THE Government will setup the National Computer Emergency Response Team of Fiji to address cybercrime, says Minister for and Trade, Cooperatives, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises and Communication Manoa Kamikamica.
He told Parliament on May 2 that vacancy advertisements had already been put out.
“That will be the first time in Fiji we have first responders when it comes to cyber security,” Mr Kamikamica said.
“At the moment, when the previous government was around, when there was a cyber incident, they don’t look around and go, who’s going to take care of this issue, so it is either communications or whoever.
“Now we’ll have first responders that will be overseeing cyber security attacks in Fiji, talking to Australia, New Zealand, all the other regulatory authorities, and trying to manage in a very cohesive way our cyber posture in Fiji.”
Mr Kamikamica said the Government was engaging very deeply with the Australian cyber security arm as a result of the Cyber Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed between the two countries.
“We do thank the Australian Government for providing expertise, which has accelerated our progress.
“We are about to complete the initial documentation of our second cyber security strategy, which will actually, unlike the other one, not gain dust, but actually be implemented.”
Mr Kamikamica said Australia’s Ambassador for Cyber Security and Cyber Affair, invited the Fijian Government to attend a function at the high commissioner’s residence to celebrate the anniversary of the MOU.
“That shows how significant and important the Australian Government places on cyber security, Fiji’s actions in actually not only creating documents, but actually doing things.
“Since then, we’ve deepened our relationship with the Australian Government. For example, we’ve already had two visits into Canberra, collaborating very closely with the Australian cyber security authorities.”
Mr Kamikamica said the Government was now able to leverage both the expertise and knowledge in terms of cyber issues.
“They’ve assigned a resource, a very high-level senior official from Australia, into our ministry because it was under-resourced, so, they are now on board, that lady’s been here for, I think, eight months.
“We’re requesting for an additional year because she’ll be part of the process of rolling out some of the initiatives.”
