US Embassy to help PHL law enforcers deter cybercrimes

MANILA–The United States Embassy in Manila will help enhance the capability of the Department of Justice (DOJ), Philippine National Police (PNP) and the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to prevent cybercrime incidents in the country.

Lamont Stiller, Legal Attache of the US Embassy in Manila said the goal of the training program is to enable the personnel from these law enforcement agencies to become first responders in addressing cyber threats that may emanate particularly from private business organizations

Stiller said the embassy envisions strengthening the cooperation between the Philippine government and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to address these security threats that might compromise data security and result to significant losses in businesses.

“We will focus on addressing cybercrime incidents being reported by the private sector to the government. We want to assist the government on how to deal with the private sector and resolve these threats through the use of forensic analysis and other best practices on cybersecurity,” Stiller said in an interview with reporters on the sidelines of the 2017 IT-BPM Cybersecurity Summit organized by the Information Technology and Business Association of the Philippines (IBPAP) Wednesday at the Marriott Hotel in Pasay City.

“We have an encyclopedia of malwares; we will be providing guidelines on malicious hashtags on social media and identify where they came from. We are willing to provide these resources to the government,” he added.

Stiller said around forty attendees from the DOJ, PNP and the NBI will participate in the training program to be conducted by cybersecurity experts from the FBI.

Eventually, the US Embassy expects that these individuals will serve as advisors to organizations that are willing to strengthen their cybersecurity measures.

For his part, Allan Cabanlong, Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Assistant Secretary for Cybersecurity and Enabling Technologies, urged the government agencies to migrate their websites to the National Government Portal to preserve data security.

The online portal, known as the Integrated Government Philippines (iGovPhil) project, is a single window containing all online information and operational infrastructures and public services of the government providing a one-stop shop of online government services to the public sector and private businesses.

The single government portal will also significantly reduce costs (financial, human resources, and spatial) typically incurred in managing multiple websites.

Stiller emphasized that private sector must cooperate in order to strengthen investigation of cybercrime incidents that would lead to the arrest of hackers in the country.

“Legislative measures should also take place that would assist the law enforcement here in the Philippines. The Internet service providers need a venue to preserve and store more data on their servers so that when law enforcers request they will be armed with the legislation to conduct their investigation,” he stressed.

The IT-BPM Cyber Security Summit 2017 aims to enhance the security and resiliency of IT-BPM companies while helping build sector capabilities to defend, mitigate and secure current and planned systems and infrastructure against cyber attacks.

The summit gathered experts and industry leaders who shared their best practices in addressing the emerging challenges in cyber security.