By Liezelle Soriano
DEPARTMENT of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Secretary Ivan John Uy said that their agency will appeal to the Senate after the House of Representatives stripped off its confidential and intelligence funds.
Uy said they would ask for reconsideration in the Senate.
“While cyber threats and cyber criminals are increasing… the Philippines — going against the tide of the rest of the world — is defunding our cybersecurity and is actually announcing to the world that we’re not interested in protecting our cyber borders,” he said in an interview with ANC.
The DICT has proposed P300 million CIF for 2024 and it was among those five agencies whose CIF was stripped off.
The department insisted that cybersecurity funds should also be a secret to prevent hackers from knowing the information about the equipment.
“If you do that, what will happen is you need to publish your terms of reference in a newspaper informing all cybercriminals how thick the safe that you’re going to use, what kind of alarm systems that you’re going to purchase. Where the locks are, what kind of locks you are buying, what are the features of those locks,” Uy said.
The CIF of the five agencies namely DICT, Office of the Vice President, Department of Education, Department of Agriculture, and Department of Foreign Affairs were realigned to security agencies, totaling an amount of P1.23 billion.
(ai/mnm)
