The Director-General of the Cyber Security Authority (CSA), Dr. Divine Selase Agbeti, has said cybersecurity can no longer be treated as an IT problem, describing it as an economic and national security issue that borders on public trust.

Speaking at the official opening of the National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM) 2026 at the Cedi Conference Centre, University of Ghana, Legon, Dr. Agbeti warned that rising cyber fraud threatens Ghana’s digital transformation agenda.

“The future of finance is digital. Unfortunately, so is the future of financial crime. When a Ghanaian loses money to cyber fraud, we lose more than money. We lose confidence,” he said.

“When citizens lose confidence in digital platforms, the consequences extend far beyond the individual victim, affecting financial inclusion, e-commerce, innovation, and ultimately Ghana’s digital transformation agenda,” he added.

The event was held under the theme: “Securing Ghana’s Digital Finance Ecosystem: Building Trust Through Collaboration and Cyber Resilience.”

Dr. Agbeti stressed that the theme was deliberately chosen to emphasize collaboration, noting that cybercriminals exploit gaps between institutions.

“Cyber criminals do not operate within our institutional boundaries. They do not care whether an incident involves a bank, a fintech, a telecommunications company, a regulator, or a law enforcement agency. They exploit the gaps between our institutions. Our response must therefore be equally connected,” he stated.

He called on financial institutions to share actionable threat intelligence, and urged telecommunications companies, regulators, technology firms, law enforcement agencies and cybersecurity service providers to exchange information quickly to disrupt attacks before losses occur.

“Cybersecurity cannot be a competition between defenders. If one institution detects an attack today, and another experiences the same attack tomorrow because intelligence was not shared, we have collectively failed,” he said.

According to him, the measure of collaboration is not the number of agreements signed, but how quickly stakeholders can detect, share, respond and recover together.

Dr. Agbeti also charged boards, chief executives and senior leaders to take ownership of cyber risk, saying it should not be buried in technology departments.

“Cyber risk is a business risk. Boards must ask difficult questions. How quickly can we detect an intrusion? How quickly can we contain it? If our systems fail tonight, can we continue operating tomorrow morning?” he quizzed.

“Resilience is not the absence of attacks. Resilience is the ability to anticipate them, withstand them, recover from them, and emerge stronger,” he added.

He concluded that there can be no sustainable digital economy without digital trust, and no digital trust without cybersecurity.

Report by Bernard K Dadzie Greater Accra Region