The government prohibits the use of private accounts for sending official emails | General news

The Cabinet has authorized the Ministry of Communications to migrate all public sector workers to the dedicated .gov.gh government domain in Ghana for official purposes.

As a result, the government introduced a new measure prohibiting all officials from using their private e-mails to perform their official duties.

Minister of Communications Ursula Owusu-Ekuful announced it Friday in Aburi at the opening session of the first day of reflection of the National Technical Working Group on Cybersecurity in 2019.

The decision, she added, was intended to help protect the government's critical infrastructure against cyber attacks.

According to her, the state understood that the use of private emails, such as Yahoo and Gmail, does not create the impression of seriousness in the performance of its obligations .

The minister also said that the use of private e-mails exposes all of the country's essential information resources to cybercrime, highlighting the need to protect the ecosystem of the country. public information.

She said workers in some departments and ministries, including the Ministry of Communications, have already started using public e-mail.

At the end of 2019, she warned that sanctions would be applied to officials who use private e-mails to perform national tasks, noting that the use of private e-mails for official purposes was unacceptable.

She said Ghana ranked among the world's top ten social media users, exposing the country to cyber attacks.

"It is unacceptable that a government official sends out an official message with the use of his private email and this is not happening anywhere in the world," she noted.

The minister revealed that the president had asked the ministry to implement all the regulations on cybercrime and related offenses in order to make the digital security campaign in Ghana a success.

"We are determined to ensure the protection of critical state infrastructure, regardless of how little funding we have as an institution"

The program should be executed by the National Cybersecurity Secretariat and the Ghana Domain Registry under the supervision of the Ministry.

The two-day workshop organized by the committee will allow members to review progress on the cybersecurity bill.

Representatives of major public institutions, such as the Department of the Attorney General, the Bureau for Combating Organized and Economic Crime (EOCO), the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF), the National Communications Authority (NCA), Intelligence (DI), among others, participate in the retreat.