Prof Goski speaking during the workshop
The President of the Laweh University College, Prof. Goski Alabi, has advocated for the continuous training of IT officers in academic institutions to help curb cyber fraud. This, she added, would protect academic integrity.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of a three-day cyber security workshop in Accra yesterday, she said despite the opportunities associated with the use of technology in recent years, failure by organisations, particularly academic institutions, to build the capacities of their IT staff to meet the ever evolving ICT trends could have dire consequences.
She said “individuals are the centre of the management systems. We should have continuous professional development as a requirement for every institution to train their IT, information security as well as cyber security officers.”
She said “academic fraud is not only limited to Ghana and Africa, it is a global phenomenon, what is usually spoken of more and more is sex for grades, but for some of us one of the biggest challenges academic institutions are facing globally has to do with cyber security.”
It affects academic integrity, ushers in a lot of academic fraud, risk and unreliability into the system, she said.
She, therefore, called on stakeholders, particularly the universities, to adopt strategies aimed at dealing with cyber fraud.
Prof. Goski Alabi, who doubles as the President of the African Council for Distance Education, also asked the Ministry of Education to enforce plans by government to utilise the knowledge of people who have had some form of experience in the cyber space for the development of the country instead of sometimes jailing them, which does not add any benefit to the country.
The workshop brought together industry experts in the cyber security space who would train participants on cyber crime and cyber security, local and global perspectives, situational analysis of cyber threats, defense and cyber fraud schemes among others.
By Ebenezer K. Amponsah