Malaysia is to establish an international centre to fight cyber-terrorism, providing an emergency response to high-tech attacks on economies and trading systems around the globe, reports said Sunday.
Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said during a visit to the United States that the facility, sited at the high-tech hub of Cyberjaya outside Kuala Lumpur, would be funded and supported by governments and the private sector.
The New Straits Times said the centre would be modelled on the Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta, which helps handle outbreaks of disease around the world.
Abdullah - who announced the initiative at the close of the World Congress on Information Technology in Austin, Texas - said the threat of cyber-terrorism was too serious for governments to ignore.
"The potential to wreak havoc and cause disruption to people, governments and global systems has increased as the world becomes more globalised," he said according to the daily.
"The economic loss caused by a cyber attack can be truly severe, for example, a nation-wide blackout, collapse of trading systems or the crippling of a central bank's cheque clearing system," he said.
"It is imperative that countries throughout the world work in concert to wipe out this danger."
Abdullah said that big names including Symantec Corp of the United States, Japan's Micro and Russia's Kaspersky Lab had agreed to take part in the "International Multilateral Partnership Against Cyber-Terrorism" (IMPACT).