Standard Chartered has engaged female entrepreneurs and CEO’s at an Information and Cyber Security (ICS) Seminar.

The business owners joined CEO, Mansa Nettey and other ladies on the Management Team as part of activities to mark Women’s Month.

The session was held for female clients to understand the global and local trends in ICS, highlight and prevention of common types of fraud that occur in everyday use of modern digital technology.

There were discussions on the emerging threats and how to build a Cyber Secure culture and the effect of Coronavirus disease (COVID 19) on businesses.

JojoKakra Bannerman, Head, Financial Market Sales focused on the trending issue of the economic effect of the Coronavirus disease (COVID 19) on businesses. During his presentation, he spoke about the slowdown in economic growth, supply chain disruptions, the adverse effect on productivity as well as domestic revenue underperformance and additional expenditure in the healthcare sector. He entreated clients to take advantage of the bank’s digital channels in the place of cash transactions.

Michael Kwofie, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) of Standard Chartered said cybercriminals will use every means to exploit internet users. He further gave scenarios of how clients could be exploited and how protect themselves.

Instances of fraud cases were shared with the participants on how customers could fall victim to phishing, smishing, vishing and malware attacks leading to outcomes such as business email compromise, CEO impersonation, mobile money fraud to mention a few. Theophilus Botchway, an investigator at the Bank also described the lessons learned from common fraud cases that the Bank had investigated in the past such as mobile money, romance fraud, and automated teller machines (ATMs) frauds.

Commenting on the session, Mrs. Mansa Nettey, CEO, Standard Chartered Bank Ghana Limited, said the Bank takes ICS as a key risk and has put in place dedicated initiatives to identify, respond and protect the Bank from the Cyber security risks. Mrs. Nettey said Cybercrime is a growing threat to everyone and the Bank continues to create dedicated fora and resources to discuss the ICS risks and find ways to mitigate them. This is part of our commitment to share our knowledge, expertise and best practice with our clients. The Bank will continue to premise its services proposition to clients on the provision of high-quality service to remain trusted and reliable business partners to our clients.

Jonathan Kwofie, Regional Head, Business ICS at Standard Chartered, said “Emerging ICS threats present themselves in different ways such as: denial-of-service attacks, data espionage, natural threats, sabotage, computer frauds and malicious attacks, among others.”

Speaking at the session, Xorse Godzi, Head, Commercial Banking, said, “It was an honour to have our cherished clients most of them female and business owners at such an engaging ICS session where the Bank shared information and our clients in turn shared their experiences.”

The ladies at the session walked away with increased awareness of simple tactics employed by fraudsters, how to maintain increased levels of vigilance while using modern digital technology and better prepared to maintain higher personal cyber safety. They gave feedback on the Bank’s digital platforms and shared some experiences.

Speaking to some ladies after the session they were very appreciative of the event and noted that they would be more vigilant and pay attention to details while performing transactions, think before they click on links and conduct confirmatory checks before committing to transactions.