Swift passage of national cyber law urged

MANILA, Philippines — Amid rising cybersecurity attacks, the Cybersecurity Council of the Philippines (CSCP) yesterday pushed for the swift passage of a national cybersecurity law and urged both the government and private sector to review their security systems to prevent digital breaches.

In a statement issued yesterday, the CSCP, which is dedicated to advancing cybersecurity awareness and policy development, called on the government and private sector to take immediate action as cyberattacks rise faster than organizations’ ability to respond.

Citing Viettel Cyber Security’s Cyber Threat Landscape Report, the CSCP said the country recorded 16,619 phishing attacks, 255 data breach incidents and 21 ransomware attacks in the first half of the year.

These breaches exposed about 335 million records and compromised over 19.2 million Filipino account credentials.

As such, the CSCP is pushing for the immediate approval of a national cybersecurity law to strengthen the country’s defenses against cyberattacks and protect critical systems and the delivery of essential services.

“The Council urges the Senate to act swiftly on its counterpart measure so that the country has a dedicated agency, clear standards and mandatory protections for critical information infrastructure,” the CSCP said.

It also called on both the government and private sector to conduct a cybersecurity health check immediately.

“Every Filipino organization should assume it is already a target – because it is. Hackers do not wait for budgets, for legislation or for the next board meeting,” CSCP chairman Donald Patrick Lim said.

“We are asking every agency head, CEO, school president and mayor to treat this as urgent: check your systems now, close the gaps you find and train your people,” he added, noting that most attacks begin with a single click by an untrained employee.

The CSCP urged organizations to take the following steps within the next 30 days: apply pending security patches, enable multi-factor authentication on all email and administrator accounts, remove inactive or unnecessary user accounts, check employee credentials against data leaks and ensure backups are kept offline and can be restored.

To help strengthen digital defenses, the CSCP is releasing a free cybersecurity health-check guide for organizations and conducting training sessions in partnership with industry and the academe.

“Cybersecurity is no longer just an IT (information technology) issue. It is a national security, economic and public trust issue. Our country needs to move forward safely – and that requires every sector to act today, not after the next breach,” Lim said.