NCA Honoured CERT Capacity Builder Of The Year

The National Communications Authority (NCA) was honoured as the CERT Capacity Builder of the Year by the Security Governance Initiative (SGI) Awards held on Wednesday 27^th November, 2019 at the SGI Secretariat.

SGI is a partnership between the Government of Ghana and the United States of America aimed at improving the effectiveness of Ghana’s security sector.

Individuals and organisations who have made distinctive contributions to cyber, maritime and border security during the year 2019 were honoured by the SGI awards.

Mr. Kwadwo Osafo-Maafo the Head of the Cybersecurity Division/NCA-CERT received the award on behalf of the NCA. Mr. Osei Bonsu Dickson, Esq. the Chief Legal Advisor of the National Security Council Secretariat, who coordinated the event, congratulated the National Communications Authority and expressed gratitude for the establishment of a CERT for the telecommunications industry and the efforts being put into capacity building to enable timely response to cybersecurity incidents geared towards a safer Digital Ghana.

Mr. Osei Bonsu urged the NCA to continue to contribute its quota at protecting Ghana’s cyberspace as statistics on cybercrime keep on rising.

NCA-CERT is a sectoral CERT inaugurated by the President of the Republic, H.E. Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on the 22^nd of October, 2018 to be responsible for coordinating response to cybersecurity incidents in the telecommunications sector.

Since its inception, the NCA-CERT amongst others has developed local human resource. The NCA retained sixteen (16) National Service Persons in 2018 and trained them on cybersecurity. They are currently employed at the NCA-CERT. Also the CERT has developed its in-house tools and methodology to automate categorization, analysis and visualization of cybersecurity incidents.

The NCA-CERT recently became a member of the Africa-CERT and is a one of the pioneers on the African continent with regards to CERTs created for the telecommunications industry.

In 2016, Ghana and the United States signed a Joint Country Action Plan (JCAP) which identified three priority areas of the partnership: Maritime Security, Border Management and Integration, and Cybercrime and Cybersecurity. In addition, Administration of Justice serves as a cross-cutting theme.