Philippines to launch national cyber security strategy

The Philippines will launch its cyber strategy in December, the country’s new cyber security chief said yesterday.

It aims to strengthen its cyber core through four key thrusts: the protection of critical infrastructure; government; businesses; and individuals, said Allan Cabanlong - Executive Director of the country's Cybercrime Investigation and Coordination Center (CICC) - at Cloud Expo Asia.

Cabanlong asserted the “need to have cybersecurity compliance and assessments” for critical infrastructures. Government networks - both public and military - will be secured by setting up Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERT), expert groups that handle system security attacks.

“We want to achieve a cyber resilient nation state”, he added, and will build training facilities, certification programmes and set common cyber security standards in the country.

It will work with Malaysia to grow its cyber capabilities, its “first ASEAN partner in cyber security”, Cabanlong said. Earlier this month, Malaysia’s head of cyber security offered training and capacity building assistance to the CICC.

The CICC is part of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), an agency signed into law this May to oversee broad ICT developments in the country and draft related policies.

In April, the government lost 70 million voters’ information to hackers. Data included email addresses, passport numbers, and fingerprint records.

The protection, enforcement and defence functions of the cyber realm will be a cross-agency effort. The Department of Justice, National Bureau of Investigation and national police task force will oversee the enforcement and prosecution of such matters; the DICT will coordinate the protection and recovery against attacks; and the Defence Department will gather foreign cyber intelligence and defend systems.

GovInsider will publish an exclusive interview with the Philippines' Cyber Security Chief next week.