The Ministry of E- governance is leading the way towards the implementation of Belize's National Digital Cybersecurity Framework. Today a consultation stakeholder review meeting took place to reflect on key discussion points, provide feedback and outline the next steps in preparation for the national cybersecurity assessment. Jomarie Lanza reports from the consultation session.
Belize has now moved into the review phase of the consultative process on advancing our national digital security efforts, in preparation of the national cyber security assessment. We have yet to establish a framework that caters to the needs of stakeholders when it comes to protecting their company's data. CEO in the ministry of E-Governance & Cyber Security Jose Urbina explained why this partnership between entities like PUC, BWS, BEL and the banking sector is vital to the development of Belize's cyber security framework.
Jose Urbina, CEO, Ministry of E-Governance & Cyber Security
"Well today is the second stakeholder engagement for cyber security assessment it is a cyber security assessment that was done in partnership with the world bank now the world bank has submitted the report what is our cyber posture and now we are coming back to stakeholders within Belize to present the assessment and also do a validation to ensure that we get buy in from our stakeholders."
"Well as we all know when we look at technology in Belize we know that we love implementing technology but we sometimes miss the concept of protecting that data, considering now that the government of Belize is championing digital transformation and digitizing services very aggressively, we need to take into consideration the most important aspect of digital transformation which is protecting the data of every citizen in Belize so our cyber posture is lacking in Belize we have a very weak cyber security posture and that is the intent of the ministry to further enhance and strengthen our posture to ensure that we are not only knowledgeable in cyber security threats but we are also knowledgeable in the different frameworks that can be implemented at the national level to be able to protect that data that we are so eager to ensure that our citizens use in terms of the services that we have."
By the end of the new fiscal year Belize should be able to establish a cyber security operations center within the public service. Ricardo Moguel from the ministry of E governance explained some of the key points in today's presentation.
Ricardo Moguel, Enterprise Architect, Cyber security matters, E-governance
"Within Belize we have a general idea of our cyber security posture so we understand, we are not advanced and are still just starting out, so we have a little bit of understanding that okay cybersecurity is a thing that is in the mind of Belizean organizations but we don't have the practical knowledge, we don't have the correct procedures. So we are all in agreement as institutions, that this is important and we recognize that ransomware, data breaches these are big threats that can impact Belizean society as a whole so we are now doing investments, private sector, public sector into cybersecurity so we have that consensus. Now the results here are going to say what concrete actions can be taken? For example some of them are capacity building for the private sector, other ones are doing communication, having round table meetings not just government ministries but also private sector institutions banking for instances on what are the best practices, how should we implement them having that buy in from everybody. And also seeing if we can do a national computer incident response team so that it is not just oh government by itself and they will handle their own, everyone on their own. No it should be a centralized unit where any Belizean institution can contact and say hey there is a cyber attack, a cyber incident what should we do? What are the steps and can you provide me help and so there will be more details within the presentation and I am excited to share some."
And of course security comes at a cost, which is why the interest and commitment of both public and private partners is crucial to funding a sturdy and hefty cyber security system that benefits and works for all.
Jose Urbina, CEO, Ministry of E-Governance & Cyber Security
"When we look at technology and the protection of that technology and it depends at what level we want to protect, we want to protect from the inception meaning doing best practices within the software development and just speaking about software development there is a high cost associated with it, when we look at in terms of standardizing firewalls within the public sector for example it comes with an investment, and that is in particular one of the questions that we received at our first stakeholder engagement whereby one of the members said, we will know how serious the government of Belize is when we see the budget allocated for cyber security, but the reality is that in respective of that size of budget because they can give you a large sum of money and we can accomplish nothing and they can give you a small sum of money and we can accomplish a lot because we have the buy in of the stakeholders and what we are trying to push here is to ensure that our stakeholders realize that this is a collaboration. When do we take the budget that government has and I can be open, the budget I requested for the cyber security initiative is about $275,000 for this coming fiscal year. Which I believe we can accomplish a lot with but when we look at the budget that for example the private sector has for cyber security and what we as a ministry have for cyber security and what other members within the public sector have for cyber security it adds up and if we can ensure that we collaborate then I think we can achieve a lot more than just looking at a large sum of money with one single stakeholder so the collaboration aspect is very important for us."
