On October 31, in Ho Chi Minh City, the 2024 Information Technology (IT) and Information Security (IS) Senior Leadership Conference - CIO CSO with the theme "Transforming Information Security Strategy: From Prevention to Response and Recovery After Cyber ​​Attacks" took place.

Le Van Tuan
Mr. Le Van Tuan, Director of the Department of Information Security (Ministry of Information and Communications) spoke at the workshop. Photo: Le My

Speaking at the workshop, Mr. Le Van Tuan, Director of the Department of Information Security (Ministry of Information and Communications), said that today digital transformation is closely linked to information security and safety. Ensuring network security and safety is a legal and mandatory requirement. If organizations and businesses do not comply, they are in violation.

The criminal world is increasingly using high technology, such as AI, to carry out sophisticated, complex and very professional attacks when dividing each specific task into someone in charge of the attack, someone in charge of distribution...

In Vietnam, 2024 opened with ransomware attacks on large enterprises and Mr. Le Van Tuan raised the question, whether international criminals have seen a lucrative market where businesses are willing to spend several million USD in ransom; Vietnam is in the "spotlight" of international cybercrime.

Mr. Tuan informed that after the securities company was attacked by ransomware at the beginning of the year, the Ministry of Information and Communications inspected other businesses operating in the same field, and the results still discovered that many errors were still intact and not fixed.

The situation of information leakage in agencies and organizations remains at an alarming level. Kaspersky's report shows that in 2023, the number of cases of account information leakage in Vietnam increased more than 30 times compared to 2020. In addition, according to the inspection, up to 625 websites of 28 ministries and 53 provinces and cities were inserted with advertisements for card games, betting, etc.

Faced with the above threats, especially after the ransomware attack in early 2024, the Prime Minister issued Directive 09 and Official Dispatch No. 33 to rectify ministries, branches, and localities in ensuring information security. The Ministry of Information and Communications has issued a document guiding 6 solutions for quick recovery after cyber attacks.

According to Mr. Le Van Tuan, to ensure information security, agencies and units must proactively respond to the above challenges.

Accordingly, it is necessary to develop a comprehensive plan to proactively respond to monitoring, rapid response, and post-incident recovery.

At the same time, it is necessary to strictly and fully implement legal regulations on information security, even when incidents occur, so that the response is effective, especially applying the key solutions that the Ministry of Information and Communications has proposed.

Organizations, units and businesses need to apply the principle that unsafe systems should not be put into use, and purchased software that has not been tested for safety should not be put into use.

Invest properly in information security, from purchasing protection tools, costs for experts, real-life exercises and especially regular expenses.

In 2018, the Prime Minister instructed agencies, organizations and units to spend at least 10% on IT, digital transformation and information security.

Another measure proposed by the representative of the Information Security Department is that businesses must conduct good practices, regularly train their staff, and conduct periodic information security assessments and inspections.

In particular, conduct real-life exercises to detect vulnerabilities in its system. During the recent real-life exercises conducted by the Ministry of Information and Communications, 640 vulnerabilities were discovered in the units, including vulnerabilities that, if discovered by hackers, would cause service disruptions that would affect the whole society.

Mr. Le Van Tuan said that in the coming time, the Ministry of Information and Communications will promote real-life exercises on a national scale, and promote the establishment of cyber training grounds for businesses to send their teams to organize exercises there.

In the long term, we will build a team of professional, trustworthy white hat hackers to help conduct real-life exercises and promptly detect vulnerabilities.

The Ministry of Information and Communications also creates communities to share lessons learned from people who have experienced incidents or attacks, giving other organizations and businesses more experience to ensure better security.

Also at the workshop, Mr. Nguyen Son Hai, Director of Viettel Cyber ​​Security Company shared that one of the current difficulties is that agencies and businesses are lacking human resources in information security and this is a common problem for the whole world, when the number of human resources is about 50% short of the demand.

Meanwhile, the current cyber security risk is very high and unpredictable; the attack motivation is growing and the consequences are unpredictable.

This is an objective practical problem that agencies, organizations and businesses must face. And to solve this problem, agencies and businesses need to optimize human resources, investment efficiency and cost optimization.