Cybersecurity Situation in Our South Asian Neighbours

Cybersecurity resellers have faced ups and downs in the recent time in India. During the lockdown, their business graph suddenly fell last year. However, it recovered again in Q1 in 2021 after May or so. Here’s a comparision with how their counterparts in other South Asian countries are doing. This can help the Indian security resellers to devise business strategies for themselves.

Bangladesh

The security industry in Bangladesh has not really picked up much as this country is more oriented towards other kinds of global business such exporting branded garments. Some of them are equipped with structured LAN cabling, high bandwidth Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and application layer firewalls, but these are believed to be not adequate for data protection and defence against cyber-attacks.

The sector lacks proper workforce and necessary investment for enhanced cybersecurity.

“It’s not that the textile and garments industry hasn’t been implementing security measures, just that it’s not visible or being discussed widely. The cybersecurity industry is also not sensitising them in the way the other sectors are being educated,” says Prabeer Sarkar, CEO of Dhaka Distributions. His clients are primarily from the financial sector, government, telecommunications and defence - high risk industries in the face of cyber-attacks.

“It’s not that the textile and garments industry hasn’t been implementing security measures, just that it’s not visible or being discussed widely. The cybersecurity industry is also not sensitising them in the way the other sectors are being educated.”

--Prabeer Sarkar, CEO, Dhaka Distributions

Bangladesh a major cyber-attack in global financial forgery when US$81 millions were transferred from its central bank’s reserves to accounts in Sri Lanka and Philippines in February 2016. In 2013, Bangladesh’s Sonali Bank fell prey to an attack, when $0.25 million got siphoned off from its network. After this incident, the Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC) was constituted to combat further intrusions and security breaches.

Pakistan

In a highly sophisticated and deceitful phishing attack, cybercriminals have recently modified five legitimate Android apps – all from Pakistan – to create fake versions that can spy on users. UK-based information security company, Sophos, has revealed the hacking details in its recent research into cyber threats facing mobile device users.

The counterfeit apps include modified versions of the Pakistan Citizen Portal (PCP) app (an official government app), Pakistan Salat Time (an Islamic prayer clock), Mobile Packages Pakistan (an app used to price-compare mobile phone plans), an insurance company app, and a tool that can check a phone’s SIM card for validity. Although PCP is the most popular app among these, it has targeted other apps for initial training and testing by hackers. The attack includes phishing, spyware and human engineering technologies.

“Government must run detailed, nationwide programmes on phishing training for every Internet user. This will help avert a lot of attacks and save millions of money.”

-- Pankaj Jain, CEO, Panzer IT

Bhutan

Bhutan doesn’t naturally feature high on any cyber threats list as a targeted zone. This, however, doesn’t mean that Bhutanese don’t face any data breaches or their network vulnerabilities aren’t exploited by cyber criminals every now and then.

One reason for this could be the increasing number of 3G and 4G network subscribers in the country. The official statistics of the ICT Ministry gives the number around 700,000, nearly as high as Bhutan’s population. Apparently, the countrymen have taken to cardless transactions lately. Ever since the Covid-19 pandemic, the health and education sectors have followed in the footsteps of other government departments in ensuring e-delivery of services. All these aspects add up to Bhutan’s cybersecurity scenario as of today.

“Despite the great engagement of the Kingdom of Bhutan in ICT development, many government and private sector leaders are from non-technical backgrounds. In a country where digital transformation is a work in progress, awareness of the importance of cybersecurity remains a big challenge,” reports the International Telecommunication Union’s news portal, MyITU.int.

The Kingdom of Bhutan has been undergoing considerable digital transformation over the last 20 years. The country’s public sector and private players have been offering a lot of digital services with the digital literacy constantly on the rise.

“Bhutan is well connected to the outside world and has close ties with neighbouring countries like India, Myanmar, Singapore and Thailand. Therefore, the nationals are gradually improving their cybersecurity awareness, with government agencies, banks, hospitality and food processing units implementing some measures,” says Bishwajit Sutradhar, VP, Synersoft Technologies. He has extensive experience working with Bhutanese Government and SME partners.

“The nationals are gradually improving their cybersecurity awareness, with government agencies, banks, hospitality and food processing units implementing some measures.”

-- Bishwajit Sutradhar, VP, Synersoft Technologies

Bhutan began the process of drafting its first National Cybersecurity Strategy (NCS) in 2012. The BtCIRT was the taskforce entrusted with enhancing cybersecurity in Bhutan. The body had to facilitate cybersecurity information coordination and establish computer security incident handling capabilities within the country.

Nepal

Cybersecurity threats are assuming a frightening proportion in the Himalayan country of Nepal over the last decade. In a daring attack, Nepal’s Department of Passport official website got defaced by a notorious Turkish hacker group in 2017. Earlier that year, as many as 58 government websites were hacked by a group, called Paradox Cyber Ghost.

The attack and subsequent interception of the SWIFT system of NIC Asia Bank also happened the same year. About $4.4 million was siphoned off from the user accounts to six different countries in the attack, of which the bank subsequently claimed to have recovered $4 million. All these attacks were carried out by different groups in a span of just 6-8 months, thereby pointing to the loopholes in the cybersecurity framework of Nepal.

According to the Nepal Telecommunications Authority’s (NTA) MIS statistics, there were 16.67 million Nepalese connected to the Internet till 2019. Most of them use it for all kinds of applications, including the ones related to work, professional services, IT services, entertainment, social media and chatting, and e-commerce. It’s a huge number to handle for any government, and it is widely acknowledged that the Nepal government has toothless policy regulations to deal with cybercrimes. Add to it the lack of skilled specialists in cybersecurity, it becomes a perfect recipe for disaster.

Gradually, the South Asian countries are getting integrated into the global security network. How far this goes remains to be seen.

By B Swaminathan

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