The Department of Information and Communications Technology, or DICT, is appealing to lawmakers to grant its request for about P300 million in confidential funds for 2024 to combat data leaks and other ransomware attacks.

Undersecretary Jeffrey Ian Dy, in a radio interview, said the financial allocation would bankroll the establishment of "correct tools" to respond to cyber-attacks similar to that experienced by the Philippine Health Insurance last 22 September.

Dy said government agencies do not have their cybersecurity response unit, which requires them to share resources from the national level.

"The PhilHealth system linked to the eGovPH app went down for more than a week, and that would be reduced to just three days if we have automated tools that will make our analysis faster," Dy explained.

He contended that computer units were individually checked to ensure they were free of the Medusa malware.

The country has an existing team called the National Computer Emergency Response Team or NCERT under DICT that receives, reviews, and responds to computer security incidents.

Dy, however, lamented that it is incapable of swiftly handling all ransom attacks.

"We respond to more than 3,000 events or cybersecurity issues nationwide from January until August — all these are handled by job order staff," he added.

It can be recalled that the National Privacy Commission or NPC had already launched a more comprehensive investigation into the data breach that hit PhilHealth.

The initial report showed that the incident involved a staggering 734 gigabytes of data with "sensitive personal information" involved. Because of this, the NPC said it is open to looking into the potential accountability of PhilHealth officials for the breach.