Aug

11

The Department of Science and Technology-Information Telecommunications Office (DOST-ICTO) supports the immediate passage of the cybercrime and data-privacy bills in the Philippines.

When enacted, these would solidify government policy to deter cyberspace crimes since there has been a rise of cases of “hacking” of Philippine government websites.

Although neither sensitive data has been stolen and used for malicious intent, nor public services paralyzed, the increasing occurrence of attacks is a concern.

Hacking and cyberattack attempts are common enough occurences in the Internet — there will always be the unscrupulous who hack into or attack websites and online systems. Therefore, the key solution has been and always will be better security.

Unfortunately, most of the cyberattacks on government are due in part to websites and systems that are developed in-house using coding practices that are below standards and best practices and did not undergo rigorous security testing which may mitigate or prevent common security attacks such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting.

There are also many cases of government agency networks which do not have a firewall, or do have a firewall that are not configured properly.

The DOST-ICTO strongly advocates the increased awareness of hacking and cyberattack threats; capacity building of government website administrators to develop, maintain, and monitor secure websites, systems, and networks that will be resistant to hacking and cyberattacks, and the knowledge sharing of best practices between and among experts, practitioners, and service providers in the Philippines government and the private sector internet community.

It is difficult to stop hackers from initiating attacks, but through concerted effort by government website administrators and experts in the public and private sector, the success of such attacks can be mitigated or thwarted altogether.

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