MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) is concerned over an undetermined number of data breaches in the APO Production Unit, which is the state-owned company that prints Philippine passports.
At the DFA’s budget hearing on Thursday, DFA Assistant Secretary Adelio Cruz disclosed that the data of the country’s 28 million passport holders could be compromised.
“We’ve experienced a lot of agencies whose data had been hacked, some were sold on the deep web. Unfortunately, if I have to say it, we’re not happy with one [government-owned and controlled corporation] that’s in charge of printing our passports,” Cruz said.
Sen. Loren Legarda, tasked with defending the DFA’s budget at the Senate, asked if Cruz was referring to the APO Production Unit. Cruz confirmed he was.
“There was one incident, actually several incidents where their data and system were allegedly breached. Unfortunately they would not admit to the gravity or to the degree of the breach. We believe it’s being sugar coated,” Cruz said.
Legarda suggested a meeting between APO and the DFA to better understand the problem. Cruz responded that they had "a litany of concerns."
APO is under the Presidential Communications Office, now led by former journalist Cesar Chavez, who recently replaced Cheloy Garafil as secretary.
Cruz said the DFA is working on securing a cybersecurity system for all passport data.
“We are very very concerned with the security of our data and we are looking into, seriously looking into the possibility of employing a cybersecurity system for all of our passport data,” Cruz said.