DICT: Cyberattacks to intensify in 2024

CYBERATTACKS will become more frequent and more severe next year, Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Secretary Ivan John Uy warned on Thursday.

Speaking during The Manila Times forum, “Tech trends, financial forecasts,” and in interviews later with reporters, Uy said the DICT has been stepping up its response by closing security gaps and cracking down on cyberattackers.

DICT HEAD AT TMT FORUM DICT Secretary Ivan John Uy receives a certificate of appreciation from The Manila Times Chairman and CEO Dante ‘Klink’ Ang 2nd (right) and President Blanca Mercado after speaking at the Times’ Digital Transformation 2024 Tech Trends forum on Thursday, Nov. 30, 2023. With them are TMT columnist Ben Kritz and IT Editor Jing Garcia (left). PHOTO BY JOHN ORVEN VERDOTE

“Overall, the cyberthreat landscape has been steadily increasing and will only get stronger next year. In fact, this problem is not just here in the Philippines but all over the world,” he said.

He said the DICT has “raided plenty of places where these groups (cybercriminals) dwell and worked together with local enforcement [by providing] intelligence.”

Uy said that because hundreds of cybercriminals have been arrested, “we are already having problems on where we will place them.”

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Cybercriminals, however, are using more sophisticated tools to hack into businesses, he said.

“The reason why the syndicates keep doing this is that cybercrimes are very profitable and get plenty of revenue from this sector. They are well funded, organized, and in fact, by next year, we project that the number of cyberattacks in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) will cost [businesses] around $2 trillion.”

Cybercriminals have achieved the same level of efficiency as our business process outsourcing (BPO) companies, “as they have grouped themselves into clusters to steal information,” Uy said.

Cybersecurity must be a group effort, with stakeholders cooperating with each other and the government to make sure that their data is safe, he said.

“I ask the government to give us the budget and resources that we and our partners need to go after these cybercriminals and prevent them from doing harm to our digital infrastructure,” the official said.

Individuals must also practice “cyber hygiene” and remember “the basic rule of online such as not clicking on unsafe links, and reporting and blocking suspicious emails, [since] it only takes one click by an individual to let a cybercriminal in,” he said.

Uy also said the DICT will continue to establish connectivity projects in 2024 and enhance the government’s website.

“We plan to increase the effectiveness of the E-Gov super app next year by providing more online services. In light of this, we plan to deploy our E-Gov pay system as well as our E-visa program [and] move forward with our electronic national ID system as well,” he said.

The department also plans to increase connected areas to 25,000 next year from 15,000 areas this year.

“Currently, we are at around 10,000 areas already,” Uy said.

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