Cybersecurity

The most paranoid people in our midst are the cybersecurity experts.

- ALEX MAGNO

This is a healthy thing. Digital technologies are progressing at a searing pace. Quantum computing is a fact of life. Artificial intelligence (AI) allows keyboard warriors to do the most wondrous — and most malevolent — things.

Everyday, it seems, we get news of major corporations broken into by hackers. Even those with the most sophisticated cybersecurity systems remain vulnerable. At any moment, bad people could manage to get ahead of the security systems and create havoc.

We do not need Donald Trump to bring chaos into our world. Kids with keyboards could very well do that, thank you. Recently, a global retail giant was hacked and suffered millions of dollars in losses because of it.

In a world where cybersecurity has become indispensable for sustainability, the financial systems are most precarious.

Never mind the scam artists using AI to fake the semblances of authoritative personalities, creating impressions of them endorsing dubious products. The most they can do is to convince naive consumers to order those products online. But any break in cybersecurity that hits our financial institutions will instantly produce chaos on a large scale.

This is why financial institutions are constantly on their toes, making sure their cybersecurity systems are at cutting edge. They cannot afford to be sloppy. The stakes are too high.

Cybercrime is a constantly evolving threat. It presents itself in many forms. This is the reason we need a "whole-of-ecosystem" approach to cybersecurity that pools the efforts of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), the BSP and the National Privacy Commission.