Cybersecurity Vietnam 2016: Focusing on CSIRT Response Teams and Cybersecurity Solutions in Vietnam

The Vietnam Computer Emergency Response Center (VNCERT), with the support from Microsoft Vietnam and NTT EAST (Japan), on November 30 in Hanoi held the Cybersecurity Vietnam 2016 workshop in the themes of developing CSIRT response teams and cybersecurity solutions in Vietnam.
The event was attended by hundreds of participants from government agencies, organizations, and a large number of businesses, both in and outside the country.

In his opening speech to the workshop, Vice Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Thanh Hung stressed: “As the world around us unravels with increasingly advanced internet connection applications, it also means that there is now more ground for hackers.Cybersecurity has always been an intense concern and will only advance in an increasing trend over time.In addition to the many ways to maintain cybersecurity, every nation and organization needs a professional workforce to take on this vital responsibility -keeping smooth and safe operation for information technology systems, protecting the legitimate properties and interests of relevant owners against borderless thefts and sabotage through network connections.”

“In Vietnam, we now have a national CERT center with a network of over 120 CSIRTS across the country.This is no small number.But this CSIRT workforce has just been formed in the cities and provinces, while at companies and businesses, CSIRT teams have not been created in a mainstream and effective way", said Vice Minister Nguyen Thanh Hung.

 

Cyber Security Day 2016 attracts hundreds of participants from government, organizations and enterprises

 

Also at the workshop, Mr. Nguyen Trong Duong, VNCERT Director, informed that Vietnam has been seeing more and more advanced persistent threats (APTs), targeting government offices and critical infrastructures, typically the recent attack on Vietnam Airlines.Websites of various agencies, organizations and individuals in Vietnam continue to become the target of numerous threats.Many of the attacks were even political.Alarmingly, ransomwares are also on the increase.Attacks launched against IoT devices including camera, smartTV and others, and use of social media to disperse malwares, award scams, fake identity and information theft, among others are increasing.

 

According to VNCERT, the center documented 31,585 incidents in 2015 alone (including phishing, deface and malwares), and 1,451,997 instances where Vietnamese IPs are spotted on Botnet.In comparison to 2014, the number of incidents skyrocketed by 159.6%, including 5,898 Phishing events, nearly quadrupled from 2014; 8,850 web interface modification (Deface) events,a 1.06 times increase over 2014, including 252 incidents related to gov.vn domain names; 16,837 malware attacks, 1.7 times higher than last year, including 87 incidents involving gov.vn domains.In the first half of 2016 alone, these incidents were on a spiraling hike, by 4.4 times of 2015, including 8,758 phishing events,77,160 deface events and 41,712 malware incidents.

 

These are the most obvious proof of the lurking massive cyber threats to organizations and businesses, and at increasing paces and scales.Keeping information safe has become a vital need for any organization, more so with businesses.For businesses, information security may be a vital requirement as it has direct impinge on business and building trust with customers, thus the very growth of the company.

 

A highly experienced professional in the field of cybercrime the global IT industry, at the workshop, Mr. Michael Montoya, a Microsoft Security Executive, shared useful solutions to keep valuable business information safe."At Microsoft, cybersecurityis a top priority with a focus on securing customer data, intellectual property, devices and our vast supply chain.As the digital ecosystem is rapidly exanding, we want to leveragethe power of intelligence and big data approaches to advance comprehensive cybersecurity capacity in a“Protect, Detect and Respond” approach, and support cybersecurity efforts in Vietnam, particularly through state-of-the-art products like Windows 10, Office 365, Microsoft reliable public cloud and various initiatives including the Microsoft Government Security Program (GSP).”

 

“Businesses should take and ‘assumed-breached’ posture and invest in proactive approaches that leverage intelligence and adaptive technology platforms that can action that intelligence for improved detection efficacy and response. Microsoft’s comprehensive intelligence platform collects trillions of data points and with the strength of the Azure Cloud and Power BI, we are able to improve the security posture of enterprises so they can focus on their core business.In addition, an IDC study also indicates a positive relationship between unlicensed software and security breaches – the higher the piracy rate, the more malware incidents are found on computers and the vice versa.As such, using licensed software is an effective way to prevent malware threats for businesses”, said Michael.

 

The workshop continued with two experts from NTT Japan who shared with attending businesses their experience in forming and running response teams at NTT Japan.At the workshop, VNCERT also presented the Program on developing a network of response teams across Vietnam, providing useful updates for businesses to turn to as a reference source, prepare and create their own CERT team to be prepared and respond to cybersecurity threats.