The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) disclosed it has detected approximately 2,900 attempted cyberattacks on government agencies and local government units (LGUs)
In a Palace briefing, DICT Secretary Chief Ivan Uy said the National Computer Emergency Response Team (NCERT) under DICT is tasked with responding to hacking incidents affecting government agencies. Currently, 30 agencies are connected to NCERT.
“Our sensors detect attempts, and we mobilize our team to mitigate them,” Uy said.
Notably, the department thwarted an attack on government mail exchange services attributed to advanced persistent threat group 41, a Chinese cyber group.
Similar hacking attempts to the Department of Agriculture (DA), Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), and the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) were also detected and mitigated.
“We are significantly better now, our detection mechanisms are there, our protective systems are there and you will notice that we are now sharing information also with our allies,” Uy said.
“I think we need to improve this by for example having a cybersecurity law that will mandate even the private sector to report to us, if there is a cybersecurity incident. So that we can, we have to address this together. So, we have to address our visibility of the entire cybersecurity,” he added.
