SAJIBUR RAHMAN
The Bangladesh Computer Council's e-Government Computer Incident Response Team (BGD e-GOV CIRT) has issued an alert to all government and private organisations including the financial sector to remain vigilant for possible growing cyber threats ahead of the national election.
Urging all to take the following measures to ensure their security as well as data protection, it called upon them to enhance their capability to combat growing cyber threats.
The CIRT also urged all to report or inform BGD e-GOV CIRT regarding the detection of indicators of compromise (IOCs) and/or any suspicious activities they observe within their environment, to work in collaboration through https://www.cirt.gov.bd/incident-reporting/or cti@cirt.gov.bd.
It also suggested ensuring vital services as such DNS, NTP as well as network middleboxes, which are securely configured and are not exposed on the internet.
Computer Incident Response Team (BGD e-GOV CIRT) serving with responsibilities to computer security incidents and activities in the territory of Bangladesh close collaboration with international entities keeping risk-free the cyberspace of Bangladesh.
CIRT also works with various government agencies, critical information infrastructures (CII), financial organisations, law enforcement agencies (LEAs), and academia & civil societies to help improve the cyber security landscape of Bangladesh.
An official at BGD e-GOV CIRT said hacking and internet penetration have increased drastically ahead of the national election.
The government institutions including critical government structures and private organisations should not neglect their security issues as the cyber criminals remain too much alerted, he stated.
He also called for ensuring proper information and cyber security awareness training among all the employees, customers, and consumers to report issues, if someone observes any anomalies and/ or suspicious activities.
The CIRT also requested ensuring strict network and user activity monitoring 24/7.
"Conduct Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing (VAPT) for all the systems on regular basis", it said.
Talking to the FE, Md Mushfiqur Rahman, chief information technology officer, First Security Islami Bank Limited, said the regulatory bodies concerned should ensure governance and hold the responsible people accountable to avert the exiting cyber attacks.
The financial sector including banks is taking international security solution, but people concerned should follow the government's guideline strictly in this regard, he added.
Former director (operations) of the Digital Security Agency and project director of the BGD e-GOV CIRT Tarique M Barkatullah told The Financial Express, "|The public and private institutions including financial sector should not breach the Bangladesh National Digital Architecture's guideline as the cyber threats are growing now-a-days substantially."
Those organisations (both private and public), who provide e-service should ensure security check from the government organisations concerned, he told the FE.
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