Rosmah: Boost measures to tackle online threats
KUALA LUMPUR: Local Internet regulators should strengthen cybersecurity measures to counter online threats and potential danger to users, said Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s wife, Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor.
She said regulators, such as the National Cyber Security Agency and Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, should review laws, policies, regulations and enforcement to ensure they were relevant to current development.
She said the Cyber Safety Awareness Baseline Research — a research conducted by CyberSecurity Malaysia and Education Ministry last year — had identified three types of cyber threats to women and children.
“These threats are cyberbullying, social media influence and cybercrime,” she said at the launch of the “Keep our Women and Children #CyberSafe” seminar yesterday.
As for social media influence, Rosmah said platforms created for communications and interaction had been abused to spread fake news.
She said based on police statistics, more than 70 per cent of commercial crimes were cyber crimes, such as e-banking scams, love scams and “cybersexploitation”, which included sexual grooming from online predators.
On Internet addiction, she said, a person who spent more than four hours online on non-work or learning-related activity was addicted.
“Based on this definition, many Malaysians are addicted to the Internet,” she said.
Rosmah said the Internet World Stats had shown that 78.8 per cent of Malaysians were Internet users.
She said with the expansion of infrastructure and reach of service, as well as various social media platforms, “it is no surprise if many are already addicts”.
This, she said, was further supported by the Cyber Safety Awareness Baseline Research report, which showed that children used the Internet for two to three days a week and used social media platforms for one to four hours a day.
“Nearly 45 per cent of children aged between 7 and 9 know how to use the Internet, and 92.5 per cent of teens aged between 13 to 17 are Internet users,” she said.