The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) uncovered a significant cybersecurity risk affecting Philippine government agencies.
Project SONAR, the DICT’s Security Orchestration and Network Assessment and Review System, identified a staggering 73,000 vulnerabilities across more than 20,000 government digital assets.
This translates to over 1,000 government agencies, including local government units and government-owned or controlled corporations, having weaknesses in their systems.
Undersecretary Jeffrey Ian Dy emphasized the proactive nature of DICT’s efforts. “Bakit namin ginagawa ito? Kasi ginagawa rin ng hacker yun. Inuunahan lang namin. After that, ina-advise namin yung government agency, this is the unfortunate part,” he said in a recent interview.
(“Why are we doing this? Because that’s what hackers are doing. We’re just getting ahead of them. After that, we advise the government agency, and this is the unfortunate part.”)
However, Dy revealed only 21% of affected agencies have responded to recommendations for shoring up their defenses.
The DICT attributes this low response rate to a lack of IT professionals within government agencies. To address this gap, the agency is working with the Civil Service Commission and the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) to create permanent positions for cybersecurity specialists.
Currently, there are no designated cybersecurity roles within the government workforce.
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