Cyberattacks in Chile: a virtual threat, but real

There are problems that require quick solutions and others that need urgent and immediate action, such as cyberattacks. In fact, in 2022 three important entities were harmed: the Court of Appeals, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the National Consumer Service.
This is not an isolated thing. According to a report by the national consultancy Nivel 4, in Chile there is a worrying degree of vulnerability that affects the various departments of the State and that import imminent risks, such as the theft of information or the destruction of data.
But we go further. Our country suffers approximately 25,000 virus attacks per day, 50 million attacks on firewalls on Internet connections and 50,000 attacks on computers, laptops or tablets according to real-time analysis available on the web.
What can we do in the face of this virtual, but real, threat? I think the first thing is to consider data protection as urgent, whether at the governmental or private level, and shorten response times to a cyberattack.
According to the aforementioned study, the delay to resolve the most serious threats in different sectors and industry of the country exceeds 24 days, while those considered medium or low risks, between 8 and 16 days.
From our point of view, it takes a long time to solve such a sensitive problem, so it would not be a bad idea to invest in effective protection mechanisms, policies and procedures, such as encryption services, perimeter protection, validation of up-to-date data and backups.
To this, we can add a more expeditious and urgent processing of the Framework Law on Cybersecurity and Critical Information Infrastructure that since March 15, 2022 remains in the Senate.
It is necessary to be more attentive. We have witnessed unauthorized access to corporate and state networks. We are in time to stop this escalation by becoming aware of the role that cybersecurity should have in all public and private work.

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The content expressed in this opinion column is the sole responsibility of its author, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial line or position of El Mostrador.

Original source in Spanish