CyberSecurity Malaysia has long been working to build itself as a regional leader in cyber physical security and threat prevention. Through national exercises and international agreements, the group has shown the benefits of putting cyber security at the forefront.
As the cyber physical landscape continues to grow, CyberSecurity Malaysia must grapple with how to prepare the nation for oncoming threats.
OpenGov sat down with Dr. Amirudin, CEO, CyberSecurity Malaysia, to learn more about how he is working to strengthen Malaysia’s cyber security capabilities and why collaboration plays such a huge role in this journey.
Malaysia is highly regarded in the Asia Pacific region for its cyber security capabilities. Dr. Amirudin argues that this is due to their proactivity in identifying ways to better their security behavior.
“We have to look at cyber security, not only as a technical matter, but we need to look at the whole ecosystem. People, processes, policies, and government are all affected by cyber threats,” Dr. Amirudin stated, “We must look at them as integrated, if there are any vulnerabilities it could affect the whole ecosystem. We must go deep into managing the new threats, so we can come up ahead and advance our efforts.”
For starters, Dr. Amirudin has a couple key milestones to reach by the time 2020 rolls around.
“By 2020, we are hoping to be the globally recognised national cyber security reference and specialty centre,” Dr. Amirudin told us, “In terms of the domain expertise, we always have to expand the current service portfolio that we have to manage new trends and threats.”
Reaching this goal will not only require an expansion of their service portfolio, but an increase in international collaboration.
“With this vision for 2020, we must go beyond just local, but also regional and further,” Dr. Amirudin exclaimed, “We have started that initiative through bi-lateral and multi-lateral cooperations.”
At the end of last year, CyberSecurity Malaysia was appointed as Deputy-Chair of the Asia Pacific Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT).
It is believed that more active participation at the international level will be carried out from this point on, as governments begin to realise how crucial it is to protecting themselves from cyber physical threats.
“We have been focused on carrying out a lot of technical services and training for law enforcement agencies,” Dr. Amirudin said, “Now, we want to go beyond these entities and provide our service to the regional and international community. There has been positive indication by local markets which have requested our services.”
In addition to this, CyberSecurity Malaysia has a duty to continue building its knowledge capacity and force, as it is a government company. This mandates the company to work closely with government in developing its skills and focus.
This has lead Dr. Amirudin to drive further inter-agency cooperation, so that the efforts of CyberSecurity Malaysia are evident across the whole of Government.
“We need to strengthen inter-agency cooperation among our entities… When it comes to cyber security, there are many players, such as agencies and other bodies. They all play by their respective rules,” Dr. Amirudin stated, “This year we will be organizing a cyber drill at the national level. This will test the inter-agency cooperation in managing a cyber crisis.”
Dr. Amirudin will be focused assessing what work needs to be done in order to improve the work between agencies, when there are cyber-attacks. He also hopes that these efforts will make CyberSecurity Malaysia more visible at an international level.
Dr. Amirudin has lined up some ambitious goals for the next upcoming years. However, if CyberSecurity Malaysia continues its efforts to increase collaboration and build their knowledge capacity, it is believed that they will successfully meet these milestones.
