Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - Vietnam’s digital economyhas progressed rapidly in recent years, but challenges in network securityrequire the country to build a comprehensive national strategy to addressnetwork vulnerabilities.

Vietnam’s internet economy reached 9 billion USD in2018, making up 4 percent of Vietnam’s gross domestic product (GDP)and tripling that of 2015, and was heading to 33 billion USD by 2025,according to the e-Conomy SEA 2018 released by Temasek (Google).

However, the rapid expansion of the digital economyhas been accompanied by an increase in network security risks in allrespects, including new risks, the number of incidents and the level of damage.

According to a Kaspersky Lab report released lastmonth, Vietnam was among the most targeted nations for banking malware in 2018,accounting for 3 percent of global attacks. Russia was in first with 22 percent,followed by Germany (20 percent) and India (4 percent).

In January 2019 alone, Vietnam suffered more than800,000 malicious codes on a daily basis. If calculated by the percentageof internet users, 21.5 percent of users in Vietnam faced the threat ofbeing attacked.

Kaspersky said cyber security threats had become moreand more sophisticated in the digital era.

The latest survey by the Ministry of Information andCommunications this week revealed that 63 percent of 90 State agencies andorganisations across sectors, cities and provinces had only paid modestattention to information security (level C). Just 12 percent had startedto look at information security (level D), which included big ministriessuch as the Ministry of Industry and Trade and Ministry of Science andTechnology.

Only 15 percent of State agencieshad adequate measures to ensure information security.

"We have different solutions at a certain levelto ensure network security but lack a comprehensive national strategy as wellas a specific implementation process. It is clear that information and networksecurity is a weakness in Vietnam," said Vu Quoc Thanh, vice chairmanand general secretary of the Vietnam Information Security Association (VNISA).

According to Thanh, awareness and capability for safeuse of the internet by the majority of Vietnamese users was still limited.

More affordable smartphones and mobile data plans havedriven the growth of internet users in Vietnam. The country has about 64million internet users (approximately 67 percent of population), placing itamong the top 20 countries with the highest internet penetration.

In particular, 72 percent of people access theinternet through smartphones, statistics from the US-based survey companyWe Are Social showed.

More and more businesses have applied digitaltechnology to production, business activities and management, which isreflected in the rapidly increasing rate of new technologies such as cloudcomputing, artificial intelligence (AI) and automation.

A survey of about 5,000 businesses in Vietnamconducted by the Vietnam E-Commerce Association revealed that 43 percent ofenterprises used websites, 32 percent used social networks and 15 percent usedmobile applications to sell their products in 2018.

Advertising has shifted from newspaper and televisionto social networks, search engines and mobile applications.

Nguyen Quang Dong, Director of the Institute forPolicy Studies and Media Development, said the complexity, multifaceted andcorrelation among different subjects beyond the national border madepolicy-making more complicated without a single solution.

“Vietnam needs a comprehensive policy and multi-solutionsystem for information and network security that involves all State, businessand internet users,” Dong said, adding that more efforts should be spent oncommunication and education programmes on internet safety to raise awarenessand skills among Vietnamese internet users.-VNS/VNA