Ghana through the Ministry of Communications has set up a Security Operations Centre (SOC) geared towards improving operational cyber security incidents.

The centres operations which will be spearheaded by National Information Technology Agency (NITA), is aimed at protecting data of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) across the country.

According to Communications Minister, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, the SOC will serve as a command centre of highly skilled and talented ethical hackers and security analysts operating with defined processes and supported by integrated security intelligence technologies.

“The launch of this facility today is to improve operational engagement and efficiency between NITA-CERT and CERT-GH for effective response to cyber security incidents affecting MDAs. The SOC will offer services, including network monitoring which will ensure that government networks are monitored consistently in real time and will contribute to the identification of patterns and prioritisation of problems for optimised resource and threat management,” Owusu-Ekuful explained.

This was revealed at the launch of the NITA-SOC on Friday, October 23, 2020 in Accra.

The Communications Minister added that SOC facility will uninterruptedly monitor and advance the security module across government digital platforms for safe and effective service delivery by proactively preventing, detecting, analysing and responding to cybersecurity incidents.

Additionally, the NITA-SOC would not function in isolation but in partnership with the entire CERT ecosystem led by the National CERT under the direction of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).

Head of the National Cyber Security Centre, Dr. Albert Antwi-Boasiako on his part said the establishment of a NITA-SOC manifests a milestone of government’s strategic resolve to scale up the country’s cyber security readiness.

To safeguard government's and the national cyber security space from both domestic and external threats, Dr Antwi-Boasiako said critical elements for the effective operationalisation of cybercrime and cyber security incident reporting points of contact have so far yielded results.

“Between January and August of this year alone, more than 5,000 residents made contact with the NCSC, through the National CERT, for guidance and advice in addressing cyber security issues of which most of them involved online fraud,” he explained.