Accra, Ghana April 23, 2010: “Cyber crime has become extremely pervasive since the invention of the Internet.   In Ghana, many people associate the phenomena with Sakawa, which is Internet fraud or scamming. However, cyber crime goes beyond Internet fraud, it could also involve the hacking of networks, which could destroy a nation’s critical infrastructure. The perpetrators of cyber crime have become very sophisticated, so there is the need to protect our Internet resources by waging warfare against them,” said Prof Nii Narku Quaynor.

Prof Quaynor, made these remarks at social night, when he chaired a social gathering

organised by the Ghana Chapter of the Internet Society (ISOC) under the theme, Internet Security and the National Effort. It was attended by about 50 people from ISOC members, government, civil society, industry and academia.

Reiterating the importance of protecting our critical infrastructure, Mr. Daniel Asante, coordinator of the Ghana Computer Emergency Response Team (ghCERT) informed the gathering that ghCERT was partnering with government agencies, ghNOG, ISOC Ghana, GhNIC and other organisations to create awareness on Internet security issues and how some of the incidences can be prevented.  He however, said that because of the pervasive nature of the Internet, it was difficult to track down on the perpetrators and that everyone was obligated to protect the Internet against anti-social acts.

An interesting question that came up for discussion was how much security was needed to prevent the cyber crime.  While one school was of the thought that security was extremely necessary and that policies should be put in place to curb cyber crime, another was of the opinion that, the more security, the less friendly the Internet becomes, since the Internet is a network of networks and used by a large number of people.

Adding on to the debate, Prof. Quaynor said that technology keeps changing very rapidly and policies very quickly become obsolete.  Moreover, policies on Internet usage are done globally with the involvement of organisations such as, the IETF, ISOC, IGF, ITU, ICANN etc, and these normally take time before they are implemented.   He said, rather than preventing the occurrences, the role of ghCERT is to respond to problems as and when they occur.  Prof. Quaynor stressed on the importance of sharing of best practices among IT operators on a regularly, so that they are abreast of the issues.

Presenting the topic, Mitigating the ‘Sakawa’ Challenge, Mr. Charles Nelson, of Youth Against Cyber Crime, described himself as ‘a lone ranger’ in the war against Sakawa. He described the phenomena as endemic and that the future was bleak if the government does not take measures to nip the crime in the bud.  Of great concern to Mr. Nelson, however is the erroneous perception among people that young people who use Internet are all engaged in the Sakawa business.   “There must be a reorientation of the minds of the youth that the Internet goes beyond Sakawa.” He said.   “Advocacy is therefore, the key to change the mindset of these young people.

As the Internet continues to grow, there is a need for global computer emergency response teams to curb the incidences of cyber crime.  The Ghana project is therefore, a laudable initiative. According to Prof Quaynor, there is the need to create network of government ministries agencies and departments to come out with a defence strategy. He made this call when Mr.  Godfred Ofori-Som, Chair, Technical Committee, ISOC, Ghana, Ayittey Bulley, Vodafone, Ghana, Daniel Asante and Charles Nelson, constituted a panel to discuss the way forward in forging a strong computer emergency response team.  Mr. Asante, said that currently ghCERT was operating on funds from benefactors and voluntary contributions and that there was the need to look for other funding alternatives. Dr. Quaynor called on ghCERT to form strong ties with the government and tackle the issues from a multi-stakeholder approach.   Mr. Asante made a call for volunteers to join in the crusade to make the Internet a safer place.  He said GhCERT was putting a portal in place where it would disseminate information via listservs.

He also called for volunteers to team up with ghCERT to create awareness of the initiative.   Four other CERTS in Africa can be found in Tunisia, South Africa, Mauritius and Egypt.

The evening was climaxed with the launching of the new ISOC website, which has current Web 2 features, user generation content, with face book and twitter integrations. The launch was performed by Prof. Quaynor, Board Chairman of ISOC Ghana.

About Internet Society Ghana Chapter

The Internet Society Ghana Chapter (ISOC-Ghana) is a not-for-profit organization and official Chapter of the Internet Society.  The mission of ISOC –Ghana is to inform the private and public community of Internet users, on recent developments in Internet technologies and their impact on today’s global society.

Contact:

Vera Doku
Communication Chair

ISOC Ghana

[E] : Vera.doku@gmail.com

[M]: +233-244627994

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society is pleased to announce that its independent review for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Next Generation Connectivity: A review of broadband Internet transitions and policy from around the world, has been finalized. The Final Report was submitted to the FCC today. For access to the report and a selection of primary data sets, visit:

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/pubrelease/broadband

From Principal Investigator Yochai Benkler’s Preface to the Final Report:

“Our most prominent initial findings, confirmed and extended in this final draft, were that U.S. broadband performance in the past decade has declined relative to other countries and is no better than middling.  Our study expanded the well known observation with regard to penetration per 100 inhabitants, and examined and found the same to be true of penetration per household; subscriptions for mobile broadband; availability of nomadic access; as well as advertised speeds and actually measured speeds; and pricing at most tiers of service.  Our study further identified the great extent to which open access policies played a role in establishing competitive broadband markets during the first-generation broadband transition in Europe and Japan, and the large degree to which contemporary transpositions of that experience were being integrated into current plans to preserve and assure competitive markets during the next generation transition. [...]

“The primary changes between the original draft report and the final are: the inclusion of a new, extensive, formal literature review of the quantitative and qualitative literature on open access, in particular unbundling, and broadband performance and investment; expansion of the price and actual speed measurement benchmarking, as well as a slight refinement of assessing 3G growth; a new, compact review of the critiques of penetration per 100 measurements and responses to them that replaces the original focus on the density critique alone; new extensive case studies of the voluntary models of open access in the Netherlands and Switzerland; and a variety of discrete responses to useful comments we received on specific country studies.”

The full Preface, Final Report, and a selection of primary data sets are available at: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/pubrelease/broadband

Congratulations and thanks are once again due to the team who undertook this important research, and to everyone who contributed to the report.

Seth Young
Communications
Berkman Center for Internet & Society
Harvard University
+1.617.384.9135

The Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) Business Barometer Indicator report for the fourth quarter of 2009 has revealed that cost of credit, recurrence of inflation and access to credit have continued to be ranked as the topmost challenges facing industries.

The Business Barometer Indicator (BBI) is a statistical means of assessing situations and expectations of the business environment.

The report released on Monday further cited high cost of energy and power fluctuation, high level of taxation, depreciation of the cedi, competition of imported goods and low purchasing power as problems militating against industries in the country.

These problems ran through 2009 in sectors such as manufacturing, service, agriculture and construction.

According to Nana Owusu-Afari, President of AGI, some of the problems creeping in were delays in government payment, unfairness in the award of contracts, the lack of ready market equipment as well as technical expertise.

Nana Owusu-Afari said business expectations of the fourth quarter did not differ so much from the third quarter.

He said 81 per cent of respondents in the fourth quarter expected the business environment to be better, compared with 83 per cent of those who took part in the third quarter.

“This could be attributed to the macroeconomic stability experienced in the country over the last four months,” the AGI President said.

He said an overview of the Ghanaian economy revealed a modest macro-economic stability achieved in the third quarter, stressing that it was sustained in the fourth quarter.

“The Bank of Ghana prime rate declined from 18.5 per cent in September 2009 to 18 per cent in November 2009, but base rates of commercial banks remained unchanged over the period under review.”

The AGI President lauded the performance of security personnel noting that crime rate recorded in the third quarter had declined drastically among the business community.

According to him, members would not relent in their efforts to engage stakeholders such as government and financial institutions over AGI’s major challenges to ensure that they were addressed.

This, he said, would go a long way to build a solid business climate for growing and existing businesses.

GNA

Accra, Jan. 25, GNA - Work on the 30 million-dollar E-governance backbone Project is expected to begin soon, Mr Gideon Quarcoo, Deputy Minister of Communication said on Monday.

The Management of China-based HUAWEI Telecom was awarded the contract to undertake government’s e-governance project in April 2006 to provide centralized information technology and e-services to Ministries, Departments and Agencies as well as metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies.

The contract was renewed in 2008 and the first batch of materials is expected in April, 2010 for site construction work to begin in May.

The project is expected to end in December 2010.

Mr Quarcoo said at a meeting with the experts on the project in Accra. He asked the team of information technology experts from HUAWEI Telecom and the National Information Technology Authority to solicit views from other sources for an efficient and effective implementation of the project. Mr Quarcoo urged the team to ensure the project covered the entire country.

Mr Jackie Shen, Product Manager of HUAWEI, said it would be difficult to connect the entire country because most areas had no access to fibre, micro wave and connectivity. He explained that when the project was initiated in 2006, there were 138 metropolitan, municipal and districts but had been increased to 170.

He said Wa and Bolgatanga might not be connected because there was no fibre, however, by August 2010 Visat would be connected to these areas in the absence of the fibre.

GNA

Accra, Jan. 11, GNA - Vodafone has announced that it has substantially improved its new consumer broadband tariffs saying the service now offers double the current usage allowance for most tariffs.

A statement issued in Accra on Monday said the new usage allowance for the basic tariff was now 10GB per month compared to the previous allowance of 5GB.

Vodafone broadband customers had been demanding an increase to limits and on the overall quality of service offered.

“Some of our valued customers have in recent times suffered outages in service. Vodafone regrets any reduction in service whether caused as a result of the large scale technology upgrade programme underway or caused by circumstances beyond our control such as the break in the SAT 3 submarine cable between Cote d’Ivoire and Portugal,” the statement said.

It pledged that the company would constantly improve quality and service “and by this significant improvement in our broadband service we are improving the terms of the offer to our loyal customers. Our aim is to provide high speed internet access to all of our customers.”

The statement said Vodafone had also introduced new highly competitive packages for its commercial broadband consumers.

It said the commercial internet access offer was aimed at providing good capacity for internet café operators wishing to provide their own consumer service, adding that a dedicated team had been set up in Vodafone to serve these customers.

Source: GhanaNews Agency