FOLLOWING the hacking of the social media pages of some government offices, the Department of Information and Communications Technology in Davao Region (DICT-Davao) said the culture of cybersecurity should be instilled among the general public.

The first step to this is to educate the public about cybersecurity through information and awareness campaigns. Information technical officer of DICT-Davao Engr. Albert Gabriel said DICT-Davao wants to deliver this awareness campaigns to schools, government offices, and to the general public.

“We just want to inform everybody na aware gyod sila sa ilahang mga ginabuhat (that theyshould be aware of their actions) especially what they are doing online. Technology cannot do it alone. We have to adopt cyrbersecurity in our mindset,” Gabriel said during the Kapehan sa Dabaw media forum on Monday, May 29.

It’s especially important for the public to identify vectors of attack or the different manners hackers can take hold of an account, such as through suspicious links or breach of email accounts that have access to social media pages.

“We have to be very careful of using our accounts, dapat kana siya for official use only and certain people lang ang naay access. At the same time, dili ta magpataka og click using official accounts,” Gabriel said.

Meanwhile, the hacking incident involving the official Facebook page of the Davao City Transport and Traffic Management Office (CTTMO) has been reported to Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) for investigation.

Gabriel added that they are mitigating the possibility of data breach but it cannot be totally avoided without the knowledge of cybersecurity.

“That’s why DICT-Davao is banking on the basic information and basic knowledge each individual should have in order to avoid these cyber attacks,” he said. ICM