Ghana is prioritising the cyber resilience of essential services, including power, water, transport, healthcare and financial services, as threats to operational technology (OT) systems increase.
Communications minister Samuel Nartey George announced the approach at a Cyber Security Authority workshop in Accra on Thursday.
The workshop, themed “Critical Information Infrastructure Resilience Beyond IT: Securing Ghana’s Operational Technology Ecosystem”, focused on strengthening protection for the systems that underpin the country’s critical services.
George said Ghana had identified 13 critical information infrastructure (CII) sectors and about 200 institutions as CII owners, stressing that regulatory frameworks must be backed by effective implementation and accountability.
The minister said cybersecurity has traditionally focused on IT systems, such as databases, websites and enterprise networks, overlooking the operational technology (OT) systems that underpin essential services, including industrial controls, SCADA platforms, sensors and field devices.
“The security of Ghana’s digital systems is now inseparable from the security of essential services, including power, water, transport, health and financial services,” George said.
He warned that attacks on OT could have consequences beyond data loss, potentially disrupting essential services and putting lives at risk.
“When an IT system is compromised, we may lose data. When an OT system is compromised, we may lose power, water and, in the worst cases, lives,” he said.
George said the government’s approach to securing CII centred on cyber resilience, enabling critical institutions to anticipate threats, withstand attacks, restore essential services quickly and adapt when vulnerabilities were exposed.
The workshop forms part of ongoing efforts to strengthen collaboration, build cybersecurity capabilities and improve practical measures to protect Ghana’s critical infrastructure, helping ensure essential services remain available, trusted and secure during cyber attacks.
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