Head of ITU and Cybersecurity division in New York, Marco Obiso, said that they have been in contact with Vanuatu Computer Emergency Response Team (Vanuatu CERT) and have received requests from the Vanuatu Government to provide assistance and facilitate the exchange of knowledge, facilitate human capacity building for Government staffs and also the community in the importance of cybersecurity.
“We have built a team of people from different organizations, basically a 5-day mission with the idea of giving back to CERT specifically, but generally to the Vanuatu government a certain amount of indication of the current status of cyber security in the International level,” said Mr Obiso.
“It also recommends how to improve for the benefit of the Vanuatu government and the community at large.
“So far there have been a lot of commitment from the community to learn and improve and to basically apply practices that may come from the country and also from the outside. There is, of course work to do. The Vanuatu CERT which was established in June 2018, have a great work in community awareness but there is still room for improvement in the standard working procedures in order to respond to Cybersecurity incidents, but mainly what we see is the need to have expertise and competence in the country level,” said Mr Obiso.
Mr Obiso mentioned they will also talk with the government to establish a capacity building campaign so that more people will be trained at that level and to also introduce cybersecurity in high schools as it is now part of the process of ICT, saying that it is time we need to start thinking of intricating the concept of anything that is related to the use of ICTs.
He said that the capacity of responding to cybercrime or threats has to be given but not all ICT officers here have this but the CERT team is pretty well aware and we are also monitoring the capacity building process.
“We are working under the framework of the Australian government that has funded the project, specifically by the Department of Communications and Arts,” said Mr Obiso.
“The project targets Vanuatu, Samoa, Tonga and Papua New Guinea (PNG). Vanuatu is doing well in connecting with ITU and other countries, it is still a long way to go but we have seen this type of realities that grow very fast and it depends on the willingness of the people.”
He said in terms of the overall ICT, Vanuatu is very engaged. This year, Vanuatu will be hosting the Global Symposium for Regulators from the 9{sup}th{/sup}-12{sup}th{/sup} of July. This indicates Vanuatu’s willingness to carry on.
The Head of ITU and Cybersecurity division said if Vanuatu scales up ICT services there would be a correspondent escalation of cybercrime activities.
The mechanism to cope with this depends on the implementation of Cybersecurity strategies in place, Cybercrime legislations to criminalize certain actions that are considered illegal and also the level of awareness by each individual.
“We are owners of our mechanism and if we act safe, automatically there will be a drastic reaction of criminal users and activities,” he concluded.
Source: Daily Post