President Marcos to DICT: Boost defense vs cyber attacks

MANILA, Philippines — President Marcos has ordered the Department of Information and Communications Technology to beef up its defenses against cyber attackers, a DICT official said yesterday.

Undersecretary Jeffrey Ian Dy told Dobol B TV that Marcos was frustrated over the data leaks in government agencies in the past weeks.

Marcos wants the DICT to be proactive and enhance the defense against hackers.

“Yesterday, the President called us and he’s really very frustrated with what’s happening here. And he actually told us that we should really beef up our defenses,” Dy said.

“He wants to know the technical details. He said we shouldn’t be reacting after the fact, we should be preparing before it happens,” he added.

Among the government agencies subjected to cyber attacks and suffered data leaks are the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth), Department of Science and Technology (DOST) and Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).

Authorities said they have already identified the suspects behind the breach in the PSA and the suspect who posted and leaked data from PSA and DOST.

No sensitive information was compromised on the data leak on OneExpert portal, the DOST said yesterday.

In a statement, DOST VI regional director Rowen Gelonga said a security incident was reported to the department by the Philippine National Computer Emergency Response Team on Aug. 31, regarding the OneExpert website.

He said the project team conducted an investigation and found out that a compromise account may have been used to access the site.

“Appropriate actions were implemented to address the incident, additional security measures were put in place and the website’s normal operations were restored soon after,” Gelonga said.

“While the incident may cause concern among the affected individuals and the public, we would like to assure everyone that no sensitive information has been compromised,” he stated.

Gelonga said the OneExpert portal serves as a public registry of Filipino experts, aimed at enhancing access to their services and expanding the reach of science and technology assistance to clients within the country. 

“While the list of clients or users is not readily accessible