From left to right:, Abiola Bawuah, CEO of United Bank for Africa (UBA) Ghana; CEO of Digital Jewels, Adedoyin Odunfa and Archie Hesse, CEO of Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement System (GHIPSS)
Adedoyin Odunfa, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Digital Jewels, an ICT firm, has advised commercial banks to use effective public education campaigns to educate their customers on activities of online fraudsters to stall crime.
She also called on banks and other financial institutions to meet internationally accepted security standards to curb the activities of fraudsters and protect the data of customers.
“There are three key sources of breaches: ignorance, mischief and malice, but ignorance can be eradicated easily. What is needed is a large-scale awareness programme driven by government and the private sector to make people aware of the cyber threats.
“We need to make people know that if they are transacting banking business on the internet, and they cannot validate they are on a secure platform such business transactions should stop immediately,” she said.
She was speaking at a breakfast forum in Accra which featured a cross-section of executives from the banking, telecoms and other sectors of the economy.
It focused on the rise in activities of electronic fraudsters and how organizations could halt their attacks on the financial system with the implementation of security standards like the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and ISO27001, a specification for information security management system.
She explained that the aim of PCI DSS is to guard cardholders’ data and make it difficult for fraudsters to access the data on such cards which include ATM cards.
Abiola Bawuah, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of United Bank for Africa (UBA) Ghana, who spoke on the UBA experience of implementing these security measures and standards, noted that banks need to constantly be a step ahead of electronic fraudsters in order to retain the trust of customers.
“Protection of data should be the number one priority of banks. Whatever the cost is in protecting this data, it is worth the expenditure because it is much costlier losing it to fraudsters,” she said.
According to the Bank of Ghana, electronic fraud constitutes more than 80 percent of all complaints and fraud cases that were reported at its Consumer Reporting Unit.
Archie Hesse, CEO of Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement System (GHIPSS), said there was the need for all banks and international institutions, as well as, merchants to achieve the standard to boost confidence in the use of electronic payment systems.
A business desk report