Palak: Mobile operators are cyberattack victims

State Minister for ICT Zunaid Ahmed Palak has said several mobile operators in the country have already been victims of cyberattacks and the government has suggested they take immediate steps to tackle the crisis.

“We are having Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) inform the operators to carry out IT audit on their existing systems, database, hardware and datacentres,” he said on Monday.

“Although they are private companies, the 18 crore SIM card subscribers are stakeholders. If there are cyberattacks, our people will suffer,” he told a press conference on cyber threats and risks at the national level at Bangladesh Computer Council in Dhaka.

Mentioning that the government is taking various initiatives to prepare for future attacks and urging all to be more alert, the state minister said, “At present, we have several important information infrastructures under the government’s Open-Source Intelligence Monitoring, where cyberattacks are constantly increasing.”

Cyberattacks have been a global concern for a long time and Bangladesh is not safe from this threat, said Palak, urging all countries to work together to reduce the risk of attack.

“We have set up the e-Government Computer Incident Response Team (e-GOV CIRT), which is responsible for maintaining cybersecurity in the country. It identified the attacks [on telecom operators] during its regular monitoring,” he said.

Tarique M Barkatullah, e-GOV CIRT project director and director (operations) of Digital Security Agency, said Bangladesh is among the top 10 countries under cyber security risk when it comes to ransomware trojan attacks.

Cyberattacks recently increased around the world amid a global economic crisis sparked by the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war. The western sanctions on Russia following the war have also disrupted food and energy supplies and caused global inflation to rise.