DAVAO CITY (PIA) – The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) through a Memorandum Order 006 has directed Government Agencies to put up a Government Computer Emergency Response Team or GCERT that would provide alerts and warnings, incident handling, vulnerability handling and artifacts handling when it comes to reactive service or if the system has been bridge by hackers or penetrated by cyberattacks.
DICT prescribed policies, rules and regulations for the protection of Government Agencies is in line with the National Cybersecurity Plan of 2022.
During the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency – XI Expanded Regional Intelligence Committee meeting held June 28, Engr. Albert Gabriel of DICT - Mindanao Cluster Office proposed a Defense-in-Depth, which is a layered strategy that includes technical, organizational, and operational controls which are necessary to avoid cyberattacks.
Engr. Gabriel bared that the Philippines was still among the five targets for global standard criminals and the growing dependence of people on technology has created a greater avenue for cybercrimes.
He stressed that cyberattack has increased since the onset of COVID-19 pandemic, citing Malware and Malicious files as the most cyber-attack incidents handled by DICT from January to December of 2021, with 39.4% or 463 cases.
The digital situation of the country showed that out of the 111.8 million population of the country, 76.01 million are internet users and 92.05 million are active social media users, with 10 hours and 27 minutes as their average time spent on the internet. The Philippines are among the top social media users in the whole world.
“We are using the internet more than we sleep and it makes us 4 hours and 6 minutes that we use on social media as an average time and make us number 1 user of social media in the whole world,” Engr. Gabriel said.
With the current statistics of internet users in the country, Engr. Gabriel cited the importance of every organization to come up with a policy which establishes clear guidelines and procedures for the operation and use of the organization’s information technologies and avoid any suspicious attacks brought by malwares and internet viruses.
Meanwhile, DICT Mindanao Cluster will be having pre-selected 60 organizations in Davao Region who will be participants on their training and capability building and conducting threat and scenario-based training. With the Cybersecurity Plan of DICT for 2022, DICT through Engr. Gabriel gave their assurance to assist partner agencies in establishing GCERT. (PIA-XI/Elvira May Suico)
