The Chief Information Officer for MTN Ghana, Mr Bernard Acquah, says the connection of unsecured pen drives and other devices to computers poses significant risks to users.
According to him, such unsecured devices could be responsible for the transmission of malware and other cybersecurity concerns, such as the execution of malicious codes and the theft of sensitive data. Mr Acquah has therefore cautioned stakeholders, particularly their customers, corporate bodies, and companies that largely depend on ICT for their operations, to secure their endpoints to stay safe.
Speaking at MTN’s Cybersecurity conversation on the theme “Navigating the Digital World Safely: Awareness, Action, Assurance,” he cautioned companies to be cybersecurity conscious in view of the growing cybersecurity threats.
He explained that unsecured pen drives may have something that could be used as a backdoor to get into a company’s database, a situation that could put the company at high cyber risk.
“In magazines, you would sometimes find free pen drives, and you don’t realize they’ve got something on it. You plug it into your machine and realize they’ve got a backdoor into your network,” he added.
He stated that any form of cyber ignorance on the part of an employee could result in that employee being used as a channel through which cyber-attacks could be launched to collapse a whole company.
Mr Acquah further advised, “You don’t go to a party and bring the pictures on a pen drive, plug it into your computer, and share across the entire office.”
Measures to Stay Safe
In order to remain safe from cybersecurity-related attacks that could harm companies, he advised companies to avoid putting their vital company information on ChatGPT, among others.
Even though he acknowledged the fact that such practices were sprawling, he advised that they (ChatGPT) could serve as a means to get the companies attacked in cyberspace.
This, he explained, was due to the fact that unscrupulous persons could exploit companies’ data or information posted on platforms hosted in the cloud owned by OpenAI.
He, therefore, called for the use of threat detection AI tools by companies to examine their networks to check for vulnerabilities and use the same to strengthen their setups to stay safe from cyber-attacks.
The need to secure endpoints has become necessary to prevent malware attacks, secure sensitive information, prevent unauthorized access, and safeguard the integrity of networks.
By: Naabenyin Joojo Amissah/newsalertgh.com
