Raising the level of awareness of cybersecurity imperative — NPC

An official of the National Privacy Commission stressed that raising Filipinos' level of understanding of cybersecurity is imperative to protect the citizens' data privacy from cybersecurity threats.

“Data privacy is not reachable if there is no effective cybersecurity. Private companies and government agencies that process information about citizens should be able to protect all the information they collect and process,” said NPC Deputy Commissioner Leandro Angelo Aguirre during the Data Privacy Fireside Chat in Discovery Suites, Manila on Wednesday.

Aguirre maintained that education among citizens has a big role in terms of cybersecurity efforts.

“Part of the approved Cybersecurity Plan by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. recently is the capacity building for Filipinos to be part of talent when it comes to cybersecurity. We have a lot of talented people here. Foreigners are saying that Filipinos are good when it comes to cybersecurity. We just need to give them the opportunity,” he said, adding that there are many vacant positions waiting to be filled with cybersecurity professionals.

NPC’s Aguirre earlier disclosed that NPC's data privacy protection initiatives include plans for a Data Privacy Foundational Course that can be easily implemented by training providers outside of the capital.

The course is designed to be both operational and practical, with benefits for senior management, legal professionals, and data protection officers.

"We want to democratize access to privacy education," to release the course materials before Privacy Awareness Week in May. The intention is to enable groups outside of Metro Manila to run their courses with materials from the agency,” he said.

Aguirre emphasized NPC’s commitment to transparency by launching "Calls for Public Input in Addition to Public Consultation."

These efforts include crafting issuances about the research exception under Section 4 of the Data Privacy Act, as well as guidelines for data scraping.

“At the same time, education also serves to raise the level of understanding of people within organizations, private and public. It’s an ecosystem and they need to understand the risks of what they are doing. It's because sometimes, companies think that cybersecurity is only a one-time investment,” he added.

Aguirre maintained that the cost of investing in cybersecurity may be significant, but the effects of not investing can be even worse.

Last week, DICT Secretary Ivan John Uy announced that President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. has approved the National Cybersecurity Plan 2024-2029 to provide the country with policy direction, operational guidelines in building its cybersecurity posture, as well as the fortification of the country’s cyberspace against online threats.

The comprehensive plan includes addressing the need to develop good policy to ensure a safe cyber landscape for the country, identify cyber assets, and infrastructure that need protection, and provide government agencies and sectors with a guideline on how to respond to any cyberattacks or attempts.

The plan also incorporated advanced threat assessment so that even before those incidents happen, the government could obtain information from its international partners.

Another important component of the plan includes capacity building and upskilling of cybersecurity personnel, Uy said, adding there are more than two million job vacancies for cybersecurity today.

Uy said they are intensifying on a massive scale training and capacity building for cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence, for many of the emerging technologies among our digital workforce, stressing that the large pool of young workers in the country averaged 24 to 25 years of age.