The good, the bad and the blind sides of our internet woes
Credit to Author: TONY M. MAGHIRANG| Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2019 13:10:41 +0000
Last month, the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) celebrated a quarter century of the internet in the country by highlighting significant developments and looking forward to level up the Filipino experience in the next 25 years. Themed “Unlock the Paths of the Future: 25 Years of Internet in the Philippines,” the event gave due recognition to recent government ICT projects like Pipol Konek, National Broadband and GovNet. The talks from public and private resource persons underscored the benefits of a faster Internet access as well as a vision to make the Internet “vanish” to make it blend into the background of everyday life.
The low-key affair managed to put into perspective a report in February that Filipinos spend the most time online worldwide. According to the Digital 2019 report from
Hootsuite and We Are Social, Filipinos spend an average of 10 hours and 2 minutes daily using a host of devices. Majority of the access are on social media platforms.
These developments should augur well for the entry of a new telco player which reportedly moved its rollout to 2021, and the onset of the next generation 5G mobile technology. There’s really a big market for faster, more reliable Internet technology hereabouts.
Above all, a robust internet framework across the country dovetails with national development objectives such as poverty reduction, higher labor productivity and by a long shot, alleviation of traffic woes all over.
At the DICT internet event, John Garrity, chief technical advisor of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), spoke on the importance of the internet in achieving sustainable development goals on top of surmounting the continuing challenge of the digital divide. International development institutions such as the World Bank have espoused that internet-based advances like Big Data and the Internet of Things are opening new viable paths in the application of digital tools to improve lives, mitigate against natural disasters and drive economic growth to help bring down endemic poverty.
The growing access of Filipinos to the digital frontier is usually attributed to the spread of fake news, rumors about showbiz personalities, gangland exchange of political diatribes and the like. That it offers an opportunity to serve the interest of nobler pursuits is blindsided by contrarian noise and in vague claims that such high-mindedness is tantamount to the hubris of a few do-gooders, not to mention a veiled attempt to restrain freedom of expression on the Wild Wild Web. In the process, the specter of a despicable despot’s New Society sometimes gets trotted out from the dustbin of history.
For all the hoopla of a better, faster Internet for all, cybersecurity threats posed on organizations and individuals alike are hardly given the same optimistic reception. The emerging reality is that more devices connecting to digital platforms increases the attack surface that’s exposed to cyberrisks. Existing security protocols can only detect less than 30 percent of threats because the current technology cannot cope with a myriad accesses on multiple endpoints, the network and the cloud. Moreover, the manual practice of detection and response fail to “see” blind spots in an expanded attack surface.
And there’s the dearth of manpower to man the data gateways against unwanted intrusions. The complexity of the threat landscape and the latest detection and remediation approach demands skills that are not yet available in the ICT industry locally and globally. There’s also the fact that cybercriminals are always one step ahead of their victims even in the evolving field of analytical tools powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Apparently, the quest for good affordable internet access in the country is going through a Passion play awaiting its day of redemption. Happy Easter to you all!
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