The Ghana Police Service has taken a bold step towards modernising its operations by reorganising and decentralising its Cybercrime Unit (CU).
The unit, which was previously housed at the CID Headquarters, has been decentralised to all 25 Police Regional commands across the country, bringing its services closer to the public and positioning it as an expert unit to support criminal investigations.
The reorganisation of the CU has been a key part of the Police Service’s transformation agenda as it seeks to stay ahead of emerging threats in the digital age.
The unit will now focus on delivering services such as cyber forensic analysis, digital devices forensic analysis, mobile and network forensic analysis, and digital content forensic analysis. This is a departure from its previous focus on general criminal investigations, such as building case dockets and direct handling of suspects.
To ensure the success of the decentralisation process, the Service has undertaken specialised training for 151 personnel who have been deployed to the 25 Police Regions across the country.
The training covered a wide range of critical areas, including Digital Wallet (mobile money) Fraud, Social Engineering, Insider Threats and Online Scam.
Others were Bank Card Fraud, File System Forensics and Artifact Analysis as well as Network and Memory Forensics.
The implementation of the first phase of the decentralisation process marks a major milestone towards modernising the Police Service. With the Cybercrime Unit now decentralised, it is expected that the Service will be better positioned to tackle emerging threats in the digital age and deliver improved services to the public.
By Vincent Kubi