International Relations analyst, Dr. Vladimir Antwi Danso has urged the government to improve systems to fight cyber attacks.<\/p>\n
His call follows reports in the French media of China bugging and stealing data from the $200 million African Union (AU) Headquarters in Ethiopia it funded and built.<\/p>\n
[contextly_sidebar id=”WRJQhnXkan49xg4m34BYF8RNTA75Nf58″]Speaking to Citi News<\/strong> on the reports, Dr. Antwi Danso called on the government to as a matter of urgency, build a robust system to avert any such attacks since they were a threat to the country\u2019s security.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Chinese, the Americans and several other countries have cyber commands, proper cyber commands\u2026 whose work is always to look at the internet and see which country is trying to target or attack their country.”<\/p>\n “Let\u2019s take cyber awareness very seriously. Let’s let the people know that it is now a weapon. Let us take it as that. It is no longer a computer kind of detection. It is now real warfare. If we take like that, then we can have people trained to know how to deal with cyber warfare.\u201d<\/p>\n Plans for\u00a0Cyber Security Centre\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n President Nana Akufo-Addo, in October 2017, said his government intended to establish a National Cyber Security Centre though no concrete plan has been outlined as yet.<\/p>\n President Akufo-Addo said this would be key to safeguard the national identification system, the digital addressing system, e-payments, digital financial services and the various e-government initiatives.<\/p>\n He assured that the government will enforce existing legislation and will empower the Data Protection Commission to ensure enforcement of the provisions of the Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843).<\/p>\n Denials from China<\/strong><\/p>\n China has since dismissed the reports it bugged the AU headquarters as \u201cpreposterous\u201d.<\/p>\n The Chinese ambassador to the AU told reporters the media in Ethiopia that claims, first reported by French news outlet, Le Monde was \u201cvery difficult to understand\u201d.<\/p>\n The article said the discovery resulted in all the AU servers being switched.<\/p>\n Le Monde spoke to a number of\u00a0anonymous sources, who claimed the alleged transfer was taking place late at night and was only spotted in January 2017 due to the spike in activity between midnight and 02:00, despite no-one being in the building.<\/p>\n It was suggested the alleged data transfer had been taking place since 2012 when the building was opened.<\/p>\n AU officials brought in security experts from Algeria to sweep the entire headquarters for potential bugs leading to the discovery of microphones in desks, according to Le Monde.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n By: Delali Adogla-Bessa\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" International Relations analyst, Dr. Vladimir Antwi Danso has urged the government to improve systems to fight cyber attacks. His call follows reports in the French media of China bugging and stealing data from the $200 million African Union (AU) Headquarters in Ethiopia it funded and built. [contextly_sidebar id=”WRJQhnXkan49xg4m34BYF8RNTA75Nf58″]Speaking to Citi News on the reports, Dr. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":396857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[106,11],"tags":[3072,139,16660,3,16198],"yoast_head":"\n