Amendments to be made to Cyber Security Act
07 Jun 2015
Increased Penalties and Fines for Cyber Criminals Soon Amendments to the Cyber Security Act (2010) to include increased penalties and fines for cyber criminals should be passed in Parliament in another month. In 2010, the government promulgated the Act which is reviewed after a three-year period. In 2013, the review was done with recommendations to strengthen the Regulation. Julian Robinson, State Minister of Science, Technology, Energy and Mining made the announcement while sharing the Government’s plans to deal with cyber security, at the recently-held second staging of the National Commercial Bank Jamaica (NCB) Limited Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) Conference in Montego Bay, St. James. He was one of the presenters on the panel entitled: “How SMEs can protect themselves from cyber criminals”. Mr. Robinson said with the passing of the amendments, the police and judiciary personnel will have to be equipped to be consistent with the legislation. “Legislation by itself doesn’t solve problems. If your police, prosecutors and the judiciary personnel are not equipped then we are not going to be able to successfully prosecute some of the criminals,” he pointed out. Additionally, he said the Government has also drafted the Data Protection Legislation and is now working with the Chief Parliamentary Counsel to have it in place early in the next financial year. “We have to ensure that that is in place to deal with the threat of cyber criminals,” Mr. Robinson underscored. The State Minister reiterated that the Government has been focusing on cyber security in a real way over the last two years, as it takes significant and concrete steps to place more Jamaicans online. “Through the Universal Service Fund we have distributed over 25,000 tablets in schools, over 200 laboratories across the country and an islandwide broadband network, which has connected schools libraries, post offices and most recently our hospitals and police stations,” Mr. Robinson said, adding that there are now more risks than opportunities to do so with the emergence of cybercrime. He said although going online is an opportunity, it exposes and increases the risks which are not just local, but international as well. As such, he indicated that this is why the Government has launched its National Cyber Strategy in January this year. This strategy, he said has four components. The first relates to the legal and regulatory framework, technical measures, Human Resource and Capacity Building and Public Education and Awareness. In the area of technical measures, Mr. Robinson said the Government will put in place a Cyber Emergency Response Team (CERT) which will provide a physical technical outfit to be housed at E-Gov to allow them to be more proactive, to easily detect cybercriminal activities and to provide guidance to ministries, agencies and departments as to the kind of systems and procedures that they need to put in place to protect themselves. “We have physically sourced the equipment and have identified the location and have begun the training of the personnel and we should be ready in another month or so,” he noted. In addition, he indicated that for the first time they have put in place a Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the Government. “Each ministry and its departments manage its own Information, Communication and Technology (ICT). This means that we don’t have standards across the board. We have in place now a CIO whose responsibility is to ensure consistency across the board,” Mr. Robinson explained. Over 100 SMEs attended the three-day conference which was highly subsidized by NCB. The theme for the conference was “Transformation Through Growth”.
