Hanoi (VNA) -🧔 Cyber security is now a concern for everyone, said Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Huy Dung at the Vietnam Security Summit 2021.

"Vietnam needs to maintain and continue to improve its capacity to protect national prosperity, create digital trust and deploy cyber information for organisations, individuals and people in cyberspace," he noted. The Authority of Information Security under the Ministry of Information and Communications co-ordinated with IEC Group to organise the Vietnam Security Summit 2021 this week. With the theme "Cyber Security In The Digital Age: Challenges And Solutions", the event is a forum to gather opinions of domestic and international experts on experience in improving response capacity towards cyber security risks. The Ministry of Information and Communications will promote a basic cyber security campaign for people, providing basic information security applications and services on mobile devices. Cyberspace is becoming a “global village", blurring geographical, regional and national boundaries. In particular, due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the whole world shifted activities online. Vietnam is ranked 25th in the Global Cybersecurity Index. This is the result of Vietnam's efforts in ensuring cyber information security in the activities of agencies, organisations and individuals. On average, each Vietnamese person uses the internet for about seven hours a day, which is expected to continue to increase in the near future. This also means that cyber security risks will increase.

The Department of Cyber Security and Crime Prevention using High Technology (A05) discovered that more than 1,550 Vietnamese websites and portals with the domain name ".vn💧" were attacked by hackers in the first six months of this year, including more than 400 sites under the management of State agencies.

The number of hacked websites and portals under the management of State agencies has doubled compared to the first six months of last year. Tens of thousands of customers and domestic internet service providers were infected with malware.

Colonel Nguyen Ngoc Cuong, A05 deputy head, said that cyber attacks targeting systems of important agencies such as telecommunications, aviation, energy, and medical sectors to destroy and steal data continued to take place, causing increasingly serious impacts.

Hacker groups continued to take advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to attack the network by sending fake information and documents to spread malware. Towards the goal of reducing the risks of cyber attacks in the near future, the Ministry of Information and Communications organises a basic cyber security campaign for people, focusing on providing applications and basic information security services on mobile platforms. The Authority of Information Security, Ministry of Information and Communications and VTC Multimedia Corporation introduced the first solutions in the campaign. It is the ViSafe application, which helps people improve their ability to protect themselves and be safe in cyberspace. In the future, the Authority of Information Security will co-ordinate to promote cyber safety applications, raise awareness, change behaviours and habits online, and help internet users in Vietnam have the opportunity to regularly protect themselves and protect Vietnam's cyberspace./.