Councilor Duncan Chiu Tat-kun, who represents the innovation and know-how sector, mentioned every sector was working by itself IT initiatives and apps, and there was an absence of a unified system.
Duncan Chiu says the federal government’s piecemeal strategy to cybersecurity has made knowledge much less safe.Photo: Ik Young Man
He mentioned the present fragmented construction dilutes assets throughout the division and lacks the flexibility to reply to cyberattacks individually.
Mr. Chiu, who can also be chairman of the Hong Kong Information Technology Joint Council, mentioned, “We ought to now not undertake the strategy of ‘making 100 flowers bloom on the identical time,’ and the federal government ought to do it uniformly.”
He appealed to the federal government to consolidate assets into 4 main knowledge hubs, together with iAM Smart, a one-stop customized digital providers platform. One for healthcare, one for companies, and one for spatial knowledge, which is info associated to a selected geographic location.
“Consolidation improves digital safety by permitting extra assets for use to deploy probably the most safe methods,” he mentioned.
Francis Fong Pok-kiu, honorary president of the Hong Kong Information Technology Federation, agreed {that a} lack of coordination between authorities departments led to repeated errors that led to cybersecurity breaches.
“Several errors, some easy ones, had been repeated between totally different departments,” he mentioned.
Data of 110,000 folks leaked resulting from breach of Hong Kong firm registry
Fong added that the federal government’s new Digital Policy Office will be capable to coordinate and monitor IT-related operations throughout the administration.
He known as on the federal government to speed up the creation of a central useful resource, saying it could additionally assist scale back the danger of additional knowledge breaches.
The new workplace was introduced by CEO John Lee Kaciu in his coverage speech final 12 months, asserting that it could be created by merging the Office of the Government’s Chief Information Officer and the Office of Efficiency.
Finance Secretary Paul Chan Mopo earlier mentioned the workplace is anticipated to be operational by the center of this 12 months.
Hong Kong privateness watchdog grills authorities over knowledge leak of 17,000 folks
Experts mentioned on Friday that an investigation into Hong Kong’s Companies Registry discovered that 110,000 folks’s private info, together with names, passports, ID numbers and residential addresses, had been leaked via an internet portal. I raised my voice.
The registry mentioned its telephone numbers and e-mail addresses had been additionally compromised and that it has begun contacting victims for explanations and apologies.
The announcement of the breach comes after the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data introduced it could examine a cybersecurity failure on the authorities’s Electrical and Mechanical Services Authority.
The private info of 17,000 folks collected throughout the coronavirus pandemic, together with names, telephone numbers, ID numbers and addresses, was leaked resulting from an error within the ministry’s password login system.
The privateness watchdog additionally revealed on Thursday that the buyer council had breached privateness guidelines when the private info of greater than 470 folks was stolen in a cybersecurity assault.