"My strong recommendation was for the cyber security authority, to develop a cyber security framework and to formulate a strategy to secure national/individual data," said Member of Prime Minister Task Force on IT and Telecommunication, Vice Admiral Syed Arifullah Hussaini (Retd), speaking at a seminar on cyber security to highlight the importance of cyber security and how to avoid cyber threats. The seminar was organized by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan Centre of Excellence.
He said that Navy is a 3-dimensional force in which space warfare is though important, but cyber is still more important. Physical life is that we are living in, but there is also a cyber-life. It is confusing to know that whether virtual world is a real world or real world is a virtual world.
He said that cyber security is a hot subject these days but cyber warfare is more appropriate terminology than cyber security. It is really a warfare.
The reason that the policies fail to deliver the expected results is that we don't take stakeholders on board. We do not involve them in the policymaking. Broad based interaction gives the fruitful results and remarkable achievements.
He pointed out that in modern world, we cannot be effective without using computer and internet. There are threats and side effects of this technology, but you cannot live now without cloud.
That is a hard reality. Today, on one hand if the data is causing negativity, on the other hand the country may use the same data effectively storing it in data bank.
Our national data is saved in Nadra, police stations and hospitals while it must be saved only in Nadra Consolidated Data and only then you will avoid epidemic this way.
Before sharing data, you must know what to share and what to hide. I never opened my Facebook account until I retired from my service, because I was custodian of national security and I did not want any kind of possible leakage of data.
Arifullah Hussaini said that when it comes to good government, there is no other way but to use computers, technology, IT based technology. We do not develop framework plan and we do not know how to do it. We need experts. We do not need qualified people. Qualification does not matter. Capability is more important.
People being hired should be capable of doing jobs they are assigned to. Identify the merit and seek the right people.
Although those people are very few, but we are in dire need of experts. The Centre of Excellence is all set to develop the cyber security centre and produce a trained brigade who would be capable of handling cyber security threats in the most effective manner.
Chancellor Sir Syed University, Jawaid Anwar said that Sir Syed University of Engineering and Technology has launched the Sir Syed Ahmed Khan Centre of Excellence, founded on the teachings and vision of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2019