The Philippine Department of Finance (DOF) is now putting in place a comprehensive cybersecurity defense structure that will span all its units and attached agencies to shield their online portals and communications systems from increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks.
A report to Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said that from now till next year, the cybersecurity system will be set up through an advanced security operations center (ASOC), and involve deploying communication “brokers” to connect all the inline security appliances of each attached agency to this ASOC.
The cybersecurity system will also include performing a comprehensive digital infrastructure upgrade, both hardware and software, for all DOF attached agencies, such as the Bureau of Internal Revenue and Bureau of Customs (BOC), and holding the corresponding training needed for employees to familiarize themselves with the system.
By 2021, DOF expects the system to be fully operational. The finance department will also work closely with the Department of Communications and Technology (DICT) to ensure the sustainability of the system.
The DOF Technology Modernization team, led by former BOC deputy commissioner Vladimir Dennis Reyes as the team’s architect, has already identified the compromised machines, software, and communication lines within the DOF.
Among the intervention and mitigation strategies proposed by the team are performing a comprehensive clean-up of all end-point devices connected to the DOF network, establishing communications and threat analytics-sharing protocols with DICT, and limiting the number of potential channels that hackers usually exploit in trying to gain access to online networks.
Image courtesy of Sira Anamwong at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
