Vietnam needs to foster rapid and sustainable digital transformation but, at the same time, must ensure cybersecurity and safety, the Deputy Minister of Information and Communications (MIC) Nguyen Huy Dung recently stated. Digital transformation and cybersecurity and safety are two aspects of a development trend, he told a teleconference with localities last week. The conference aimed at bolstering their capacity in managing and implement digital transformation and information safety. The government issued the National Digital Transformation Programme in 2020, he said, and 2021 is a year of action to accelerate the process in all fields.
According to a report, he noted that digital transformation includes three main pillars: a digital government, a digital economy, and a digital society. During the digital transformation process, at the central level, the Ministry of Information and Communications is the national coordinating agency performing the functions and tasks of state management and law enforcement on national digital transformation, e-government, and digital government development.
At the local level, the Departments of Information and Communications will lead digital transformation in their provinces. It is necessary to determine which information systems must have cyber security and safety guaranteed at all costs, Dung stressed, adding that other information systems will be guaranteed in the way of risk management. Vietnam has some 60,000 digital technology enterprises and the sector needs to mobilise all to address common problems in digital transformation facing the country and localities, he added.
In the first quarter of 2021, the Department of Information Security recorded 1,271 cyber-attacks on information systems in Vietnam, a reduction of 20% compared to the same period last year. Of a total of 1,271 cyber-attacks causing incidents to information systems during this period, the number of malware attacks was the highest, with 623 cases. The numbers of phishing and deface attacks were 449 and 199, respectively. The number of cyber-attacks causing incidents on information systems in the country decreased by 20% year on year, but it slightly increased from January through March, as OpenGov Asia reported.
In March, the Department of Information Security recorded 491 cyber-attacks, an increase of 8.15% compared to that in February 2021, including 180 malware attacks, 164 phishing, and 147 deface attacks. The total number of cyber-attacks on local systems was 326 in January 2021, up 3.49% from the previous month. This figure in February 2021 was 454, an increase of 39.26% compared to January.
As per the Department of Information Security, after eight consecutive months of decline, in March 2021, the number of Vietnamese IP addresses in botnets increased slightly, to around 1 million addresses, an increase of 11.34% compared to February 2021.
However, in the first quarter of 2021, the number of Vietnamese IP addresses in botnets decreased by 37.44% compared to the first quarter of 2020 and by 14.39% compared to the fourth quarter of 2020. In the first two months of this year, Vietnam’s telecom carriers stopped more than 22,000 spam calls. From July 2020 to February 2021, the Department of Telecommunications cooperated with Viettel, VNPT, and MobiFone to deploy a technology solution to screen 111,694 calls and cancel scammer-owned subscriptions.
