. He was also recently appointed a member of the National Security Council, to support Government’s efforts in protecting the country’s critical national infrastructures.
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The workshop which is being organised by the Council of Europe as part of the GLACY+ project is expected to interrogate the current systems available in each member country with regards to reporting, collating and interpreting statistics on Cybercrime and Electronic Evidence and build capacity to develop measures in this regard. It brought together several local and international law enforcement and justice professionals involved in collecting, collating and interpreting statistics for offences of cybercrime from countries including Mauritius, Philippines, Tonga, Sri Lanka and Morocco.
The workshop was facilitated by, Mr. Matteo Lucchetti, a Project Manager at the Council of Europe who has led the GLACY+ project in Ghana. Mr. Lucchetti was also involved with the 2016 GLACY+ assessment of the cybersecurity space situation in Ghana. Also at the opening ceremony was Mrs. Maria Luisa Trancoso, the Head of Governance of the EU Delegation in Ghana. She stated that government has a duty to protect citizens from crime and breach of privacy. She acknowledged that one of the biggest challenge in fighting cybercrime is under-reporting of cybercrime and a lack of statistics and data for analysis.