To ensure that all activities undertaken by Ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) and Ghana’s e- government infrastructure’s digital ecosystem is secured and safeguarded, the government through the National Information Technology Agency,(NITA) has set up a Security Operations Centre (SOC) at the National Communication Authority Office In Accra.
The SOC will serve as a threat monitoring infrastructure to identify threats that seek to plague the systems used by MDAs while preventing, detecting, analyzing, and responding to cyber security incidents.
At the official opening of the centre in Accra, the Minister for Communication, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, said one key benefit of NITA’s SOC will be TO improved security incident detection among MDAs to ensure a secured digital space within which MDAs can operate and interact.
She said SOC will also offer services including network monitoring aimed at consistently monitoring the network of the MDAs in real time and be instantly appraised of threats as they occur.
“With advanced analytical and correlation technology to recognize threats, the SOC will aid in the identification of patterns and prioritization of problems for optimized resource and threat management.”
The Communications Minister maintained that the key part of it is that we are not completely blind of what is happening in our cyber ecosystem but are more visible than before.
“We have the capability to now detect and stop immanent attack and even ongoing threat can be detected and acted upon and the part of the eco system that we are putting in place to build up the capability of our critical national information infrastructure.”
Adding she said , “In the past when you wanted to protect critical installation, you have to station soldiers around them with guns , now you need a different kind of defence mechanism against a different kind of criminals who will infiltrate into our critical national information structure and this will be a very key part in our arsenal for this and every agency is expected to be signed on in other to be protected from cyber attack.”
She said NITA SOC still have the capability of offering their services to the private sector for a fee as well.
The National Cyber Security Advisor, Dr Albert Antwi – Boasiako , in an address said the security operations centre adds to a similar interventions which the government has implemented in the last 3 and half years to improve our cyber security incident response across different sectors.
He said the others include the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) for the telecommunications sector at the National Communications Authority and the Security Operations Centre (SOC) launched by the Bank of Ghana in 2018 to address cyber security challenges in the financial sector.
Richard Okyere – Ofosu, Director General, National Information Technology Agency in an address said the Security Operations Centre (SOC) is a command centre of highly skilled and talented ethical hackers and security analysts operating with defined processes and supported by integrated security intelligence technologies.
He said the SOC specifically focuses on cyber threats, monitoring, forensic investigations, incident management, reporting, escalation and close with proper justification and root cause of events and incidents.
(lindatenyah@gmail.com)
By Linda Tenyah-Ayettey