As part of ensuring a resilient and digital ecosystem for the financial sector, the Cyber Security Authority (CSA) and the Ghana Association of Banks (GAB), have met in Accra to discuss the role of banks in achieving safe working environment.
The meeting also brought together representatives from the Information Security Office of the Bank of Ghana (BoG).
The parties looked at ways to strengthen cybersecurity among their operations, discussed practical strategies for implementing the Act and reviewed the BoG’s Cyber and Information Security Directive.
They also recognised the importance of securing the banking sector especially critical information infrastructure (CII) in pursuant to Section 35 of the Cybersecurity Act, further admitted that the Bank of Ghana is the regulator of the banking and financial services sector and that the CSA only regulates owners of CII with respect to cybersecurity activities as provided in Section 3 (c) of Act 1038.
The meeting also highlighted GAB as owners of critical information infrastructures and hence the need to strengthen collaboration between them, CSA and the BoG.
“We agreed that security in the Banking sector could be improved if there is effective partnerships among sister institutions like the Financial Intelligence Centre, the Economic Organised Crime Office, the Criminal Investigations Department, and the Cyber Security Authority.”
The meeting which was spearhead by the various directors of CSA and GAB agreed to provide each other with the necessary assistance for the efficient performance of their functions.
The following strategies were adopted; to protect CIIs, incident response, multi-stakeholder engagement, capacity building and awareness creation.
Both GAB and CSA reaffirmed their commitment to collaborate with the Bank of Ghana to review the existing financial sector cybersecurity directive, sensitise the public on the latest trends in cyber threats and ways they can protect themselves and increase stakeholder knowledge, understanding and compliance of the cybersecurity Act.
They also committed to work closely with the BoG to ensure the accreditation of the Financial Sector Sectorial CERT pursuant to Section 44 of the Act by facilitating incident reporting and information sharing and contribute to the establishment of the Industry Forum pursuant to Section 81 of Act.
