‘Stay vigilant against cybersecurity risks’
KUCHING: Sarawak needs to stay vigilant against cybersecurity risks despite Malaysia only having a moderate risk compared to other countries.
Premier Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Abang Johari Tun Openg said according to findings from Trend Micro’s biannual Cyber Risk Index (CRI) report, Malaysia is ranked 0.08, which is moderate.
The CRI measures the gap between the cybersecurity readiness of clients versus their likelihood of being attacked and is based on a scale of -10 to 10, with -10 being the riskiest.
“The CRI also reported 58 per cent would very likely suffer critical cyber-attacks in the next 12 months; 30 per cent has suffered more than seven network and system infiltration attacks; 14 per cent had their information assets breached over seven times; while 21 per cent encountered more than seven customer data breaches over the past year.
“Engineers are no exception to this. You will have to deal with a huge scale of data in every task, so I am sure you are well aware and understand the risks,” he said at the Institute of Engineering Malaysia (IEM) Sarawak annual dinner here on Friday.
Abang Johari said everyone must return to the basics, identifying critical data at risk, focusing on threats that matter most to the state’s economic sectors and delivering multi-layered protection from comprehensive and connected platforms.
“I put this challenge to IEM
Sarawak, as one of our local engineering institutions, to educate and train engineers for digitalisation and cybersecurity.”
Abang Johari also urged the public and private sector economies to quickly and effectively adapt to artificial intelligence (AI), virtual and augmented reality.
“This is to match the current pace of the state’s digitalisation movement and in line with the Post Covid-19 Development Strategy 2030.
“These three years have been very challenging as the pandemic has caused health and economic hardships in every sector and affected the livelihood of the people. But on the bright side, the pandemic has stimulated digitalisation across various sectors,” he said.