Ghana, like any part of the world, recorded Phishing as the highest Cyber attack in the height of Covid-19 lockdown, CEo of MTN has said.

According to Jacqueline Hanson Kotei, the sophisticated form of cyber attack  became rampant as countries went into the lockdown to control the spread of the dreaded pandemic.

Phishing involves the use of deceptive e-mails and websites to lure individuals into providing sensitive personal information.

The National Cyber Security Centre report named it among the top 10 Cyber incident recorded in the country.

But speaking at the 20th day of the Cyber Security Awareness Month in Accra, Madam Jaquelin revealed phishing  top of all the cyber crimes as it appears the simplest to scammers in the covid-19 era.

"I think as everybody is stuck at home, there is no creative way to get to people so Phishing has become one of the most effective form of cyber attack available to them," he said.

"People were at home, nobody was doing anything due to lockdown, so it became the only way through which they could attack or harvest somebody's data or perpetrate any cybercrime."

"So globally we saw a rise of that during the lockdown in this this covid-19 crises."

Madam Jaquelin was speaking at a five panel discussion on Tuesday, on theme: Embracing Change and Digital Transformation in the era of Covid-19".

She called on Ghanaians to beware of the increasing rate of Cyber crime across the country.

She said as Government and the telecommunications industries are doing their bit to curb the rate, the individual must also be careful about the worrying trend.

"We all need to be cyber aware, first we need to be careful, that is very very key," she said
"It's not everything that you see that you have to click, it's not every website that you must visit,  it's not every message that you are sent that is genuine.

"So you need to educate yourself in the ways of the cyberspace, educate yourself on what to click, what to get involved in, what messages to answer and how to detect whether a message or website is fake or whether a website is secured."

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has already reported that over 5,000 Ghanaians were saved  from being defrauded between January and August of 2020 alone, after the introduction of its Cybercrime/Cybersecurity Incident Reporting Points of Contact (PoC).

For madam Jacqueline that is wake up call for all bussiness to develop their structures in the era of Covid,

She said due to the pandemic, it has become imperative for management of organizations to prioritize cybersecurity as business go online.

"I think we are in the days where a lot of things are being done on website, a lot of online trading," she said.

"You need to be able to detect which one is true and which one is fake and be able to protect yourself adequately since there are many places your information can be harvested.
"So I think we are all need to be careful."

The 2020 National Cybersecurity Awareness Campaign entered its third week on Monday, with expect anaysis on how the country can maintain cybersecuirty compliance in the era of COVID-19.

It has involved series thought-leadership sessions, panel discussions, workshops and media engagements aimed at intensifying capacity building and awareness creation efforts on cybercrime and cybersecurity issues among Ghanaians.