Karachi: Syed Aminul Haque, Federal Minister for Information Technology and Telecom (MoITT), urged the importance of Cyber Security and its critical importance for Digital Pakistan.
During his address at a two-day event “Cyber Security Hackathon”, organized by MoITT, Aminul Haque said that the objective of the event is to acquaint and prepare cyber security experts in Pakistan. As the Government has to take up Cyber Security as a challenged owing to the “Cyber power will be considered as the Super Power” in the world today.
Addressing the audience, Haque explained the dire need for Cyber Security experts and also told revealed that the Competition the successful cyber security experts will receive huge cash prizes and will become a part of the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT).
This team will thus form on national level and NCERT will respond with immediate outcome and later on CERT for Defence sector, Public sector, Private sector, Banking & Telecom Sector will be formed.
Pertaining to the cyber-attacks on our Public and Private sector, Aminul Haq demonstrated that the FBR website was hacked and the most crucial data was compromised.
Pakistan’s leading musical streaming website “Patari” was cyber-attacked, in June this year, while hackers released the data of 257,000 users on the Dark Web.
Moreover, K-Electric’s system was hacked in 2020, and the hackers demanded the ransom. The 8.5 GB data of millions of users was published on the dark web on account of non-payment. The data of Meezan Bank, Bank Islami was hacked also.
He stressed that the Ministry of IT has the best Cyber Security experts informed the Private sector about the up-coming cyber-attacks and suggested preparedness for such event.
He mentioned “The online taxi service ‘Careem’, Peshawar ATM Services, Sindh High Court, PTV Sports and many other organizations were hacked and the latest attack was on the data of the National Bank” and the whole banking system is not working today and now NBP is struggling for the damage control.
He furthermore told that institutions still do not follow the instructions of the Ministry of IT and bear unsalvageable damages from cyber-attacks. Many institutions do not even have cyber security systems at all, he indicated.
Moreover, Aminul Haque shed the light on partial polices of Sindh government which are to be blame for paving the way for mass transportation and drinking water to the province after 18th Amendmentbut.
However he thanked Prime Minister Imran Khan for rescuing the people of Karachi and resolving these two critical issues.
He indicated that the MoIT provides the broad band connectivity and 4G services in impoverished regions of Sindh and even in the C.M Sindh Murad Ali Shah’s constituency in Dadu.
Discussing about the future targets for 2023, he divulged of achieving $6 to 7 billion from IT Industry.
Asim Shehryar, CEO Ignite, shared his strategic vision for Digital Pakistan and explained the growing primacy of cyber security.
Junaid Imam Member IT, Dr. Slahuddin Shamsuddin CTO Malaysia and Mehzad Saha CISO Engro talked about strengthening Cyber Security readiness and response.
A panel discussion was also held on “National Preparedness of Cyber Security Challenges” moderated by Hassan Husseini (G.M & Head IT Audit HBL).
The event was attended by Member IT Ignite Syed Junaid Imam, CEO Ignite Asim Shehryar, cyber security experts and large numbers of people from the IT sector and academia.
