Features
Moving away from passwords in the era of technology
The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has led many people to fall back extensively on digital infrastructure–be it collaborating virtually with co-workers and clients across geographies or ordering essential goods and services through e-commerce portals.
If demonetisation was the first impetus, COVID-19 may well be the second to accelerate the use of digital payments. The countrywide lockdown has, on the one hand, propelled citizens to go digital and, on the other, migrated a new set of consumers into the digital payments ecosystem. However, like the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2020[1] mentions, data theft is one of the top risks that businesses are likely to face in the long term. And with this unprecedented digital dependency, what becomes critical is safe and secure access to online services and unwavering data protection of organizations and consumers. With a possible rise in cyber attacks under the current circumstances this is a much-needed step.
How effective are passwords?
Even though computer passwords have come a long way since the 1960s, the traditional methods of keying in a password, including additional security questions is still not tamper-proof, as the information is often misspelt, forgotten or stolen. With compromised credentials responsible for over 80% of data breaches as per Verizon Breach Investigations Report 2019 at a time when remote working is gathering steam, and is being contemplated as a long-term move, employees, the human element, can prove to be the weakest link in an organization’s security chain.Hence, organizations are now realizing the need to adopt strategies that depend less on passwords, by implementing multi-factor authentication systems.
Technology to the rescue
The penetration of sophisticated smartphones and tablets equipped with fingerprint sensors and high-quality cameras and speakers, have enabled the integration of biometric authentication in everyday life. These devices often form the core of working remotely, with VPN authentication, email access, document editing and collaboration tools, all possible on a smartphone. While this clearly reflects the findings of a Visa survey[2] released in 2018 – that stated consumer’s inclination to adopt at least one method to verify their identity – it also showcases their desire to drift away from legacy authentication methods like passwords that need to be typed. The same can be extended to banking, payments and other transactions where security is pertinent.
Time to adapt
The payments ecosystem is evolving and so should the waysin which we keep it secure. New authentication and anti-fraud technologies are making signatures and PINs optional for issuers and merchants. For instance, since the last one year, the regulator has mandated issuers to issue EMV chip-enabled contactless payment cards.Besideschanging consumer behaviour, which is embracing mobile technology to pay –payments is also being driven by mobile technology.
Hence as the payments industry starts adopting digital forms, the tokenization of card credentials will help banks and digital payment service providers to offer consumers a safe, simple and consistent
purchase experience, regardless of where they are and what device they use to pay, playing an important role in moving away from passwords.
Another technology that will play a key role in securing payments, especially with more connected devices, is EMV®3-D Secure. This will deliver rich data to financial institutions and merchants to better authenticate consumers and reduce fraud on transactions made via a mobile or desktop browser, app, or connected device. Using sophisticated artificial intelligence across more than 100 applications and capabilities enables Visa to create a more secure payments ecosystem without sacrificing consumer experience. Machine Learning analyses fraud migration patterns that help issuers verify card applications in near real-time and at scale.
Though the current pandemic trains its focus on safe and secure digital payments for consumers, convenience is in the eye of the cardholder.
Highly secure payment systems remove a key challenge for the digital ecosystem – the dropout of consumers from digital payments – and bolster consumer experience without foregoing convenience. With seamless, secure payments where authentication and verification move to the background, the dependence on keying in passwords and security questions will reduce considerably, ultimately more convenient for the consumer.
The writer is the Country Manager, Visa Ghana
By Adoma Peprah
Features
Tears of Ghanaman, home and abroad
The typical native of Sikaman is by nature a hospitable creature, a social animal with a big heart, a soul full of the milk of earthly goodness, and a spirit too loving for its own comfort.
Ghanaman hosts a foreign pal and he spends a fortune to make him very happy and comfortable-good food, clean booze, excellent accommodation and a woman for the night.
Sometimes the pal leaves without saying a “thank you but Ghanaman is not offended. He’d host another idiot even more splendidly. His nature is warm, his spirit benevolent. That is the typical Ghanaian and no wonder that many African-Americans say, “If you haven’t visited Ghana. Then you’ve not come to Africa.
You can even enter the country without a passport and a visa and you’ll be welcomed with a pot of palm wine.
If Ghanaman wants to go abroad, especially to an European country or the United States, it is often after an ordeal.
He has to doze in a queue at dawn at the embassy for days and if he is lucky to get through to being interviewed, he is confronted by someone who claims he or she has the power of discerning truth from lie.
In short Ghanaman must undergo a lie-detector test and has to answer questions that are either nonsensical or have no relevance to the trip at hand. When Joseph Kwame Korkorti wanted a visa to an European country, the attache studied Korkorti’s nose for a while and pronounced judgment.
“The way I see you, you won’t return to Ghana if I allow you to go. Korkorti nearly dislocated her jaw; Kwasiasem akwaakwa. In any case what had Korkorti’s nose got to do with the trip?
If Ghanaman, after several attempts, manages to get the visa and lands in the whiteman’s land, he is seen as another monkey uptown, a new arrival of a degenerate ape coming to invade civilized society. He is sneered at, mocked at and avoided like a plague. Some landlords abroad will not hire their rooms to blacks because they feel their presence in itself is bad business.
When a Sikaman publisher landed overseas and was riding in a public bus, an urchin who had the impudence and notoriety of a dead cockroach told his colleagues he was sure the black man had a tail which he was hiding in his pair of trousers. He didn’t end there. He said he was in fact going to pull out the tail for everyone to see.
True to his word he went and put his hand into the backside of the bewildered publisher, intent on grabbing his imaginary tail and pulling it out. It took a lot of patience on the part of the publisher to avert murder. He practically pinned the white miscreant on the floor by the neck and only let go when others intervene. Next time too…
The way we treat our foreign guests in comparison with the way they treat us is polar contrasting-two disparate extremes, one totally incomparable to the other. They hound us for immigration papers, deport us for overstaying and skinheads either target homes to perpetrate mayhem or attack black immigrants to gratify their racial madness
When these same people come here we accept them even more hospitably than our own kin. They enter without visas, overstay, impregnate our women and run away.
About half of foreigners in this country do not have valid resident permits and was not a bother until recently when fire was put under the buttocks of the Immigration Service
In fact, until recently I never knew Sikaman had an Immigration Service. The problem is that although their staff look resplendent in their green outfit, you never really see them anywhere. You’d think they are hidden from the public eye.
The first time I saw a group of them walking somewhere, I nearly mistook them for some sixth-form going to the library. Their ladies are pretty though.
So after all, Sikaman has an Immigration Service which I hear is now alert 24 hours a day tracking down illegal aliens and making sure they bound the exit via Kotoka International. A pat on their shoulder.
I am glad the Interior Ministry has also realised that the country has been too slack about who goes out or comes into Sikaman.
Now the Ministry has warned foreigners not to take the country’s commitment to its obligations under the various conditions as a sign of weakness or a source for the abuse of her hospitality.
“Ghana will not tolerate any such abuse,” Nii Okaija Adamafio, the Interior Minister said, baring his teeth and twitching his little moustache. He was inaugurating the Ghana Refugee and Immigration Service Boards.
He said some foreigners come in as tourists, investors, consultants, skilled workers or refugees. Others come as ‘charlatans, adventurers or plain criminals. “
Yes, there are many criminals among them. Our courts have tried a good number of them for fraud and misconduct.
It is time we welcome only those who would come and invest or tour and go back peacefully and not those whose criminal intentions are well-hidden but get exposed in due course of time.
This article was first published on Saturday March 14, 1998
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Features
Decisions have consequences
In this world, it is always important to recognise that every action or decision taken, has consequences.
It can result in something good or bad, depending on the quality of the decision, that is, the factors that were taken into account in the decision making.
The problem with a bad decision is that, in some instances, there is no opportunity to correct the result even though you have regretted the decision, which resulted in the unpleasant outcome.
This is what a friend of mine refers to as having regretted an unregretable regret. After church last Sunday, I was watching a programme on TV and a young lady was sharing with the host, how a bad decision she took, had affected her life immensely and adversely.
She narrated how she met a Caucasian and she got married to him. The white man arranged for her to join him after the marriage and processes were initiated for her to join her husband in UK. It took a while for the requisite documentation to be procured and during this period, she took a decision that has haunted her till date.
According to her narration, she met a man, a Ghanaian, who she started dating, even though she was a married woman.
After a while her documents were ready and so she left to join her husband abroad without breaking off the unholy relationship with the man from Ghana.
After she got to UK, this man from Ghana, kept pressuring her to leave the white man and return to him in Ghana. The white man at some point became a bit suspicious and asked about who she has been talking on the phone with for long spells, and she lied to him that it was her cousin.
Then comes the shocker. After the man from Ghana had sweet talked her continuously for a while, she decided to leave her husband and return to Ghana after only three weeks abroad.
She said, she asked the guy to swear to her that he would take care of both her and her mother and the guy swore to take good care of her and her mother as well as rent a 3-bedroom flat for her. She then took the decision to leave her husband and return to Ghana.
She told her mum that she was returning to Ghana to marry the guy in Ghana. According to her, her mother vigorously disagreed with her decision and wept.
She further added that her mum told her brother and they told her that they were going to tell her husband about her intentions.
According to her, she threatened that if they called her husband to inform him, then she would commit suicide, an idea given to her by the boyfriend in Ghana.
Her mum and brother afraid of what she might do, agreed not to tell her husband. She then told her husband that she was returning to Ghana to attend her Grandmother’s funeral.
The husband could not understand why she wanted to go back to Ghana after only three weeks stay so she had to lie that in their tradition, grandchildren are required to be present when the grandmother dies and is to be buried.
She returned to Ghana; the flat turns into a chamber and hall accommodation, the promise to take care of her mother does not materialise and generally she ends up furnishing the accommodation herself. All the promises given her by her boyfriend, turned out to be just mere words.
A phone the husband gave her, she left behind in UK out of guilty conscience knowing she was never coming back to UK.
Through that phone and social media, the husband found out about his boyfriend and that was the end of her marriage.
Meanwhile, things have gone awry here in Ghana and she had regretted and at a point in her narration, was trying desperately to hold back tears. Decisions indeed have consequences.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’
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