Accra, Ghana//-Speakers at a cybersecurity webinar organised by MTN Enterprise as part of its Accelerate Growth and Cybersecurity Month have warned that every business—regardless of whether it is small, medium, or large—faces constant cyber threats, including ransomware, phishing, and data breaches.
According to them, cybersecurity must therefore be a major concern for all businesses, especially the Small and Medium Enterprises in Ghana, Africa and other parts of the world.
Why would cyber criminals be targeting small businesses
The Head of Cybersecurity Technology Standards at Ghana Cyber Security Authority, Jake France, answered that: if a business is small and it is digital, it is fair game. Payments like mobile Money cards, and when that business starts doing procurement online, that business could attract cybercriminals, he added.
Mr France noted that cybercriminals don’t discriminate, because they are always looking for loopholes in businesses to strike.
For Madam Jacqueline Hanson Kotei, Senior Manager, Enterprise Information Security & Governance at MTN Ghana, small businesses are easily targeted by cybercriminals, saying they can probably send them an email to say their invoices are being paid. If the criminals know that the SMEs are dealing with a couple of banks or the small businesses are dealing with some people, they can attach malicious things, especially emails, to target the SMEs.
“So, for everybody, be careful what you see, be careful what you click, be careful what you scan as QR codes, be careful what you accept. Try and interrogate everything”, she advised.
Phishing, which is a cyberattack where criminals trick people into revealing sensitive information—such as passwords, credit card numbers, or login credentials—by pretending to be a trustworthy organisation or person, is definitely a big one, Madam Kotei stated.
“Your unpatched systems, your vulnerabilities are you looking at them, or are you ignoring them?. Your people! I think a lot of investments will be made in the tools. Are we training people? Sometimes, SMEs think they are too small to do all these things. But they need to know what to look out for, the signs. They are the weakest links. You can have all the fancy tools in place, but if one person is negligent, the cyber criminals can use that to attack that SME and several others”.
