Government Institutions, Department and Agencies have been encouraged to develop security policies to secure their critical information from getting leaked into the public sphere.

Additionally, they must put in place mechanisms that would restrict workers from using official office computers to visit porn sites and download materials from the internet during working hours.

Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Herbert Gustav Yankson, Director, Cybercrime Unit of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service (GPS) who gave the advice said the risk in attracting virus from porn sites was high.

“Official computers cannot be used to visit porn sites and download personal materials. But these are things that are happening in our institutions. Policies must be developed so that some of these things would not be faulted”, he stressed.

According to ACP Yankson, a virus could be a conduit for transferring vital information of an institution unknowingly. He admonished the agencies to ensure that their computers were updated regularly and had proper anti-virus installed on it.

He was speaking at a day’s sensitisation workshop on cybercrime and cybersecurity for Institutions, Department and Agencies of the various Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies in the Central Region on Thursday.

The workshop, which formed part of the national efforts to raise awareness on cybercrime and cybersecurity was aimed at engaging the agencies on the trends of cybercrime and how they could protect themselves from becoming vulnerable.

ACP Yankson said computers could be infected with viruses through e-mail attachment, downloading files, visiting infected websites and using removable media such as pen drives.

In this regard, he cautioned against accepting different pen drives for one computer saying “lots of pen drives moving from one computer to the other infects almost everything and through that, government information could be sent out”.

He said advancement in Information Communication Technology (ICT) comes with associated risks and emphasised that protecting one’s self in the cyberspace was critical and must not be taken for granted.

He advised the agencies and the general public to be vigilant and do due diligence particularly when using their mobile phones and other electronic gadgets.

ACP Yankson advised Ghanaians, especially the youth, not to give too much information about themselves on the internet, have strong passwords with a mixture of alphabets, symbols.

He expressed worry about the increasing incidence of sex extortion despite the regular education and advised ladies to avoid taking nude pictures of themselves and more importantly must not share it with their friends.

He indicated that sex extortion, child pornography and nudity on the cyberspace were criminal offences, which when found culpable could face a jail term of not less than ten years.