At the Security World 2018 Conference held in Hanoi on April 5 with the theme of ‘Increasing data and cyber security in the connected world’, Director of the Cyber Security Department under the Ministry of Public Security, Lieutenant General Hoang Phuoc Thuan said that each year his department discovered tens of state information leaks on the Internet, but the truth might be more than that due to the anonymous nature of the network environment.
According to Lt. Gen Hoang Phuoc Thuan, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is happening in a large scale and has created new opportunities for Vietnam to rapidly integrate into the world, to upgrade its technology level as well as manufacturing and competitiveness capacity.
Industry 4.0 has also been a means for a major change in formations of the service sector; for new chances for innovative startups. It has provided a lucrative and promising investment environment in the field of digital industry and Internet as well as a golden opportunity for industrial manufacturing which can successfully apply advances in science and technology.
Vietnam is one of the 20 countries with the fastest Internet development and implementation speed in the world. It has nearly 60 million Internet users, accounting for 62 percent of the population, and is striving to become the second in ASEAN to build a smart city so that it can deliver a better living environment to citizens while boosting the positive effects of sustainable economic and social development.
However, just like other countries in the modern world, Vietnam is significantly affected by complicated and rapid changes of cyber security. These changes have posed risks and challenges to each individual, organization, and company. They even issue dire threats to national security.
According to Lt. Gen Hoang Phuoc Thuan, one of the grave risks is that at the moment, personal information leaks of Internet users is escalating worriedly. The most scandalous event recently has been the case of illegal sharing of 50 million Facebook accounts to Cambridge Anlytica Company for commercial and political purposes, forcing the US and EU to conduct an urgent investigation. At the same time, unhealthy and disturbing information on the Internet also seriously harms many organizations and individuals.
Aside from receiving benefits and positive information, Vietnamese Internet users, especially the young and students or even children, are negatively affected by thousands of pieces of information and images which have obscene, decadent, and violent content to terrorize their mind. These have been freely distributed on the network, and some are used to offend public security. This has been a thorny issue which directly affects social safety and security as well as legal rights of all citizens.
Head of the Information Safety Department under the Ministry of Information Nguyen Thanh Hai stated that the development of the Internet and Internet of Things (IoT) has promoted the connection process among domestic information systems and international ones, leading to various advantages in different aspects of life.
However, it is this process that has created new risks of information leaks. Recently, there have been more and more cyber-attacks on confidential information, many of which are shifting their aim from individuals to major international corporations or even important governmental information systems.
“The lack of human resources in the field of information safety as well as the insufficient individual and organization awareness has accidentally created information weaknesses for cyber attackers to take advantage of. Experts have claimed that more than 90 percent cases of information leaks are due to human faults. Therefore, the task of ensuring information safety is becoming more and more challenging”, affirmed Mr. Nguyen Thanh Hai.
