THE GOVERNMENT has thwarted over 800 cyberattacks against its online assets and servers this year, the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) revealed in Tuesday’s congressional hearing.
“We would like to note that there are 811 early detections,” DICT Undersecretary Jeffrey Ian C. Dy said. “These were attempts to attack government agencies but did not push through.”
The DICT created a national operations center in response to various cyber threats domestically and internationally, Mr. Dy told congressmen investigating the string of data breaches and attacks in the past months that resulted in sensitive data being accessed by the perpetrators.
So far, the centralized data security system of government has 28 agencies connected to it, he said, adding that the DICT can scan system vulnerabilities of all government assets and databases.
“We found 30,682 vulnerabilities on some 2,000 government assets,” the DICT expert said.
However, even with the data security system, a total of 282 attacks were successful in breaching various government data systems.
According to the DICT, the Department of Transportation, the National Economic Development Authority, and the Philippine National Police–Information Technology Management Service are the agencies most frequently targeted by cyberattacks. — Kenneth Christiane L. Basilio