KUCHING: Sarawak needs a team of cyber experts with the required expertise to provide intelligent layer of proactive defense as well as active threats and risks analysis.
Premier Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Abang Johari Tun Openg said it is crucial to build an ecosystem for cybersecurity expertise in Sarawak as cybersecurity is a vast domain requiring both deep technical expertise and generalist roles.
He pointed out that Sarawak needed more people in both the technical and generalist role.
“Currently, countries and organisations are competing for cyber talent by paying more to the small pool of people. The global cyber talent shortage is creating a high turnover of cybersecurity experts.”
He was speaking at the Asia Pacific Cybersecurity Conference 2023 Gala Dinner on Friday.
Elaborating on the Sarawak-based team of cyber experts, Abang Johari said the core Cyber Team may comprise a collaboration of local players with the required security expertise and technical linkups with global cybersecurity technologies and providers.
He said this core Cyber Team can centrally provide managed security services easily, more affordably and embed cyber-risk methodologies to all state public and private sectors.
“This is a shared services model where costly investment and rare resources required for a critical service could be achieved by pooling the rare resources or skills and the sharing of the needed services,” he said.
Abang Johari said cybersecurity threats are not local phenomena with the attacks could be launched from anywhere in the world and coming in anytime.
As such, he said the managed security services by skilled people, with proactive cybersecurity intelligence, and analysis would augment and significantly enhance the existing local security operations.
“This is analogous to our building security team, or a local police station being supplemented with inputs or service of the central intelligence agency which has access to outside or global specialists and security intelligence.
“We also need to build a security culture across Sarawak with awareness about cyber attacks, an understanding of cyber risks and personal responsibility in managing them,” he added.
