News

The Cyber Security Authority (CSA) in collaboration with the African Centre for Parliamentary Affairs (ACEPA), the Parliamentary Centre, and the Parliament of Ghana has organised a training session for the staff of the Public Affairs Subdivision of Ghana’s Parliament in Accra to sensitise them on detecting and mitigating misinformation.

It was organised under the Global Affairs Canada-funded Inclusive Legislatures for Gender Responsive Policies (ILGRP) project and attended by staff from the Media, Broadcasting and Public Engagement Departments of the Parliament of Ghana.

Addressing the gathering, the Executive Director of ACEPA, Dr. Rasheed Draman, said the training aimed to enhance staff capacity related to public engagement in parliamentary work and to equip staff with information management skills to navigate the complex information landscape in the wake of misinformation and the issues surrounding deepfakes.

The facilitator for the training from the CSA, Mr. Isaac Socrates Mensah educated participants on some of the prevalent cyber threats such as malware, business email compromise, and phishing attacks.

As a security measure, he advised them to regularly update their software, stay alert of media attachments and install antivirus on their devices to mitigate such attacks.

Mr. Mensah took them through some techniques to combat disinformation such as the use of fact-checking tools and evaluating the tone of information to check for bias.

The trainees were further equipped with best practices to protect their devices including the use of strong passwords and two-factor authentication and cautioned against sharing passwords as it could undermine information security.