In the epoch of digitalization and technological development, developing countries must ensure their cyber security and official data from data theft. Daily, we come across news that some of the official or country’s company’s sites have been hacked. According to an Economic Times report last year, Chinese hackers hacked American business sites; the case of tampering with US networking business Solar Winds is the recent story. Moreover, as per report of Pentagon that the 2016 election of the USA was manipulated by a Russian cyber team to make Trump win. The Global Threat reports that adversaries funded by states can access vital infrastructure and applications without being discovered. Most technologically rich and advanced states are busy using malicious actors to intervene in other countries’ official and nuclear-related data. Even the most developed countries are not saved from the curse of cyber security threats. From politics to military information and policy, there is a digital intervention. Developing states with poor digital skills and cyber-related expertise are countries with the worst victims of cyber threats.
Each year, global cyber security reports are published to address the cyber security loopholes. The essential things discussed are digital skills and the technical usage of state citizens. Know-how about technological equipment, cyber-related information, and expertise are the only sources to contain this technological warfare.
Digitally illiterate states are those where the population has little knowledge of digitalization and technological practices; according to the global digital literate index, Pakistan is the region that is most behind in both the race for digital literacy and the issue of technologically structured richness. Pakistan is a country in this epoch where the internet penetration stood at 36 percent. Dealing with the matter of cyber security and threat is a far cry.
Effective cyberattacks have the power to compromise users’ data as well as the infrastructure of a whole country. As a result, cyber security is now acknowledged as a concern that cuts across national boundaries. With new sophisticated zero-day assaults costing economies billions of dollars each year, it is an issue that is escalating quickly. The developed world is severely affected, but underdeveloped nations are at greater risk due to a lack of knowledge and a paucity of security personnel with the necessary training and experience to adequately address this growing threat.
The growing problem of data theft, the dark web, and malevolent actors has shown many nations’ technological brittleness and weaknesses. The dark web and its crew previously exposed useful official information about Iran and India. According to their thinking on the subject, states with weak infrastructure and setup for cyber security are now at risk.
Last year, Indian malicious actors, accompanied by a State agency, hacked an official Pakistani site and stole data. Various official data has been stolen and distorted by Indian agencies, which bitterly proves that Pakistan has a very fragile digital and cyber security team and infrastructure to contain such malpractices. However, after this event, the Pakistani cyber team did hack Indian cricket teams’ sites and uploaded a funny video as revenge. Actually, what had to be done to ameliorate the cyber security performance and set-up against future occurrences?
Recently, leaked audios of the former Prime minister of Pakistan, Imran, the Chief of the Army, and their opposition member is a wake-up call for security agencies. As a result, what we can see that on the one hand, it proves the Islamic country’s moral and ethical decay, and on the other, it also exposes the breakability of digitalization and its usage.
However, The Pakistani government began work on establishing the National Center for Cyber Security (NCCS) in June 2018. The Higher Education Commission (HEC) and Planning Commission collaborated on the NCCS project. The task assigned to NCCS was to take the lead in protecting Pakistan’s cyberspace and elevating Pakistan to the top position in the world for cyber security. If a naïve mind asks what cyber security is as mentioned in the NCCS description: Protecting people and organizations from online attacks is the goal of cyber security. A growing number of rich and emerging nations have recently focused their attention on cyberspace, a venue for fifth-generation warfare.
The main motive behind NCCS is to contain countries from 5th generation or hybrid warfare under the cyber security paradigm. Nonetheless, it is a well-known fact, and no secret behind this, that government websites being hacked, and private information being stolen by foreign organizations are no longer breaking news.
Effective cyberattacks have the power to compromise users’ data as well as the infrastructure of a whole country. As a result, cyber security is now acknowledged as a concern that cuts across national boundaries. With new sophisticated zero-day assaults costing economies billions of dollars each year, it is an issue that is escalating quickly. The developed world is severely affected, but underdeveloped nations are at greater risk due to a lack of knowledge and a paucity of security personnel with the necessary training and experience to adequately address this growing threat.
Therefore, it is high time that the government not only should work on digital literacy and technological enrichment but also contain the cybersecurity-related threat.
